Last week I noted, a little drily, that this Congress had managed to pass a Russia sanctions bill. Today the headlines say Trump has signed an order waiving most of it, pausing the new measures amid his row with Ukraine. I only have the headlines, so I can’t tell you which provisions survive or what legal authority he’s citing.

But I’d guess the authority is in the bill itself. Sanctions laws almost always carry a national-security waiver, because presidents insist on one and legislators who want the thing passed agree. So the sequence is less a betrayal of the statute than the statute working as drafted. Congress writes the pressure valve, and the president turns it.

What I find interesting is the timing. The diesel deal with Putin drew bipartisan criticism, and a House Republican invoked Reagan to try to block it. Congress’s answer was a law, and the executive’s answer was an exception, and the exception arrived first. A vote is a statement and a waiver is an action. Whoever holds the waiver pen holds the policy, whatever the bill’s title says.

There’s a second-order effect I’d watch. Everyone who dealt with Russia now knows the sanctions can be switched off by one signature. That changes how banks, shippers, and Moscow itself price the risk of the next round, and the next bill will have to be written knowing the waiver exists. Maybe Congress tightens the waiver language. Maybe it decides, as it has before, that a strongly worded vote is cheaper than a fight over drafting.

Meanwhile the penny is still being retired. Some institutions can finish things.

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