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Tag: Dianne Feinstein

  • California Senate Polls: Schiff Helps Garvey Edge Out Fellow Democrats

    California Senate Polls: Schiff Helps Garvey Edge Out Fellow Democrats

    Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty Images

    In addition to the 15 states holding presidential contests on Super Tuesday, there are also a handful of down-ballot primaries on March 5. The contest that’s drawn the most national interest is the U.S. Senate primary in California, a complex and expensive battle to identify general-election candidates for the seat previously held by the late Dianne Feinstein.

    California utilizes a so-called top-two primary system in which candidates (below the presidential level) compete for spots on the November ballot without regard to party affiliation. So there could be two Democrats, two Republicans, or one of each in the general election. This system has frequently led to candidates trying to “box out” their most dangerous opponents by keeping them from making the top two in the primary vote.

    This sort of gamesmanship has been pivotal in the 2024 Senate race. Given the Democratic Party’s dominant position in California (no Republican has won a statewide race since 2006), the general election will almost certainly be won by a Democrat. But it makes all the difference in the world whether there are one or two Democrats competing in November.

    The longtime front-runner in the race, Los Angeles–area Democratic congressman Adam Schiff, very much wants his November opponent to be Republican Steve Garvey, a baseball star in Los Angeles and San Diego, whom he would trounce without much question. So he has been devoting a sizable portion of his massive campaign treasury (he’s raised about $50 million so far) to attacks on Garvey designed to consolidate GOP voters behind the former ballplayer, as opposed to either of the other two significant Republicans in the contest. Schiff is hoping that Garvey can box out his Democratic colleague Katie Porter, the Elizabeth Warren protégé from Orange County who has stronger progressive credentials and is herself a prodigious fundraiser (pulling in an estimated $24 million for the Senate race). An X factor in the race is Schiff and Porter’s distinguished Bay Area colleague Barbara Lee, whose age (she will turn 78 in July) and poor fundraising have offset her sterling progressive reputation.

    In addition to Schiff’s promotion of Garvey, Porter has also had to contend with $10 million in attack ads from a group backed by cryptocurrency executives angry at her criticisms of the industry. A wrinkle in the campaign has been an upsurge of progressive fury at Schiff for his staunch backing of Israel in its war against Hamas; Lee was an early supporter of a permanent cease-fire and Porter has supported a more conditional cease-fire effort.

    The polls show that Schiff’s strategic effort to boost Garvey at Porter’s expense is working. In the RealClearPolitics polling averages for this race, Schiff is at 26.5 percent, Garvey is at 20.5 percent, Porter is at 18.3 percent, and Lee is at 9 percent. Garvey has been steadily trending upwards in the polls as Schiff’s campaign love-bombed him; in the latest UC Berkeley–Los Angeles Times survey, the Republican actually led the field with 27 percent, two points ahead of his frenemy Schiff and eight points ahead of Porter.

    A big imponderable about this primary is turnout. Whatever its merits, the top-two system has done nothing to improve the Golden State’s reputation for poor turnout in primaries, nor have such voter-friendly enhancements as automatic voter registration (in most counties, at least) and the dispatch of mail ballots to all registered voters without the need for an excuse or an application (voters also have in-person options if they don’t want to vote by mail). This year’s turnout may also be depressed by two totally uncompetitive presidential contests and an unusually early date (California primaries are usually held in June but were moved up to coincide with the presidential primaries). Politico looked at the pace of ballots returned early and predicted very low turnout:

    California is lagging behind the 2022 midterm return rate, when the state had more ballots returned by this point in the race. Ultimately, 2022 saw a 33 percent turnout.

    There’s dozens of factors that could affect the state’s final turnout number, but [turnout monitor Paul] Mitchell is cautiously speculating that only 29 percent of California’s registered voters will turn in their ballots, falling below the current record low of 31 percent in 2012.

    Low turnouts in California have traditionally been good for Republicans, which is another factor that might help Garvey, whose own campaign and debate appearances have been decidedly unimpressive. Many Democrats have mixed feelings about the contest. On the one hand, a Schiff-Garvey general election might free up many millions of dollars that would otherwise go to a Senate race between two Democrats. More available donor money would benefit candidates in races more critical to the Democratic Party’s power (notably six competitive U.S. House races, five of them for seats now controlled by Republicans). On the other hand, strategic issues aside, Schiff is not an inspiring choice for many California progressives, as my colleague Rebecca Traister explained in her recent overview of the race:

    Porter does not always play well with others in her own party — including Nancy Pelosi, the fearsome éminence grise of both California politics and the U.S. House — and has been accused by multiple former employees of being a tough, perhaps even abusive, boss. Lee is a beloved hero of the left who has not participated in a competitive election in years and at 77 is a dicey choice to fill a seat recently vacated by a woman in possession of the philosopher’s stone. And Schiff? Schiff is fine if you want a warrior on behalf of the meager gruel of status quo politics, a candidate handpicked by the previous generation of Democratic leadership to further its dubious legacy.

    If the race for the two spots in the general election is very close, it could be a while before we know the outcome: California is a state that counts mail ballots postmarked by Election Day so long as they are received at local election offices within seven days. Another strange wrinkle is that voters will be selecting a top two not just for the full Senate term that begins in 2025, but — separately — for the last two months of Feinstein’s term (being filled until November by appointed place-holder Laphonza Butler, who chose not to pursue an elected term). It’s possible that confused voters will produce different top twos for the full and truncated terms. That would be an unlikely but fitting end to this odd Senate race full of misdirection and borderline deceit.


