Lindsey Graham, 71, died Saturday night at his South Capitol Street residence, hours after getting off a plane from Kyiv, after his heart failed. The medical examiner in the District of Columbia had a preliminary answer by Sunday afternoon: an aortic dissection that was triggered by hardening of the arteries, which can within minutes become deadly, the largest blood vessel in the body. He was not responsive to calls for help when emergency crews arrived at George Washington University Hospital at 10:23 p.m., where he was pronounced dead, after receiving a call reporting chest pains and heart attack. He had succumbed to a brief and sudden illness, his office said, without giving any additional details, and requested privacy. Toxicology reports have not yet been received, but so far, there is no evidence of anything more than what his physicians would describe as a "catastrophic, unforeseeable failure of an aging artery.

The weirdness of the timing is what he just did. By his own account, Graham was "never more optimistic" about ending the war after spending Friday in Kyiv with Volodymyr Zelensky to brief him on a sanctions package that he has been working to get through in Congress for over a year. President Trump told NBC that he spoke with Graham on the phone Saturday evening and that the call may have been the senator's final call with the president. Tributes poured in within hours from all over the political spectrum, from Trump, calling him a true American patriot, to Zelensky, who described him as a defender of freedom, and in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu describing him as one of Israel's greatest friends and a beloved friend of his own. President Isaac Herzog used virtually the same words.

The loss is especially significant for Israel. Following the massacre on October 7, Graham assembled a 10-member, bipartisan Senate delegation to Israel and, while in Tel Aviv, vocally announced that if his plane had been larger he would have brought the whole chamber. For three decades, he fought for that assistance, those arms packages and that diplomatic cloak that Israeli governments of both hues relied upon, and he also cautioned his own party's emerging isolationist faction that opposition to Israel would be the losing proposition, not the winning one, for Republicans. He was, by his own account, a member of the wing of the party that saw antisemitism as a disqualifying trait, and he applied his influence with Trump to maintain that argument in a party that seemed more and more drawn to retrenchment.

Getting on the right side of Trump was an improbable mid-career change. Graham had previously run against Trump in the 2016 primary and forecasted that the party would be "destroyed" if Trump made the cut. He has become one of Trump's most reliable defenders and golfing partners, helping him push back against policy on Iran, on Ukraine and, more recently, on Israel's military stance even going so far as to make a public call this spring that Israel not strike Iranian oil refinery operations even while he backed the broader US-Israel campaign against Tehran. On the day of his death, Iranian state news praised his demise with open arms, marking the end of a career as one of the loudest American voices to challenge the Islamic Republic.

The real-life implications in Washington are direct and in some areas, financial. Graham was the chair of the Senate Budget Committee, which was in the middle of negotiating a reconciliation bill that is likely to include funding for the reconstruction of the U.S. arms arsenal used during the Iran war. The Republicans' de facto Senate majority has dwindled to 51, with the death of Mitch McConnell in the hospital and the tight deadline for government funding on September 30 looming as prospects for a victory have dimmed.Now that Mitch McConnell is in the hospital and the Republicans are vulnerable to a Democratic filibuster in various areas of the Senate, from the confirmation of Todd Blanche as attorney general to a coming government funding deadline, the advantage may be slipping away. Graham's absence on the Judiciary Committee makes its 11-10 Republican member margin even.Graham's absence on the Judiciary Committee makes her nomination's margin even 11-11, which could halt the Blanche nomination entirely.

But the most significant unfinished business is economic, on a much broader scale: the Graham-Blumenthal Sanctioning Russia Act that the two Senators had just had the White House approve. As detailed in the table above, the bill would feature a minimum 500 percent tariff on any countries that continued to purchase Russian oil, gas, uranium or petroleum products, which would hit China and India the hardest. With 84 co-sponsors, the measure is meant to be used as a lever to cut off the Kremlin's war funding, but putting the whole Chinese trade with Russia on hold with a sweeping tariff would be an escalation with no clear historical precedent in trade policy and likely to be challenged by the WTO. Those who support Graham are now pressing leadership of the Senate to take the bill up quickly, describing speedy action as the right way to honor a senator who dedicated his final productive hours to that very goal.

South Carolina is now in a rushed sprint for the political pole. Graham had been expected to win that race easily, but state law calls for a special primary on Aug. 11, possibly with a runoff scheduled for Aug. 25, to select the nominee for Nov. 13, which will be led by Gov. Henry McMaster. Trump has indicated that he has a favorite replacement in mind, but hasn't shared his name; both Rep. Nancy Mace and Lt. Governor Pamela Evette have been mentioned as possible candidates.

What Graham's legacy will be is more difficult to measure than a seat in a committee or the number of votes a bill receives. He was the final of the "Three Amigos" along with John McCain and Joe Lieberman who persistently worked, sometimes against their own party lines, to ensure that U.S. involvement overseas remained a bipartisan impulse, rather than a partisan grievance. Graham's death puts to rest one of the most distinctive Washington personalities: a hawkish dealmaker who was trusted and respected by both Israeli and Ukrainian leaders as well as American ones.The lesson from Graham's death is that it also marks the end of a particular Washington archetype: a hawkish dealmaker who could be trusted and respected by both Israeli and Ukrainian leaders as well as American leaders. The question of whether anyone will get up to take that seat whether in South Carolina or in any other spot in the Senate has become an open one and one that has real ramifications.