Darline Graham Meets Trump at White House, Acting Labor Secretary Sonderling Set for Senate Hearing

Two Different Stories, Same Thursday

Since Senator Lindsey Graham died last Saturday night at age 71 of an aortic dissection, and since South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster appointed his sister Darline Graham on Tuesday to fill the remainder of his term, the White House put her on the schedule fast. She met with President Trump in the Oval Office at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, according to The Guardian's live coverage of the day's political events.

Graham's meeting with Trump was her first face-to-face since being sworn in. At Monday's press conference announcing her appointment, Graham called it an "honor" to take her brother's seat, noting he became her legal guardian after their parents died when she was young. "Now, I will be there for him," she said, promising to "work hard over the next several months to support the president and carry forward the efforts of my brother."

Her term runs only until January 3. South Carolina Republicans will hold a special primary election on August 11 to pick a permanent nominee, who will then face Democrat Annie Andrews in November. Graham won't be on that ballot unless she runs herself, which hasn't been announced.

Trump was scheduled to sit down with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele at 11 a.m., per The Guardian.

Sonderling's Confirmation Hearing

Separately, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee was scheduled to hold a confirmation hearing Thursday, July 16, on the nomination of acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling to become permanent Secretary of Labor, according to a notice published by the Senate HELP Committee on July 9. The hearing was set for 10:00 a.m. ET in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Sonderling has been serving in an acting capacity. The scheduled hearing is the formal step toward Senate confirmation for the permanent post. No vote outcome has been reported. The committee's own notice makes clear this was a scheduled nomination hearing, not a final confirmation vote, so any claim that Sonderling has already been confirmed would be getting ahead of the actual record.

A structural concern about the executive branch is that acting Cabinet officials sometimes serve in a role for extended periods before facing a confirmation vote, effectively running an agency without the full Senate vetting that a permanent nominee undergoes.

The Rest of Thursday's Washington Traffic

The same day carried a stack of other developments that The Guardian's live blog tracked. House Democrats split on Israel policy: 103 members voted to cut military aid to Israel, reflecting a growing faction in the party that argues Israel's government carried out genocide in Gaza. That's a characterization made by those lawmakers, not an independent legal finding, and it remains a contested claim rather than a settled one.

Two other Trump nominees ran into rough patches in their own hearings. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche described himself at one point as "Trump's lawyer" before correcting the statement, according to The Guardian. Jay Clayton, nominated for national intelligence director, declined to answer when Senator Jon Ossoff asked him directly who won the 2020 election.

Representatives Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna, the authors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, introduced a follow-up bill that would let state officials, victims, and members of Congress sue the attorney general over records withheld from the Epstein files release. And in a podcast interview with Joe Rogan, Vice President JD Vance rejected the theory that Trump's past association with Jeffrey Epstein was leveraged by Israel to push Trump toward military action against Iran.

What's Still Unresolved

Whether Sonderling clears the HELP Committee and gets a full Senate floor vote hasn't been reported yet. Whether Darline Graham runs in the August 11 special primary to keep the seat past January, or steps aside for a new nominee to face Annie Andrews in November, is also an open question nobody in South Carolina's GOP has answered publicly. Both threads will need separate tracking as they develop.