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    Ed Kilgore

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  • Israel-Hamas war puts top Democratic Senate candidates’ foreign policy differences in the spotlight

    Israel-Hamas war puts top Democratic Senate candidates’ foreign policy differences in the spotlight

    WASHINGTON — 

    Just a few days after terrorists attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001, as Congress rushed to give President George W. Bush wide-ranging power to invade Afghanistan, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) faced a decision that would come to define her career.

    As she weighed her vote, Lee thought of a lesson she’d learned in an earlier job running a community mental health center: “Don’t make critical decisions when you’re grieving and mourning, angry, confused.”

    Lee decided that the authorization as written “could set the stage for forever wars,” she told The Times in a recent interview. After intense deliberation, she decided to vote no — the only member of Congress to oppose the bill.

    Twenty-two years later, Lee, Burbank Rep. Adam B. Schiff, and Irvine Rep. Katie Porter are the top Democrats in the race for the U.S. Senate seat once held by Dianne Feinstein, for decades a key player on foreign and national security policy.

    California voters now face a choice among candidates with vastly divergent approaches to — and experience with — foreign policy.

    Lee’s immediate reaction to the attack on Israel by Hamas militants this month sounded much like her response to 9/11.

    “Our country has a responsibility, I believe, to call for a cease-fire and to call for the whole world to come together to try to stop the escalation of what is taking place in the Middle East. And peace is possible if we can bring all parties together to talk,” she said at a candidate forum the weekend of the attack.

    Schiff sounded a different note:

    “The only sentiment I want to express right now when Israel is going through its own 9/11 is unequivocal support for the security and the right of Israel to defend itself,” he said.

    Lee and Schiff’s decades of work on foreign policy issues contrast with the relative inexperience of Porter, a third-term lawmaker whose House career has focused more on domestic issues.

    In her answer at the forum, Porter pivoted to a hawkish line about Iran that sounded a lot like what some leading Republicans said in the immediate aftermath of the attack.

    “I stand with Israel in this time and I condemn the loss of lives — both of Palestinians and Israelis who are being victims of this terror,” she said, asserting that “the United States has allowed terrorism to flourish and has refused to take a strong enough stance against Iran” — which backs the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

    When asked what specific Iran policy Porter was referring to, a spokesperson pointed to President Trump’s withdrawal from the treaty aimed at curtailing Iran’s nuclear program.

    Lee and Schiff have long differed on foreign policy.

    Besides voting against the war in Afghanistan, Lee voted against authorizing the Iraq war and the Patriot Act, which expanded government surveillance powers. Schiff voted for all three. (He has since said he regretted his Iraq vote.) Lee opposed the Obama administration’s 2011 missile strikes in Libya, while Schiff conditionally supported them.

    Schiff voted to approve final passage of the last seven annual defense funding bills; Lee, who has long pushed to slash Pentagon spending, voted against every one. (Porter voted against the most recent two spending bills but voted for them the first two years she was in Congress.)

    Lee told The Times before the Hamas attack that Schiff was “part of the status quo thinking” in Washington on foreign policy, and argued that Porter “doesn’t have a foreign policy record to stand on because she just hasn’t been in Congress long enough.”

    Schiff declined to directly contrast his record with his opponents’ in an interview shortly before the Hamas attack. But he emphasized his years as the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and the opportunity that’s given him to get to know world leaders.

    “I’ve been deeply engaged in both foreign policy issues, national security issues and intelligence issues,” Schiff said. “It’s given me, I think, a wealth of experience to deal with and address some of the paramount national security challenges facing the country.”

    Schiff’s years leading the House Intelligence Committee helped prepare him to prosecute Trump at his first impeachment trial — where diplomats and military officials testified that the then-president had tried to pressure Ukraine into launching an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter in exchange for U.S. weapons the country wanted to defend itself against Russian aggression.

    “In terms of his impeachment efforts, he did a very good job,” Lee said of Schiff.

    Lee got her introduction to Capitol Hill foreign policy debates in the 1980s as a senior staffer for longtime Oakland Rep. Ron Dellums, then chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. During that time, Dellums led the bipartisan charge to sanction apartheid-era South Africa.

    In recent years, she’s been able to gain allies in her quest to rein in presidents’ expansive war powers — partly because elements of both parties had moved her way. Lee helped draft the Democratic National Committee’s national platform in 2016 and pushed the party’s official foreign policy stance in a much more dovish direction. Her once-lonely crusade to repeal the 2001 and 2002 authorizations of military force has gained strong bipartisan support.

    Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) said Lee’s views on war and peace were a key reason for his decision to endorse her.

    “I view Barbara Lee as the strongest voice against endless war, not just in the race, but in the entire Congress,” he told The Times

    Schiff leads the Senate race in delegation endorsements — 22 of California’s 40 House Democrats have backed him, compared with three for Lee and none for Porter.

    A number of his colleagues cited his foreign policy experience and work leading the Intelligence Committee as a major reason they’re backing him.

    “That was a big part of why I chose to endorse Adam,” Rep. Ami Bera (D-Elk Grove) said. “There’s only 100 senators. So foreign policy experience is incredibly important.”

