Ohio Republican Max Miller and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board came out against Trump’s waiver of the Graham Act’s Russia sanctions, a law Trump signed himself on Sept. 18.
Rep. Max Miller, an Ohio Republican, came out against the waiver on Monday, Oct. 19, a day after the Journal’s editorial board wrote that Trump had “stuck a shiv in the back” of the late Lindsey Graham’s legacy.
Trump signed the law himself on Sept. 18, then suspended its new sanctions and tariffs 28 days later, on Friday, Oct. 16. He says he can impose the penalties “later, or any time that I want.”
October 20, 2026 · Eight stories, illustrated
“The Administration should not waive sanctions passed by Congress to punish Russia for its brutal war of choice in Ukraine.”
On X. He holds a swing seat that Decision Desk HQ gives him a 52% chance of keeping on Nov. 3, and his district includes Parma, home to more than 4,000 Ukrainians.Trump had “stuck a shiv in the back” of the late Lindsey Graham’s legacy.
It called the diesel deal “a $4.5 billion windfall for Russian energy companies.”The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board$4.5 billion the board’s “windfall for Russian energy companies”
Sergey Vakulenko, Carnegie analyst$54 million–$72 million Russia’s best-case gain: $30–$40 a ton on the 1.8 million tons announced
The analyst’s range, $54 million–$72 million, is drawn at its true width. At this scale it is a sliver, so a flag marks where it ends.
Both bars start at zero on one scale. They measure different things: the board’s “windfall,” and Vakulenko’s best-case gain of $30–$40 a ton on the 1.8 million tons announced, since Russia could sell the diesel to existing buyers anyway.
tons of Russian diesel
more tons
tons
- 86-11
- The Senate vote that passed the Graham Act.
- Section 115
- Lets the president suspend the law by certifying a national interest, with no expiry and no congressional approval vote. The law itself sunsets on Sept. 18, 2031.
- 67 senators · 290 House members
- Undoing the waiver would take a new law, and overriding a veto takes 67 senators and 290 House members.
- 57 of 60 votes
- A comparable fight fell short: in January 2019, a Senate measure to block Trump’s lifting of sanctions on companies tied to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska won 57 votes, short of the 60 needed to advance.
- Sept. 18
Trump signs the Graham Act, which passed the Senate 86-11.
- Oct. 10
Treasury lifts sanctions on Russian diesel until April 7, 2027, with no volume cap and no ceasefire condition.
- Oct. 12–13
Twelve senators, six from each party, ask Trump to rescind the diesel deal. Diesel averages $6.27 a gallon, against $3.67 a year earlier, per AAA.
- Friday, Oct. 16
Trump suspends the law’s new sanctions and tariffs, 28 days after signing it.
- Oct. 18
Energy Secretary Chris Wright calls the diesel deal a peace “carrot.” The Journal’s board publishes.
- Monday, Oct. 19
Rep. Max Miller comes out against the waiver.
What next: Secretary of State Marco Rubio calls the waiver a 60-day economic review, which would run to about Dec. 15. That is the administration’s own timetable; the order sets no end date.
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Trump told Zelensky to let “somebody else” negotiate for Ukraine and said Russia “has been fine,” and two House Republicans threatened to block his agenda over Ukraine.
Trump spoke as he left the White House on Monday, Oct. 19. Russia “has been fine on Ukraine. They haven’t been doing much,” he said, and it is “time for somebody else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine,” a line aimed at Zelensky, who has led Ukraine’s side of the talks.
“We’ve given a lot to Ukraine. They’ve given nothing to us.”
Defending his deals with Russia, he said: “I’m trying to get a hostage.”He accused Trump of pressuring Kyiv to surrender to Russia.
He is running a public pressure campaign through allies in Congress.Zelensky has been warned that lashing out at Trump “will not end well.”
By text. McCaul is leaving Congress.- Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick
- A Pennsylvania Republican. He says he will block Trump’s agenda unless Trump changes course on Ukraine.
