Congress ignores White House pressure to tweak Russia sanctions bill

The House and Senate are on a path to quickly tweaking and passing a bill imposing new sanctions against Russia and Iran, possibly before they leave for the July 4 break, without any consideration of the Trump administration’s call for more flexibility in how to implement those sanctions.

A technicality stalled the bill this week in the House, which led many Democrats to suspect that House Republicans were wavering on the bill in deference to President Trump, who doesn’t want to get boxed in with the mandatory Russia sanctions in the bill.