    Whoever wins the seat will be replacing a senator who played a crucial role on foreign policy, privacy and civil liberties issues for decades — at times to her fellow Democrats’ consternation.

    Feinstein was the top Democrat on the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee from 2009 through 2016, and often hewed in a more interventionist direction than many in her party.

    She voted to authorize the war in Iraq and was a major supporter of the Patriot Act. One of U.S. intelligence agencies’ staunchest Democratic allies for much of her career, Feinstein sided with Republicans to expand the government’s ability to covertly monitor Americans’ calls and emails without a warrant and supported giving immunity to telephone companies that had allowed the U.S. government to listen in on calls between suspected terrorists and people on American soil. When former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked details of the government’s vast data-gathering operation, Feinstein accused him of treason. She also was a fierce defender of drone strikes and blocked President Obama from moving control of the drone strike program from the CIA to the Defense Department.

    But she also was key in defending Obama’s deal to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons and led the charge to investigate and declassify a report on the CIA’s secret torture program. The document would never have seen daylight if not for her work.

    Schiff is probably the closest of the three candidates to Feinstein in terms of worldview and experience.

    The two worked closely together as the top Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees. In the lead-up to the 2016 election, they pushed hard for the Obama administration to publicly call out Russia for meddling in the election. After being rebuffed, they put out a joint statement in late September 2016 declaring they’d seen evidence Russia was trying to influence the U.S. election — weeks before Obama officials finally said the same.

    “Far too late,” Schiff lamented.

    In recent years, the foreign policy differences between Schiff and Lee have not been as far apart as earlier in their political careers.

    While Lee has fought to severely limit the CIA’s long-running drone strike program, Schiff hasn’t gone as that far — but in 2015 introduced legislation to put the program under Defense Department control. Schiff has also backed Lee’s work to repeal the 2002 law authorizing military force in Iraq. That effort has strong bipartisan support, including from Biden, and passed the House back when it was in Democratic hands in 2021 but has yet to become law.

    Schiff worked across the aisle to reform the Patriot Act and end its warrantless wiretapping program. He also said the lesson he drew from his vote to back the Iraq invasion based on incorrect intelligence provided by the Bush administration led him to push to reform American intelligence-gathering services’ reports so that dissenting views are aired and “group think” is avoided.

    “Seeing how an administration could mislead the country and use intelligence to do it was a very powerful motivator for me to work on reforms of the intelligence community,” he told The Times.

    Both Schiff and Lee criticized the Biden administration’s handling of the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, but praised him for deciding to do so.

    All three leading Democratic Senate candidates generally have strongly backed U.S. military aid for Ukraine, but voted against supplying that nation with cluster munitions.

    The candidates overlap on some issues regarding Israel as well.

    Schiff pointed out at the forum that he has criticized Israeli settlers’ expansion into the West Bank as well as Israel’s recent “move away from democracy” — alluding to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to undermine the independence of the judiciary.

    Lee has consistently voted to provide funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. But she was also one of 16 House Democrats to vote against a nonbinding resolution that condemned the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which looks to block investments in Israel, and co-sponsored legislation to bar U.S. aid from going toward Israel’s annexation of West Bank land or detention of Palestinian children.

    The reemergence of Israel as a global flashpoint puts their differences back on display.

    Schiff continues to offer a full-throated defense of Israel.

    “It is crucial that Congress works quickly to provide Israel with the security assistance, humanitarian aid and intelligence support it needs to defend itself and to safely recover the hostages taken,” he said in a statement. “Words matter and our allies around the world — as well as our adversaries — are watching us closely. It’s important, now more than ever, for the U.S. to stand united with Israel.”

    Lee recently joined a letter from the Congressional Progressive Caucus to President Biden expressing deep concern about Israel’s actions in Gaza and calling for an end to the siege and a humanitarian corridor to deliver lifesaving supplies.

    “Israel has the right to defend itself from Hamas, but must do so within the framework of international law,” she wrote in a statement, calling on the U.S. to “protect innocent civilians & ensure delivery of humanitarian assistance.”

    Porter released a five-minute video a few days later touting her support for Israel, strongly criticizing Iran and making only brief mention of Palestinian civilians’ suffering.

    “We cannot give in to Iran’s efforts to weaken our long-standing special relationship with Israel,” she said.

    Porter, whose district includes a large Iranian American community, has long spoken out against the Iranian government’s brutal oppression of women and other protesters.

    Porter’s campaign declined to make her available for an interview, but pointed to her work to trim defense spending and her successful push for an amendment banning senior Pentagon officials from owning stock in defense contractors as examples of her foreign policy work.

    At the forum, Porter was asked a question about her lack of foreign policy experience and responded that she was a quick study.

    “I have done the work and always do the work. I was a professor, so I take doing your homework pretty seriously,” she said. “I’m committed to continuing to learn.”

    Cameron Joseph

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  • Stretch of the Central California coast is about to be designated a marine sanctuary. What does that mean?

    Stretch of the Central California coast is about to be designated a marine sanctuary. What does that mean?

    A stretch of land that is expected to be designated as a national marine sanctuary by next year would preserve more than 5,000 square miles of ocean off California’s Central Coast.

    It was the dream of a Native American tribal leader who died before he could see it come to fruition.

