Stunned GOP Looks to Replace Graham After His Sudden Death

Lindsey Graham’s sudden death from an aortic tear over the weekend has set off a scramble among South Carolina Republicans to replace him, narrowing the GOP’s already-thin Senate majority and adding a new layer of uncertainty to President Trump’s legislative agenda ahead of November’s midterms. The news, which broke Monday morning, dominated the opening of this episode of WSJ’s What’s News, alongside a busy earnings season kickoff, a major Chinese IPO, and a deepening U.S. squeeze on Cuba’s medical diplomacy program.

The scramble to replace Lindsey Graham

Senator Lindsey Graham died Friday after returning from Kyiv, where he had met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Preliminary findings from the D.C. medical examiner attributed his death to an aortic tear. President Trump told CNN’s State of the Union that he spoke with Graham shortly before he died, calling him “a great politician” and “a natural.” The episode traced Graham’s arc from a fierce Trump critic during the 2016 campaign—warning the party would be “forever changed”—to one of Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill, a relationship the show described as “one of the most interesting relationships of the Trump era.” Graham was a consistent foreign policy hawk, instrumental in advocating for war with Iran and a fierce defender of Israel, and he remained widely respected even by Democrats who disagreed w