Staff Reports
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a longtime Republican from South Carolina and ally of President Donald Trump has died from a reportedly “brief and sudden illness.”
First elected to the U.S. Senate in 2002, Graham came to embody the evolution of the Republican Party as a critic to Trump who turned fiercely loyal and grew to be one of the president’s closest advisors on Capitol Hill.
The senior senator was a vocal spokesperson for U.S. intervention and leadership across the globe.
Graham, 71, died shortly after returning from a visit to Ukraine—one of many he made after the Russian invastion in 2022. Emergency responders were dispatched to a DC address for Grahma around 8:30 pm for a report of someone suffering from chest pains, according to audio of the dispatch. The audio indiciates that someone had called in from Baltimore and was on the way to the home.
The dispatcher said the caller believed the door was unlocked, though emergency responders said it was deadbolted, according to the audio. About 25 minutes later, they reported that CPR was in progress.
Graham’s X account said he died July 11.
First elected to the U.S. Senate in 2002, Graham was running for a fifth term in this fall’s midterm elections. Under state law, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster can appoint a temporary replacement to fill Grahma’s now vacant seat. Because Graham was up for reelection this year, there is also now a vacancy in the Republican nomination for the seat. State law appears to call for a special primary election to be held Aug. 11, with a possible runoff Aug. 25, to choose his replacement, but officials haven’t yet announced a process.
Graham began his political career in the early ’90s after serving as a city and county attorney in South Carolina. He was elected to the House in 1994. He also served in the U.S. Air Force as a prosecutor and defense attorney.
His early life was marked by the deaths of his mother and father within 15 months of each other when he was an undergraduate; his father died of a heart attack, his mother from cancer. Graham helped raise his then 13-year-old sister, Darline, and later adopted her.
Graham briefly ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2015, arguing the GOP needed to tell Trump, his then-rival, to “go to hell” after Trump proposed a ban of Muslims coming to the U.S. During the 2016 GOP primary, Graham was one of Trump’s fiercest Republican objectors, calling him “the most flawed nominee in the history of the Republican Party” and warning that nominating Trump would doom the party and in the general election refused to vote for him.
That changed after a March 2017 meeting with the newly inagurated president. By Trump’s second term, Graham became one of Trump’s most trusted voices in the Senate, calling himself at one point the president’s “North Star.”
Trump praised Graham on Truth Social after news of his death broke, and said details on funeral arrangments would follow.
“Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the greatest people and Senators I have ever known, is dead!” Trump said. “He was always working, was a true American Patriot. Lindsey will be greatly missed!!!”