    The proposed Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary is not yet finalized, and the public can submit comments on the draft proposal through Wednesday. The sanctuary would span 134 miles along the coast from Hazard Canyon Reef, south of Morro Bay, to just south of Dos Pueblos Canyon, which is home to one of the largest historical Chumash villages. The designation would protect a 5,617-square-mile area.

    The designation would prohibit dumping matter into the sanctuary, disturbing cultural resources, drilling or producing oil, gas or minerals, and disturbing the seabed, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

    The NOAA is hoping to finalize a sanctuary designation by next year, which would add to the agency’s marine sanctuary system that already includes “more than 620,000 square miles of marine and Great Lakes waters from Washington state to the Florida Keys,” according to its website. The network encompasses 15 national marine sanctuaries.

    President Biden has endorsed the proposal as part of his America the Beautiful Initiative, which includes a goal to restore and conserve 30% of U.S. waters and land by 2030.

    The proposed Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary would also protect marine life and cultural and archaeological sites under the National Marine Sanctuaries Act. Regulations would be imposed to protect water quality, habitat and species. The sanctuary would also protect the ecological qualities of the area including marine mammals, birds, fish, sea turtles, algae and other organisms, as well as rocky reefs, kelp forests and beaches.

    Fred Harvey Collins, the chair of the Northern Chumash Tribal Council and an ardent advocate for the protection of sacred Northern Chumash lands, submitted the nomination for the creation of the sanctuary, with the support of Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) and Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla (both D-Calif.). He died on Oct. 1, 2021.

    NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries issued a notice of intent to begin the designation process for the sanctuary in November 2021.

    The draft management plan outlines a framework for Indigenous and tribal collaborative management, providing an opportunity to incorporate Indigenous people’s traditions, values and knowledge.

    Summer Lin

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  • Gavin Newsom has picked Laphonza Butler to fill Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat

    Gavin Newsom has picked Laphonza Butler to fill Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat

    Gov. Newsom picks Laphonza Butler to replace Feinstein in Senate


    Gov. Newsom picks Laphonza Butler to replace Feinstein in Senate

    01:43

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom has chosen Laphonza Butler to fill the Senate seat left vacant by the death of California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, two sources familiar with the decision confirmed to CBS News.

    Butler is the president of EMILYs List, an organization devoted to electing Democratic women who support abortion rights. Butler was the first woman of color to lead Emily’s List when she joined the organization in 2021. She previously served as a senior campaign adviser to Kamala Harris during her 2020 presidential campaign. She also served as director of public policy at Airbnb and has a long history as a labor leader.

    Butler was not immediately available for comment.   

    Feinstein, who was 90 years old, had about 15 months left in her term at the time of her death last week. Butler’s speedy appointment will help bolster the Democrats’ narrow majority in the Senate as Congress continues to work on longer-term funding for the government after a last-minute deal temporarily averted a shutdown over the weekend.

    Politico first reported Butler’s appointment. 

    EMILYs List President Laphonza Butler
    EMILYs List President Laphonza Butler on March 7, 2023.

    Araya Doheny/Getty Images for EMILYs List


    Earlier this month on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Newsom said he would abide by his pledge to appoint a Black woman to Feinstein’s post, while adding that he hoped he’d never have to make that decision. But Newsom also said he wouldn’t fill the seat with one of the Democrats vying to succeed Feinstein in the 2024 election, calling such a move “completely unfair to the Democrats that have worked their tail off.” 

    There is no precondition that this must be a temporary replacement, so Butler could run for a full term in 2024. Complicating matters, in addition to next year’s scheduled Democratic Senate primary, a special election is expected to be held for California voters to choose who finishes out the last few months of Feinstein’s term.

    Rep. Barbara Lee, Rep. Adam Schiff and Rep. Katie Porter are among those who jumped into the 2024 race after Feinstein announced earlier this year that she would not run again. It was not immediately clear if any of them, or Butler, would also enter the expected special election for the remainder of Feinstein’s term.

    In a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Lee said, “I wish @LaphonzaB well and look forward to working closely with her to deliver for the Golden State. I am singularly focused on winning my campaign for Senate. CA deserves an experienced Senator who will deliver on progressive priorities. That’s exactly what I’m running to do.”

    Schiff and Porter have not reacted yet.

    Nikole Killion


    Nikole Killion

    Nikole Killion is a congressional correspondent for CBS News based in Washington D.C.

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  • Newsom Appoints Laphonza Butler To Finish Dianne Feinstein’s Senate Term

    Newsom Appoints Laphonza Butler To Finish Dianne Feinstein’s Senate Term

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced he’s appointing EMILY’s List President Laphonza Butler to finish out the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Senate term, making good on his promise to fill the vacancy with a Black woman.

    The swift appointment (D) was essential for Democrats’ power in the Senate, where they have a slim 50-49 majority following Feinstein’s death at age 90.

    Butler’s appointment will last until January 2025, when Feinstein’s sixth term in the chamber was due to end. It’s then up to voters to select a permanent senator for the next six-year term.

    The race for Feinstein’s seat was well underway at the time of her death. Three Democrats representing California in the House had launched campaigns: Reps. Barbara Lee, Katie Porter and Adam Schiff. While Newsom made good on his pledge of appointing a Black woman by selecting Butler, he said in September he wouldn’t nominate someone who’s seeking to hold the seat permanently.