- Rep. Don Bacon
- A Nebraska Republican, retiring at the end of this term. On Oct. 14 he wrote that Trump’s agenda “is dead unless they change paths” on Ukraine. He says the threat covers the lame-duck session after the Nov. 3 election, per The Hill.
Still open: neither lawmaker has named a bill or a vote he would withhold.
- $195 billion
- Made available for spending tied to the war since 2022, per a U.S. inspector general’s count cited by the Council on Foreign Relations. $164 billion of it came from five laws, the last passed in April 2024.
- About $127 billion
- Of it, aid directly to Ukraine, by the Kiel Institute’s count. Much of the rest paid for the U.S. military presence in Europe.
- The face
- Swapping Zelensky out at the table is legally possible, since Ukrainian law lets the president delegate a negotiator.
- Not the land
- Article 73 of Ukraine’s constitution says any change to its territory must be approved in a nationwide referendum, so no negotiator can sign land away alone.
Read the reporting
Zelensky said partners gave no early warning before one of two Russian ballistic-missile waves on Kyiv; Secretary of State Marco Rubio said U.S. intelligence sharing never paused.
Russia fired 16 ballistic missiles plus drones at Kyiv and the surrounding region overnight into Monday, Oct. 19, damaging more than 10 energy facilities and leaving more than 500,000 people without power, heat and running water. A 21-year-old woman was killed in Kyiv.
Ukraine says it got advance warning from partners for only one of the two attack waves.
Partners gave no early warning.
A day earlier, on Sunday, Oct. 18, he had told NBC that U.S. intelligence sharing was “de-blocked” after a three-day pause.There has been no pause in intelligence sharing.
Rubio and the White House deny any change.A ballistic missile reaches its target two to four minutes after launch, Beskrestnov has said, per Ukrinform.
Counting Ukraine’s own detection, per air force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat. He said similar failures had happened before for technical reasons; the reporting gives no count of how often.
“People [have] already died … last night we received it, but... one minute before the attack.”Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov, adviser to Zelensky
- Wednesday, Oct. 14
- The first of two big ballistic-missile strikes on Kyiv in less than a week: 39 ballistic missiles at Kyiv, the Kyiv region and Kharkiv.
- March 2025
- The precedent for a deliberate cutoff. CIA Director John Ratcliffe confirmed a U.S. pause in intelligence sharing on March 5, and Washington lifted it six days later, after talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Read the reporting
The Trump administration has not approved sending Patriot interceptors to Ukraine, including missiles European allies already own.
The Washington Post and Reuters reported it on Monday, Oct. 19. Patriot is the U.S.-made system Ukraine uses to shoot down incoming missiles. Zelensky told senators Ukraine has “almost no” U.S. Patriot interceptors left.
Zelensky says it is waiting on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s signature.
Only the Washington Examiner carries that claim, and no report gives its size or price.They need prior written State Department approval to go to a country the original sale did not cover.
Congress reviews such transfers above $14 million. No report says whose desk holds the European transfers.On Sept. 15 the State Department told Congress it was prepared to authorize Germany’s transfer of 10 GEM-T Patriot interceptors, worth $29.6 million, to Ukraine, per the Kyiv Independent, which says supply has tightened as interceptors went to the Middle East.
The missiles “are ready, and they could already be in Ukraine … but unfortunately there is still no approval.”Volodymyr Zelensky, on a call with senators from both parties
He said the delays, together with other recent U.S. limits on help, suggest “some political decision has been made to slow down support for us.” That motive is his inference. The reports do not show that anyone ordered a slowdown.
- Oct. 14
Ukraine’s military Starshield satellite terminals cut out above 160 km/h. Elon Musk said the U.S. military and Trump set the limit.
- Oct. 15
Two U.S. officials and a Western official said the White House ordered the cap. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, sought a Pentagon watchdog probe.
- Oct. 16
Trump denied that he or Musk ordered the caps; nine senators asked the Pentagon inspector general who did.
- Oct. 17
Zelensky said Ukrainian road tests show the cutoff applies only inside Ukraine; the jets filling in hit about half their targets.
