Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) turned down a personal request by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La) last month to advance a sanctions bill targeting pro-Russian, antidemocratic officials in the country of Georgia, according to two congressional aides.
Johnson wanted to include the bill, called the Megobari Act, in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the annual must-pass Defense bill. The bill, which has broad support in the House and Senate, would require the president to impose sanctions on people undermining Georgia’s security or stability.
Thune’s decision to reject Johnson’s request demonstrates another crack in a relationship that is increasingly fractured. It was the second time in three months that Thune had blocked a bipartisan request to include Megobari in the NDAA.
Johnson’s last-minute intervention on behalf of the bill came as a surprise to those following the NDAA process closely.
“Speaker Johnson’s lobbying was welcome but seemed to come out of nowhere,” one congressional aide said. “We thought the bill was dead after Thune shot it down in September. We tried hard to get the bill into the NDAA at the last minute at the Speaker’s request but couldn’t overcome Thune’s opposition.”
Johnson put the wheels in motion Nov. 21, sending congressional aides scrambling to reach out to other Republicans and Democrats and build support to add the bill to what was a nearly finalized NDAA.
But Thune held firm in his opposition to advancing the bill.
“He just said flat no,” one aide said.
Thune and Johnson’s offices did not respond to requests for comment.
Thune had earlier blocked Megobari’s inclusion in the NDAA at the request of Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), disappointing the bill’s bipartisan backers and puzzling pro-democracy activists.
Mullin in 2020 accused the Georgian Dream government of cozying up to “American hostile rivals and enemies.” But in September, he told The Hill he had a good relationship with Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze of the ruling Georgian Dream party, and argued for using carrots with Tbilisi instead of the stick of sanctions.
“I want to be able to work with them before we throw sanctions on them. I want to work with them to see how they can, you know, have true sovereignty, to get away from the overbearing influence of Russia,” he told The Hill at the time.
Mullin’s colleagues on both sides of the aisle do not view Georgian Dream as a decent and cooperative partner.
Since seizing power in October 2024 parliamentary elections criticized as not free and not fair, Georgia’s ruling party has carried out a campaign of violence, repression, intimidation and imprisonment against its political opponents, critics and independent civil society groups.
In one of the more alarming allegations, the BBC reported Sunday that Georgian security forces used a World War I-era chemical weapon against anti-government protests last year.
The Trump administration has not removed Biden-era sanctions on Georgian Dream officials that were imposed over allegations of corruption and undermining Georgia’s democracy and security.
But the administration has also not taken any new action. Analysts acknowledge the Megobari Act, if enacted, is not likely to get Georgian Dream to reverse course, but they argue the law would have an impact.
Elene Kintsurashvili, senior program coordinator on the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Security team based in Warsaw, said the Megobari Act would raise the personal cost on Georgian officials by targeting their financial networks, imposing asset freezes and visa restrictions.
“It would also send a clear geopolitical signal: Washington is prepared to classify Georgia’s authoritarian turn not as a domestic dispute, but as a strategic concern,” she said.
The U.S. views Georgia as an important partner in advancing American security interests in the region, given its strategic location in the Caucasus region linking Russia and the Middle East. The country had for decades been a model of democracy emerging in a post-Soviet state, and it resisted a Russian invasion in 2008. Russia still occupies two territories of Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and Georgian Dream has more recently deepened ties with Moscow, China and Iran.
Analysts and pro-democracy activists are sounding the alarm that without meaningful action from the U.S. and Europe, Georgia will be entirely lost to U.S. adversaries.
“If Megobari fails to pass or is indefinitely delayed, the consequences inside Georgia would be severe,” Kintsurashvili said.
“Protesters — who already face criminalization, surveillance, imprisonment, and heavy fines simply for dissent — would interpret the failure as abandonment by democratic allies. [Georgian Dream] would further exploit it aggressively to advance the narrative that ‘the West supports the regime, not the opposition,’ enabling further repression and accelerating the shift toward full authoritarian isolation. In that scenario, the regime’s grip would tighten, and the space for civil resistance would narrow dramatically.”
Bipartisan lawmakers have increasingly raised alarm to the Trump administration and in public to try to motivate action.
On Nov 5, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, led a bipartisan group of House and Senate lawmakers in a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio urging him to defend American and Georgian employees of the U.S. mission in the country against allegations of being “radicals against the government” and funded by the U.S. “for revolutionary purposes.”
“This mischaracterization is putting FSNs [Foreign Service Nationals] in harm’s way. The statements also serve as an important data point: Georgian Dream has demonstrated no serious intent of seeking to improve bilateral relations with the United States,” the letter read.
On Nov 28, Shaheen and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Sen. James E. Risch (R-Idaho) issued a joint statement criticizing Georgian Dream of introducing “a dark new chapter in its modern history.”
The lawmakers were marking the anniversary of Georgian Dream reneging on the country’s constitutionally mandated pursuit of European Union membership and has moved forward on “passing authoritarian laws, imprisoning and moving to ban the political opposition, intimidating civil society leaders and maligning the United States and its embassy personnel,” Shaheen and Risch wrote.
“On this somber anniversary, we call on the government to immediately reverse course, restore political freedoms in Georgia and recommit to democratic governance.”