    “I don’t want to get involved in the primary,” Newsom told NBC News. “It would be completely unfair to the Democrats who’ve worked their tails off.”

    That was a big blow to Lee, who’s trailing Porter and Schiff in both polls and fundraising.

    “The idea that a Black woman should be appointed only as a caretaker to simply check a box is insulting to countless Black women across this country who have carried the Democratic Party to victory election after election,” Lee said on X after Newsom’s remarks.

    There are currently no Black women elected to serve in the Senate. Prior to Newsom’s nomination, Sens. Carol Moseley Braun and Kamala Harris were the only two to have ever sat in the Senate.

    This is the second time Newsom has gotten to nominate a senator. When then-California Sen. Harris won the vice presidency in 2020, the governor nominated now-Sen. Alex Padilla to replace her. Newsom caught some flak for selecting Padilla, who is a first-generation Mexican American, to replace the only Black woman in Congress.

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  • Dianne Feinstein’s Fight Against The CIA Made A Difference

    Dianne Feinstein’s Fight Against The CIA Made A Difference

    In 2009, Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) became the first woman to lead the storied Senate Select Committee on Intelligence — just as Barack Obama became the second president to oversee the massively expanded national security establishment that America developed after the 9/11 terror attacks.

    Both Democrats had condemned the way President George W. Bush handled security matters,and both particularly opposed the Bush administration’s use of a global detention and interrogation program for suspected terrorists. Feinstein, who died on Friday at age 90, channeled that concern into a yearslong battle, defying opponents ranging from Obama’s team to the CIA and its allies. The result was a lasting statement against torture and in favor of accountability.

    Feinstein’s unlikely push to reveal the truth about U.S. misconduct in the name of keeping Americans safe is likely to be one of the most consequential elements of her legacy. By producing a 6,700-page report on Bush-era torture — and insisting that a lengthy executive summary be released publicly — she irrevocably changed America’s national security conversation.

    A Grueling Battle

    Starting soon after Sept. 11, 2001, the CIA began sweeping up supposed plotters of terror attacks and held them at secret facilities worldwide. American interrogators, or foreign partners they directed, meted out gruesome tactics the agency called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

    Weeks after Feinstein took over the Intelligence Committee, two members of the committee’s staff told the panel they had reviewed CIA cables showing the agency had subjected detainees to extensive waterboarding and stress positions, as well as threats, near-constant nudity and slaps. The staffers also reported that CIA officials had kept torturing detainees even after they were ready to cooperate, or after the officials assessed that the detainees lacked valuable information.

    Feinstein was well-known as a supporter of intelligence agencies. But she determined the entire CIA program needed to be probed — and nearly every member of the intelligence committee from both parties agreed with her. The committee began a sprawling inquiry.

    Soon after Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) took over the Senate Intelligence Committee, she directed the panel to probe the CIA’s rendition and interrogation program.

    Scott J. Ferrell via Getty Images

    The Obama administration agreed to give Senate personnel access to a huge cache of operational cables, emails and memos related to the detention program, so long as they worked at a CIA office in Virginia rather than transfer material to Capitol Hill. The arrangement was not perfect: on at least two occasions, CIA personnel stopped committee staff from accessing previously provided documents.

    Still, by December 2012, the staff finished a report painstakingly dismantling examples the CIA cited as proof that torture had prevented terror and exposing new details of the agency’s viciousness, such as its use of “rectal feeding” and sleep deprivation periods of up to a week. Feinstein sent the document to the Obama administration for its response, which the CIA delivered in the summer of 2013, admitting some mistakes but firmly denying the report’s overall conclusions.

    Then John Brennan — Obama’s third CIA director and the deputy executive director at the agency from 2001 to 2003, when it was carrying out some of the worst abuses in the rendition program — escalated the dispute. In January 2014, Brennan privately berated Feinstein and the committee’s vice chair, then-Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), over his suspicion that Senate staffers had accessed CIA material they were not entitled to. “John didn’t handle that right,” Chambliss recalled to The New Yorker.

    “Brennan has such an explosive temper. His face turns really red. Dianne seems to bring that out in him — because she’s so West Coast, calm, cool, stately,” former Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, Feinstein’s predecessor on the committee, told the magazine of the dynamic between the two.

    Feinstein said the “terrible” meeting was “something I never expected to see in my government.”

    By March, McClatchy News reported that the CIA inspector general was investigating an explosive claim — that Brennan’s staff had been monitoring Feinstein’s team. The implication: a national security institution had become so overconfident it was willing to challenge the constitutional separation of powers between the executive branch and Congress.

    After weeks of trying to quietly mend the CIA-Senate rift, Feinstein went to the Senate floor to “reluctantly” address it in public. She specifically defended Senate staffers for keeping a copy of a skeptical internal CIA review of the rendition program.

    “How can the CIA’s official response to our study stand factually in conflict with its own internal review?” Feinstein asked. She noted that a CIA attorney working under Brennan who had reported her staff to the Justice Department was himself one of the top CIA lawyers involved in the rendition program.

    “We’re not going to stop,” Feinstein continued. “How this is resolved will show…whether our work can be thwarted by those we oversee.”