- Oct. 18
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent three times declined to call Ukraine a U.S. ally and said European NATO members “have plenty of Patriots.”
Read the reporting
The Justice Department charged 28 California green-card holders with voting crimes and arrested 11, all from the list of more than 20,000 names behind its suit to hold California ballots uncounted.
Under what it calls “Operation Protect the Vote,” the department filed the charges on Monday, Oct. 19. The 28 are lawful permanent residents: green-card holders, legal immigrants who are not citizens. A DOJ spokesperson says 21 of them are accused of actually casting ballots.
All 28 come from the list of more than 20,000 suspected noncitizens. DOJ says California mailed each of them a ballot.
21 accused of casting ballots · 28 charged · 20,000-plus names
The 28 charged, top left
- One of the 21 accused of actually casting ballots
- One of the other 7 charged
- A name on the list
The list has more than 20,000 names; the field draws 20,000. The 28 charged are placed first, not where they sit on the list. Twenty-one accused voters out of 20,000-plus names is about one in 1,000, and these are charges, not convictions.
- Up to five years
- The felony counts, per DOJ: lying on a naturalization application and fraudulent voter registration.
- Capped at one year
- The six defendants in the Eastern District face only “voting by an alien” (18 U.S.C. § 611), a misdemeanor.
- About 90 people
- Charged with election crimes this year before Monday, Oct. 19, 50 of them for noncitizen voting, per PBS. Election experts say noncitizen voting is extremely rare.
- Oct. 13
DOJ gives California an undisclosed list of mail voters on a thumb drive and demands citizenship checks within 48 hours. Los Angeles County would not open it.
- Oct. 15
The deadline passes, and DOJ sues California and L.A. County to hold about 20,000 flagged ballots uncounted, 19 days before the Nov. 3 election.
- Oct. 16
DOJ warns officials who count those ballots that they could be prosecuted as “aiders and abettors.”
- Oct. 17
Trump says L.A. officials “will all go to jail” if they count them. Registrar Dean Logan says DOJ is litigating “unverified assertions.”
- Monday, Oct. 19
The charges. Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter does not rule out charging election workers who process ballots sent to people on DOJ’s list.
“It’s not to sow distrust. The distrust is there.”Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, on 60 Minutes
Read the reporting
The White House counsel is investigating a text in which Ric Grenell allegedly offered Alina Habba’s husband access to Trump for a Kennedy Center donation; Grenell denies sending it.
Axios reports that it obtained the text, dated May 3, 2025, in which Grenell, who then ran the Kennedy Center, allegedly promised Turkish businessman Turhan Mildon access to Trump and VIP events for a donation. Mildon is married to former Trump attorney Alina Habba. Axios reports the text is now part of a White House counsel investigation that Trump ordered.
- $17.6 million
- Mildon says he wired it at Grenell’s direction to Texas Armament & Technology, a Houston defense firm, to be split between a software deal in Congo and the Kennedy Center.
- Nearly $6 million
- What the Kennedy Center was to get, by Mildon’s account.
- $270,000
- What its records show from Mildon, per Lisa Dale, who handled the Kennedy Center’s finances at the time: a separate pledge, which he paid Oct. 13, 2026, and no gift near $6 million.
- Whose money
- Axios says the wire came from Congo’s finance ministry, not from Mildon’s bank account as Habba first said.
The reporting so far does not explain why a defense firm would handle a Kennedy Center gift, or what the Congo deal was.
McDonnell v. United States (2016)The standard
- AccessArranging a meeting or a VIP invitation, alone, is not an “official act” under bribery law.
- A dealProsecutors would need a deal to act on a specific government matter; a gift steered to a third party like the Kennedy Center can still count.
- So farNo federal decision tied to the Congo software deal has been identified in the reporting.
Trump installed Grenell as Kennedy Center president in February 2025; he left that post in March 2026, per TicketNews. In early 2025 Grenell, then Trump’s special envoy, pushed to normalize relations with Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela, where Mildon does business, and lost that fight to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, per Livemint, citing Axios.
