Sen. Lindsey Graham has died. The South Carolina Republican leaves behind a legacy of representing the Palmetto State for decades as a staunch conservative who, after previously opposing Donald Trump’s rise within the GOP, became one of the president’s most loyal allies in Congress.
Graham, modern Republican-turned-Trump ally, dies after decades of representing South Carolina
The Washington Post reported that Graham, who had just turned 71 on Thursday, was taken from his Washington, D.C., residence to a hospital after paramedics responded to a call about a man experiencing chest pains and treated him for cardiac arrest.
The senator had just returned that day from visiting Ukraine, where he had met with President Volodymyr Zelensky and pushed for new U.S. sanctions against Russia.
Graham had represented South Carolina in the Senate since 2003, having previously served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He was running for reelection this year after winning the Republican primary in June.
Graham’s death temporarily cuts Republicans’ thin majority in the Senate and throws uncertainty into the South Carolina Senate race. Under South Carolina law, Republican Gov. Henry McMaster has the authority to choose someone to serve out the remainder of Graham’s term. The South Carolina Republican Party is expected to hold a special primary within the next month to replace Graham on the ballot for November’s election.
Graham was known as a moderate for the first part of his Senate career, gaining a reputation for working closely with political “maverick” Republican John McCain and cooperating with Democrats on issues such as climate change and immigration reform.
Graham briefly sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 and opposed Donald Trump’s candidacy, famously saying, “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed…….and we will deserve it.”
Once Trump became president, however, Graham became one of his most loyal and vocal allies in the Senate. He helped push through the president’s agenda, including the 2025 tax cut bill.
Graham was also accused, though ultimately not charged, in President Trump’s alleged scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, one of the key swing states Trump lost to Joe Biden. Graham referred to his position as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee to defend his actions in questioning mail-in ballots in Georgia’s 2020 election and denied pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to throw out mail-in ballots, a move that would likely have favored Trump.
Graham defended right-wing domestic and foreign policy agendas
Graham developed a reputation as a staunch conservative. On foreign policy, he was seen as one of the Senate’s more hawkish members.
In addition to strongly advocating for American support for Ukraine against Russia, Graham was a longtime proponent of U.S. war with Iran, pushing for regime change in that country. He was also a consistently pro-Israel voice in the Senate. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remembered Graham as “a great friend of Israel and a cherished friend of mine.”
On domestic issues, Graham was a longtime and influential member of the Senate Judiciary Committee who helped block Barack Obama’s 2016 nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, arguing that a new justice should not be confirmed months before a presidential election, only to help push through Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett weeks before the 2020 election.
Graham also defended Trump nominee Brett Kavanaugh against sexual assault accusations but opposed Biden nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, storming out of her confirmation hearing over suggestions that the U.S.-run Guantanamo Bay detention center be shut down. Of the eight Supreme Court nominees considered during Graham’s Senate career, Jackson was the only one for whom he cast a “no” vote, despite calling her “a very nice person.”
Graham often opposed LGBTQ rights, and although he pushed back against racist and Islamophobic attacks against Barack Obama, he also denied and downplayed systemic racism.
In 2020, while running for reelection against Jaime Harrison during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, Graham quipped, “If you’re a young, African American or an immigrant, you can go anywhere in this state, you just need to be conservative, not liberal.”
On Meet the Press, a program that often featured Graham and was scheduled to have him appear this week, President Trump praised Graham as “like a member of the family to me.” Trump also used the senator’s death to push for the SAVE America Act, claiming Graham had been working with him to pass the legislation.
The idea of Trump and Graham working together to restrict voting rights aligns with the legacy of the senator, who often championed Trump’s policies. GOP colleagues and Democratic critics alike are remembering Graham as a staunch defender of the conservative agenda, as the senator’s sudden death reshapes the political landscape in South Carolina and Washington.