    Senate Democrats gave her a standing ovation at a lunch later that day. Appearing on Fox News a few weeks later, former CIA director Michael Hayden cited Feinstein’s speech to launch a sexist assault on her work, saying the remarks showed an “emotional feeling on the part of the senator” that compromised her report.

    Brennan ultimately acknowledged the CIA had misstepped in monitoring the Senate committee and apologized to Feinstein that summer.

    Feinstein spent most of 2014 trying to publish her report. The White House told her the CIA would lead the process of declassifying the document. When she said that represented a conflict of interest, she got no response. She pushed back against the CIA’s recommended cuts and spent months negotiating with White House chief of staff Denis McDonough over questions like whether the document could include pseudonyms for key figures in the rendition program, which the CIA first said Senate staffers could employ but then claimed would make operatives identifiable.

    The tense bargaining process directly pitted Feinstein against the president, her ostensible political ally. “Obama participated in the slowdown process and that’s a hard thing to forgive,” Rockefeller told The New Yorker.

    Obama aide John Brennan (left) committed to supporting Feinstein's investigation into the CIA torture program but then spent months challenging the probe and her efforts to release its findings.
    Obama aide John Brennan (left) committed to supporting Feinstein’s investigation into the CIA torture program but then spent months challenging the probe and her efforts to release its findings.

    Alex Wong via Getty Images

    By Dec. 5, with Republicans set to take over the Senate within weeks and unlikely to prioritize releasing the report, Feinstein sent the report to be printed. Then-Secretary of State John Kerry — a personal friend — called her to say releasing the document would put America at risk by sparking a backlash. Multiple government agencies publicly made a similar claim in a threat assessment.

    Feinstein released the report anyway on Dec. 9, sending the full classified version to government agencies and publishing the executive summary with agreed-upon redactions. In remarks that day, she said: “There are those who will seize upon the report and say ‘see what Americans did,’ and they will try to use it to justify evil actions or to incite more violence. We cannot prevent that.”

    “But history will judge us by our commitment to a just society governed by law and the willingness to face an ugly truth and say ‘never again,’” Feinstein continued.

    The executive summary said waterboarding and painful restraints had been more widespread than was known, shed light on the CIA’s efforts to hide its activities from other officials all the way up to the president and emphatically denied any national security benefit of deploying torture. As human rights groups and watchdog organizations commemorated a win for transparency, hawks — including high-profile former intelligence officials — trashed Feinstein for weeks. Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) called the veteran senator “a traitor” akin to Edward Snowden.

    “They rolled out the big guns,” said then-Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), himself a survivor of torture, of the pushback to Feinstein. “I’m proud of her resilience.”

    A Lasting Message

    Feinstein’s report had an immediate impact for the prospects of the U.S. living up to its stated values.

    Because the Senate’s executive summary was the first public detailing of the government’s responsibility for torture, it allowed attorneys representing detainees at Guantanamo Bay to talk in court about what their clients had experienced — helping America’s justice system more fully reckon with the War on Terror era.

    Less than a year after the torture report’s release, Congress and Obama approved legislation from Feinstein and McCain reiterating the ban on torturing detainees in U.S. custody and curtailing interrogation techniques that any government agency could use. As a bipartisan statement from two high-profile legislators, the step “made it much more difficult bureaucratically for the U.S. to engage in any kind of systematic torture program ever again,” said Andrea Prasow, an activist who spent years working on anti-torture advocacy at Human Rights Watch.

    In the following years, Feinstein continued challenging defenders of torture and people involved in the CIA rendition program, notably helping lead opposition to Gina Haspel, who was President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the agency and who helped run a secret CIA prison in Thailand.

    The California senator’s record on torture stood out amid her broader views on national security. She had voted for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and she defended government surveillance programs and the CIA’s authority to maintain a covert drone program.

    But her somewhat hawkish credentials helped bolster her advocacy against CIA rendition, observers say.

    “She was the only person who could have done that” because of her relationship with the intelligence community, said Prasow, who is now the president of the Freedom Initiative nonprofit. “Whatever her flaws, she took very seriously her role as an overseer, as someone who provided the necessary checks on the agency’s behavior. So it was from the perspective of someone who believed in the agency … and wanted to see it fulfill its actual mission.”

    Feinstein approached the rendition investigation by emphasizing consensus and intense rigor, urging her team to be “cold and calculating,” Daniel Jones, a former Senate staffer involved in writing the torture report, told CNN on Friday.

    “Without her steadfast leadership … I don’t think we would have the facts out on the table as we have them,” Jones said.

    For advocates who are still urging greater steps toward accountability — like holding CIA personnel responsible or securing compensation from the U.S. for torture victims — Feinstein provided a baseline to build on.

    “It’s easy to reflect on the things that she didn’t accomplish: I would love to see the torture report made public in an unredacted form and there is so much more that could be done,” Prasow said. Yet she said the existence of comprehensive government documentation of CIA misdeeds gives heft to calls for further reform, praising Feinstein for “a tremendous legacy.”

    Amid the ongoing political success of Trump, who purports that torture is effective, Feinstein’s data-driven rebuke of that lie offers a corrective.

    “Despite the best attempts of the report’s detractors, none of the details in the report has been proven wrong,” the late senator said in a statement on the five-year anniversary of her report’s release. “To anyone who would claim that torture works or that the United States should ever again lower ourselves to such barbaric acts, I say ‘Read the Report.’ It puts those claims to rest in a clear, coherent and comprehensive manner that will serve this country for many, many years to come.”