Read the reporting
DHS political appointees asked CISA to secretly buy and hack a voting machine and send the flaws to the White House, not the vendor, ProPublica reports.
A few months into Trump’s second term, which began Jan. 20, 2025, political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security asked CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency that helps states guard election systems, to quietly obtain a voting machine and hack it.
- Federal certification hacking tests are run by machine makers and accredited labs.
- CISA contacts the machine’s maker about a flaw it finds.
- If a maker ignores CISA, the flaw can go public 45 days after contact was attempted.
- CISA quietly obtains a voting machine and hacks it.
- The results go to the White House.
- The machine’s maker is not told about any flaws found.
Career staff pushed back, and the appointees eventually let it drop. ProPublica’s account rests on two unnamed former officials.
“My thought was they could keep it in their back pocket to invalidate any [election] results they don’t like.”A former official, to ProPublica
- More than 1,000 employees
- Laid off or pushed out in Trump’s second term, about one-third of CISA’s workforce.
- $700 million
- More that Trump’s 2027 budget proposal would cut, which could require 900 more layoffs.
- 2018
Trump creates CISA himself, signing the law that made it a stand-alone agency, per ProPublica.
- Nov. 17, 2020
After CISA distributes a statement from federal and state election officials and voting-machine makers calling the 2020 vote “the most secure in American history,” Trump fires its director, Chris Krebs, by tweet, calling that statement “highly inaccurate,” per NPR.
- 2016–2024
No documented hack changed certified vote totals in the 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022 or 2024 federal elections, per the Senate Intelligence Committee and CISA’s later assessments, though the Senate flagged gaps in forensic checks of 2016 systems.
Still open: ProPublica names neither the appointees nor who at the White House would have received the results, and cites no memo or email. The midterms are Tuesday, Nov. 3.
Read the reporting
Mass General Brigham researchers project 83% more childhood chronic hepatitis B if the CDC’s optional birth dose takes effect; a court has blocked that change since March 16, 2026.
A Mass General Brigham model in Annals of Internal Medicine followed one year of U.S. births, 3.6 million, for 20 years: 255 chronic infections with a universal birth dose, 467 under the CDC’s January 2026 “shared decision-making” recommendation. A federal judge stayed that recommendation on March 16, 2026, restoring the universal birth dose.
That is 212 more chronic infections per year of births, an increase the authors call “modest, at least in the early years.”
Universal birth dose255 · in force, restored by the court’s stay
First shot waits until two months303 19% more
75% get a delayed shot357 40% more · per MedPage Today
Shared decision-making, half vaccinated at two months or later467 83% more · the CDC’s January 2026 recommendation, stayed since March 16, 2026
26% get a delayed shot575 125% more · per MedPage Today
The dashed line marks 255, the projection with a universal birth dose. TIME reported 225%: 575 is 225% of 255, which is 125% more.
Every bar is a projection from one model. A federal judge stayed the CDC change on March 16, 2026, restoring the universal birth dose, so the 467 (83% more) applies only if that change takes effect.
still susceptible at 20
still susceptible at 20
| Children of mothers who tested negative | Infected in childhood |
|---|---|
| Unvaccinated | 6.16% |
| Vaccinated starting at 6–8 weeks | 0.21% |
| Vaccinated starting at birth | 0.05% |
The gap between the last two is not statistically significant, and the data are from sub-Saharan Africa, not a U.S. estimate.
- Since 1991
- The U.S. has recommended hepatitis B vaccine for all infants, later specifying a dose within 24 hours of birth. The medical groups suing HHS say pediatric cases fell from about 16,000 a year to fewer than 20 since.
- 26 of 37 peer countries
- Of the 37 peer countries CDC compared, 26 give the birth dose only selectively, and 24 of those start other infants by three months.
The December 2025 change never barred a birth dose, and HHS said insurance coverage continued.
What next: a federal appeals court heard the administration’s bid to lift the stay on Oct. 6, per The Hill; 15 states have also sued over the schedule changes.