We began this episode with a February 2016 clip of South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham speaking to the Washington Press Club Foundation. In a darkly funny speech, Graham warned journalists about what a danger Donald Trump posed to the GOP and the United States—and offers to jinx Trump by endorsing him.
Our theme music this week is Knocking on Heaven’s Door, written by Bob Dylan and sung by Bryan Ferry, copyrighted music licensed from Lickd.
The late Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in the Oval Office with Donald Trump on February 3, 2026. Photo courtesy of The White House/Wikimedia Commons
In the News:
Perhaps responding to President Donald Trump’s claim that 250,000 non-citizens were registered to vote in New Jersey, California, Nevada and Pennsylvania, Governor Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey has publicized the fact that the state has removed 6,600 noncitizens from the voting rolls. Added by computer error under the previous governor Phil Murphy, the Wall Street Journal reported this week that these individuals “were erroneously registered to vote when they applied for driver’s licenses and identification cards from June 2023 to June 2024. Fewer than 400 of those people, registered across the state, actually voted.
On Wednesday morning, Trump celebrated a MAGA sweep in the Arizona Republican Party primary, as if the November results were now predetermined. “THE DUMOCRATS ARE DUMBFOUNDED,” he crowed. Election-denying Congressman Andy Biggs (R, AZ-22) will challenge incumbent Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs. Alexander Kolodin, sanctioned by the Arizona State Bar for his role in the lawsuits filed by MAGA activists in 2020 will oppose Democratic incumbent Adrian Fontes for Secretary of State. In AZ-01, a tossup district that includes a chunks of liberal Scottsdale and Phoenix, Trump-endorsed former NFL kicker Jay Feely IV won his primary in AZ-01; he will face ER doc Amish Shah, not the DCCC pick, in what is projected to be a potential pickup for Democrats. Finally, in AZ-04, Democratic incumbent Greg Stanton handily dispatched Democratic Socialist Kai Newkirk, ensuring that Democrats will hang onto that seat.
In Michigan, where voters will select candidates on August 4, we have a brawl in the Democratic Party for the Senate seat being vacated by Gary Peters: progressive physician and public health official Abdul El-Sayed and Congresswoman Haley Stevens (MI-11) are leading the pack. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is the most recent endorser to sign on to El-Sayed’s campaign, while Leader Chuck Schumer has endorsed the more moderate Stevens. This is an important Senate seat to hang on to; Trump won the state in 2024 by a point and a half, and the winner faces a strong opponent in former Representative Mike Rogers.
Your hosts:
Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller.
Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024).
A proof of life photo issued by Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell’s office earlier this month that has failed to stem rumors and conspiracy theories about his health.
News focus:
As of last week, the Senate is missing two notable figures: Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, died suddenly on July 11 at the age of 71 of an aortic dissection,. Meanwhile, former Leader Mitch McConnell was last seen in the Senate on June 11; supposedly he remains in care at a rehabilitation center from a fall and pneumonia. Although aides released a statement under his signature on July 12, and a photo of McConnell holding a newspaper was released on July 13 (along with a statement that he is doing Senate business and intends to return), rumors have circulated that McConnell is fatally compromised.
Graham’s death also exposes how much he had lost control of his own story. He was regularly derided by some on social media for being an allegedly closeted homosexual, something he denied his entire life. In the immediate aftermath of Graham’s death, memes of this genre proliferated: was that homophobia really just a political smear? Hunter Biden says no, alleging on a recent podcast that there’s a closeted gay Republican “mafia” waging culture wars to protect themselves.
The sudden absence of two very senior Senators has once again cast a spotlight on how old this body is. Let’s start with a little arithmetic: the average age of the Senate is 64. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is 92; Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) are both 84; Jim Risch (R-ID) and Angus King (I-ME) are 82; and Dick Durbin (D-IL), who is retiring is 81. A third of the Senate is over 70. One aspect of this longevity may be that the last party to have a Senate supermajority was the Democrats in 2009, and both parties are using incumbency to hold seats. Senators are not required to reveal health status, and the seniority system has long made it advantageous to keep Senators in place, regardless of age: remember that Lindsey Graham replaced 100-year-old Strom Thurmond in 2003.
The current alignment in the Senate is 45 Democrats, two independents who caucus with Democrats, and 53 Republicans. With Graham’s passing and McConnell’s incapacity, the GOP was temporarily down 2 votes; with the appointment of Graham’s sister, Darline Nardone, to fill out his term, that is now one vote. However, there are also five other Republicans in play on any given day for the next 18 weeks: Maine’s Susan Collins, Texas’s John Cornyn, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, Kentucky’s Rand Paul, and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.
To complicate matters, Graham was up for re-election this year. There will be a special primary in August to choose a replacement. Former representative Trey Gowdy has been mentioned as a strong candidate, although he has said he doesn’t want to run, as has Lt. Governor Pamela Evette. And while Darline Nardone, an optician who has worked on behalf of disabled people in state government, was initially seen as a placeholder, she has announced her candidacy: Trump has endorsed her.
Does Graham’s death create an opening for pediatrician Annie Andrews, the Democratic candidate, in the South Carolina Senate race? Unlikely. At the time of his death, Lindsey Graham was only up 3 points, but South Carolina has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since Fritz Hollings in 1998, and Trump won the state by 14 points in 2024.
It has not been uncommon for wives to replace their husbands in the House and Senate; some were then even elected in their own right. But Graham didn’t have a wife; his sister, however, was a prominent supporter and element of his political biography.
Numbers don’t tell the whole story of what it means for senior Senators to suddenly drop out of that body’s business. Although McConnell has been failing visibly for over a year, until this illness he chaired the Committee on Rules and administration, was on the Appropriations Committee (chaired by Susan Collins), and the agriculture committee. McConnell cannot be easily replaced, and not without testing the constitutionality of the recently passed law that bars Democratic governor Andy Beshear from doing so. Until McConnell returns, his seat on all these committees also remains vacant, since replacing him requires a vote of the full Senate.
Similarly, Graham, a Trump critic turned loyalist, chaired the Budget Committee, and was also on the Judiciary, Appropriations, and Environment and Public Works Committees. While Nardone can cast votes, she cannot fill the role her brother played in the Senate, particularly in foreign policy, national security, and jamming through key Trump nominees like Todd Blanche, currently in hearings to be confirmed as Attorney General.
Naturally, at a moment when trust in government could not be lower, there are conspiracy theories about both Graham and McConnell! Laura Loomer and George Santos used their platforms to assert that Lindsey Graham was murdered; and Kash Patel assured everyone he was on the case. Mitch McConnell is rumored to be variously dead or in a coma: Loomer claims that he is “brain dead.” These rumors were fueled last week when Governor Beshear said he had received two phone calls from agencies saying that McConnell had “passed.”
What we want to go viral:
Neil wants you to watch “The Predator of Seville” (Netflix, 2026), about a man who ran excursions for American students abroad—and used that position to prey on women at their most vulnerable.
Claire wants you to read Rebecca Egan McCarthy’s account of horse racing’s slow collapse in the United States, after one of New York City’s two storied venues closed at the end of June: “The End of Aqueduct Race Track,” July 21, 2026.
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