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  • How Dianne Feinstein led San Francisco through the AIDS epidemic

    How Dianne Feinstein led San Francisco through the AIDS epidemic

    How Dianne Feinstein led San Francisco through the AIDS epidemic – CBS News


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    Lawmakers across the political spectrum are remembering Sen. Dianne Feinstein as a trailblazer in the nation’s Capitol. But her career began in San Francisco local politics, where she served on the city’s Board of Supervisors — and later as mayor. California State Sen. Scott Wiener joins CBS News to discuss Feinstein’s mayoral legacy.

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  • Dianne Feinstein, trailblazing California senator, dies at 90

    Dianne Feinstein, trailblazing California senator, dies at 90

    Dianne Feinstein, trailblazing California senator, dies at 90 – CBS News


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    Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose extraordinary political career was forged by triumph and tragedy, has died at the age of 90. Feinstein served as San Francisco’s first female mayor and California’s first female U.S. senator. Norah O’Donnell has more.

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  • Dianne Feinstein’s Ashes Scattered On Kids Who Confronted Her Over Green New Deal

    Dianne Feinstein’s Ashes Scattered On Kids Who Confronted Her Over Green New Deal

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  • A Final Chapter Unbefitting an Extraordinary Legacy

    A Final Chapter Unbefitting an Extraordinary Legacy

    Senator Dianne Feinstein, who died last night at 90, braved one of the most remarkable political expeditions in American history—and also one of the grimmer spectacles at the end of her life and career.

    Is it too soon to point this out? Yes, perhaps. With the official notice of her death today, Feinstein received her just and proper tributes, hitting all the key markers: How Di-Fi, as she is known in Washington shorthand, had stepped in as mayor of San Francisco after her predecessor was assassinated in 1978. How she was a fervent proponent of gun safety, the longest-serving woman in the Senate, and the chamber’s oldest member. How, as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, she presided over the preparation of an incriminating report describing the CIA’s torture of suspected terrorists in secret prisons around the world. How she was a trailblazer, stateswoman, powerhouse, force, grande dame, etc. Give her her due. She deserves it.

    But Congress can be a tough and ghoulish place, with its zero-sum math and unforgiving partisanship. Over her last year, Feinstein’s declining health became a bleak sideshow—her absences and hospitalizations, shingles, encephalitis, and bad falls; the lawsuits over her late husband’s estate and the cost of her medical bills and long-term care.

    Feinstein’s insistence on remaining in the Senate—and the uncertainty of her schedule—complicated life for Democrats, making it harder for them to hold votes, set strategy, and confirm judges. Her colleagues and White House officials whispered their frustration. And she became the latest exemplar of a basic, egalitarian principle in lawmaking: Even the most legendary figures ultimately amount to a vote. Often your most important job is simply to be available, show up, be counted.

    Franklin Foer: Dianne Feinstein and the cult of indispensability

    When that is in doubt, patience can wear fast. Questions about “fitness” arise. Such is the price of continued residency in the senior center of the Capitol. Feinstein resisted quitting for years, and only grudgingly said she wouldn’t seek reelection in 2024, leaving the race to succeed her in a kind of morbid suspension.

    Politics, of course, runs on its own schedules and follows its own rules. A few weeks ago, I asked Adam Schiff, one of the California House Democrats running to succeed Feinstein in the Senate, whether she should step down. In other words, was she fit to serve? Again, maybe this was harsh, but it had become a standard question around Washington and California, and perfectly germane, given the tight split in the Senate. “It’s her decision to make,” Schiff said, a classic duck, but also practical. “I would be very concerned,” he continued, “that the Republicans would not fill her seat on the Judiciary Committee, and that would be the end of Joe Biden’s judicial appointments.” (Politico reported today that Republican Whip John Thune, of South Dakota, said he expects that his party will not resist efforts to fill committee seats left vacant by Feinstein’s death.)

    Schiff added that he had continued to have a productive working relationship with Feinstein’s office, despite her health struggles. He was a proponent of business as usual, for as long it lasted, and Feinstein was still there. The pageant continued, the government heading for another shutdown, House Republicans tripping toward an impeachment and over themselves.

    In the hours after Feinstein’s death was announced, Washington took a brief and deferential pause. Statements and obituaries were dispatched, most prepared in advance. Then it was on to the next. Who would California Governor Gavin Newsom pick to serve out Feinstein’s term? How would that affect the race to succeed her next year? Who would replace Feinstein on the Judiciary Committee, and when would they be seated?

    Ronald Brownstein: Who will replace Dianne Feinstein?

    The hushed questions about how long the nonagenarian senator could hang on finally had their resolution. Far too many people in power resist the option of a restful denouement. The stakes can be high, even harrowing, for the country. These sagas can be distressing to follow, but there’s no shortage of dark fascination. Stick around too long, and you risk losing control of the finale. It can happen to the best, and at the end of the most extraordinary careers.

