WASHINGTON – United States Senator Lindsey Graham likely died on July 11 from a tear in his aorta, officials said, hours after returning to the US from Ukraine and months before he was to face re-election.
Graham’s office said on July 12 that a preliminary report from Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Washington indicated that the senator had died from an aortic dissection, though that determination was subject to additional testing.
Graham, who was chair of the Budget Committee and formerly led the Judiciary Committee, became a household name in Republican politics and was among US President Donald Trump’s closest and most loyal allies in the Senate. He died two days after his 71st birthday, and as he was seeking a fifth term.
A former Air Force lawyer who had served in the Air Force Reserve, Graham also developed a reputation as a foreign policy hawk who vehemently defended Israel and Ukraine. Hours before he died, the senator had returned to Washington after a trip to Ukraine, where he said he had reached agreement with colleagues in both parties and the White House on imposing sanctions targeting buyers of Russian oil.
Here is what to know about the end of Graham’s life:
Emergency workers were called to his home
Graham’s office did not provide any further details about what happened in the moments leading up to his death. But the medical examiner’s preliminary finding said he suffered a tear in the main artery that carries blood from the heart, “stemming from arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease”, or a gradual weakening and hardening of the arteries.
According to recordings of dispatcher calls obtained by The New York Times, emergency workers responded on the night of July 11 to a call about a person experiencing chest pains at the senator’s Capitol Hill address. The recordings did not name Graham, who had returned from Ukraine hours earlier, but responders could be heard saying they were administering CPR to a person suffering from cardiac arrest.
According to the recordings, the emergency call for help came from a woman in Baltimore who was not identified. She informed responders that the house’s door was open, but emergency crews could be heard saying they needed the police to assist a forced entry.
Trump said in an interview on July 12 that he had spoken with Graham not long before the episode, and gotten no inkling that there was anything amiss.
“Other than being tired, he was fine,” Trump said. He said early reports of a possible heart attack made sense. “That would just be a quick end. And maybe that’s not the worst way to go.”
Officials with the D.C. Metropolitan Police and the Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department did not respond to requests for comment.
He had just returned from Ukraine
In his last public act, on July 10, Graham announced during a visit to Ukraine that he had reached agreement among a bipartisan group of senators and the White House on his long-stalled effort, resisted by Trump, to impose sanctions targeting buyers of Russian oil.
It was a fitting end to the senator’s career on Capitol Hill, where he had long been a proponent of US military intervention against adversaries abroad, particularly Russia. In 2025, he had pressed for new, harsher sanctions on countries that did business with Moscow, but he pulled back amid Trump’s opposition.
“I have never been more optimistic than I am today that we have the formula to end this war,” Graham said on July 10 in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. “Help Ukraine be more lethal. Let those supporting Russia to know there’s going to be a price to be paid if you keep doing it. And to try to find an off-ramp – not to humiliate Putin, but to end this war so that Ukraine will thrive and survive.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on July 10 that he was grateful to Graham, posting a photo of the two shaking hands in Ukraine.
Graham’s trip to Ukraine came just days after he had travelled to Ankara, Turkey, for the NATO summit.
Officials will move quickly to replace him
Graham’s death came a month after he won the Republican primary in South Carolina’s Senate race, and about four months before the general election he was heavily favoured to win.
Between now and then, state law allows Governor Henry McMaster, a Republican, to appoint a replacement to serve out the rest of Graham’s term, through Jan 3, 2027. On July 12, Trump said he already had someone in mind for the post.
A spokesperson for the governor declined to answer questions about the process for filling the vacancy.
But the law sets out a quick timeline, indicating that a special primary election to replace Graham on the ballot would be held on Aug 11, with candidates required to file for that contest between July 21 to 28.
Plans are underway to honour him
Trump announced on social media on July 12 that he would order flags to be flown at half-staff until the evening of July 18 in honour of Graham.
Arrangements on Capitol Hill have yet to be announced, but Senator Tim Scott, his fellow South Carolina Republican, suggested in an interview on CBS programme Face The Nation that GOP leaders were planning to find ways of honouring Graham in the coming week.
It was not known whether he would lie in state in the Capitol, as his close friend and former Senator John McCain of Arizona did in 2018 after his death from a malignant brain tumour.
Bayliss Wagner and Robert Jimison contributed reporting.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
