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Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and one of President Donald Trump’s closest allies in Congress, died Saturday evening at 71 after what his office described as a brief and sudden illness.
“On the evening of Saturday, July 11, US Senator Lindsey Graham passed away from a brief and sudden illness,” his office said in a statement posted to his official X account, adding that his family was requesting privacy.
Graham had traveled to Kyiv on Friday and met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky before returning to Washington, where he had been scheduled to appear on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday morning. An emergency call placed Saturday evening to a residence tied to the senator referenced a dispatch for cardiac arrest, though his office has not confirmed a specific cause of death.
President Trump paid tribute to Graham in a post on Truth Social, calling him one of the most dedicated senators he had known and describing him as a true patriot who would be deeply missed.
Graham was first elected to South Carolina’s state legislature in 1993 and to the US House of Representatives in 1994, where he represented the state’s 3rd congressional district until winning a Senate seat in 2002. He was re-elected in 2008, 2014, and 2020, and was campaigning for a fifth term ahead of this fall’s midterm elections. He most recently chaired the Senate Budget Committee and had previously led the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2021.
South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster called Graham “irreplaceable” in a post on X, describing him as a steadfast fighter for the state and the country.
Graham’s political trajectory shifted sharply over the past decade. He ran briefly for the Republican presidential nomination in 2015 and was an outspoken critic of both the Tea Party movement and Trump’s first candidacy, at one point calling him a “jackass” during the 2016 primary race. That opposition reversed after a 2017 meeting with Trump, following which Graham became one of the president’s most consistent defenders and a regular presence with him on the golf course.
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Foreign policy defined much of Graham’s three-decade congressional career. He was a longtime advocate of an interventionist US posture abroad, pushing for military action against Iran and for closer US-Israel ties. He backed the naval blockade left in place after the 2026 Iran war ceasefire was extended, arguing it would maintain pressure on Tehran, and had reportedly advised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on how to persuade Trump to authorize strikes on Iran earlier this year. Three weeks before his death, Graham told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that if diplomatic efforts with Iran failed, Trump would move to control the Strait of Hormuz.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said he was shocked and heartbroken by the news, describing Graham as a leader of the US-Israel partnership.
“We will never forget how he stood by the people of Israel in our most difficult moments, and we will remain eternally grateful for his sense of justice, truth, and loyalty,” Herzog said, adding that he would miss his friend deeply.
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Graham’s death adds to a recent pattern of health concerns among sitting members of Congress that have drawn scrutiny over transparency. Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell was hospitalized weeks earlier for undisclosed reasons, while New Jersey Representative Tom Kean Jr. was absent from Congress for months before disclosing a depression diagnosis upon his return. Graham’s office has so far released no additional medical detail beyond the initial statement citing a brief and sudden illness.
Graham earned both a bachelor’s degree and a law degree from the University of South Carolina and served as a lawyer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps before entering politics. His Senate committee work spanned Appropriations, Environment and Public Works, and Judiciary in addition to his chairmanships of Budget and, earlier, Judiciary.
His death leaves South Carolina’s senior Senate seat vacant ahead of the November midterms, with Graham having reported $15.6 million in campaign fundraising for a re-election bid that Trump had endorsed in March 2025. No timeline has been given for a special election or interim appointment to fill the seat, and neither the governor’s office nor state party officials had issued guidance on the process as of Sunday.