    Mark Leibovich

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  • Senator Dianne Feinstein, Trailblazer In Being Old, Dead At 90

    Senator Dianne Feinstein, Trailblazer In Being Old, Dead At 90

    WASHINGTON—Having been alive as far back as 1933, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, a trailblazer in being old, died Thursday night at age 90. “Sen. Feinstein, born Dianne Goldman, started off young but through hard work and dedication rose through the ranks to become very, very old,” said the late Democrat’s chief of staff, James Sauls, who in prepared remarks to reporters cited Feinstein’s many career highlights, such as turning 88 years old in 2021, turning 89 years old in 2022, and, just this year, turning 90. “Her remarkable persistence as the oldest sitting U.S. senator made her a role model to nonagenarians everywhere. Across the nation tonight, little girls will find inspiration in her story, knowing that they, too, can one day grow up to be incredibly old.” Sauls added that while Feinstein did not fulfill her longtime goal of clinging to power in the Senate as long as her late mentor in aging, the 100-year-old Strom Thurmond, she nonetheless spent her final years shattering expectations for what an unbelievably infirm and exhausted person can and should do.

    Senate Freaking Out After Dianne Feinstein Gets Her Hands On Gun

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  • Dianne Feinstein, California’s longest-serving senator, dies at 90

    Dianne Feinstein, California’s longest-serving senator, dies at 90

    U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California has died at age 90, her office confirmed Friday.

    Feinstein, a Democrat, was the oldest member of the Senate, where she had served since 1992. She held her seat in the chamber longer than any other woman and any other senator from California.

    She passed away Thursday night at her home in Washington, D.C.

    “There are few women who can be called senator, chairman, mayor, wife, mom and grandmother. Senator Feinstein was a force of nature who made an incredible impact on our country and her home state,” her chief of staff, James Sauls, said in a statement.

    Feinstein’s death ends a boundary-pushing political career that spanned more than half a century and was studded with major legislative achievements on issues including gun control and the environment.

    But in Feinstein’s final years, she had increasingly visible health and memory issues, and as a result of those a conflict with fellow Democrats over her refusal to step down.

    She planned to retire at the end of her current term in January 2025.

    Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., in the Senate subway on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., May 11, 2022.

    Kent Nishimura | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images

    Feinstein’s death leaves it to Gov. Gavin Newsom to appoint a temporary successor. Three leading Democrats are seeking the seat, Reps. Barbara Lee, Katie Porter and Adam Schiff.

    Newsom in a statement called Feinstein “a political giant, whose tenacity was matched by her grace.”

    “She broke down barriers and glass ceilings, but never lost her belief in the spirit of political cooperation,” he said. “There is simply nobody who possessed the poise, gravitas, and fierceness of Dianne Feinstein.”

    Newsom said he and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, “are deeply saddened by her passing, and we will mourn with her family in this difficult time.”

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the chamber floor, “We lost a giant in the Senate.”

    “Today, there are 25 women serving in this chamber, and every one of them will admit they stand on Dianne’s shoulders,” he said.

    Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the former speaker of the House, grew emotional as she told reporters, “It’s a very sad day for all of us.”

    “May she rest in peace,” Pelosi said.

    President Joe Biden, who served with Feinstein for decades in the Senate, said in a statement, “She had an immense impact on younger female leaders for whom she generously opened doors.”

    “Dianne was tough, sharp, always prepared, and never pulled a punch, but she was also a kind and loyal friend, and that’s what Jill and I will miss the most,” Biden said.

    A San Francisco native, Feinstein cleared a path for women in politics as she rose through the ranks of leadership.

    Close-up of American politician San Francisco Board of Supervisors member (and future US Senator) Dianne Feinstein as she attends a Candidates’ Day event at the Douglas School, San Francisco, California, September 1979. 

    Janet Fries | Hulton Archive | Getty Images

    After two failed bids for mayor, she was elected president of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors in 1978, becoming the first woman to hold the title.

    Feinstein was made acting mayor later that year, when then-Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk, a colleague on the supervisors board, were assassinated by former board member Dan White.

    In later interviews, Feinstein recalled finding Milk’s body and searching for a pulse by putting her finger in a bullet hole.

    Feinstein was the first to announce the murders to the press. Her appointment a week later made her San Francisco’s first female mayor.

    The trauma of the murders remained with her for decades. 

    “I never really talk about this,” Feinstein said with a sigh when asked about the killings during a 2017 CNN interview.

    Candidate Dianne Feinstein celebrates her primary win, June 2, 1992.

    John O’Hara | San Francisco Chronicle | Getty Images

    Her streak of firsts continued at the national level.

    Feinstein lost a gubernatorial bid in 1990. But in 1992, she won a special election to the U.S. Senate, becoming the first California woman to hold a seat there.

    Weeks later, Barbara Boxer was sworn in as a senator, making California the first state to be represented in the Senate by two women at once.

    Their elections came in the “Year of the Woman,” when four Democratic women were elected to the Senate — more than doubling the chamber’s female representation.

    Feinstein clinched some of her biggest legislative achievements in the Senate. She wrote and championed the 1994 assault weapons ban, a landmark bill that was a continuation of a career-long effort to enact stricter gun controls. 

    The legislation passed Congress and was signed by then-President Bill Clinton, albeit with major compromises including a 10-year sunset provision. The ban expired in 2004 during the administration of George W. Bush.

    She also sponsored bills that protect millions of acres of California’s desert, worked to create a nationwide AMBER alert network, helped reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act and fought for the release of a lengthy report detailing the CIA’s torture practices, among other accomplishments.

    Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) attends a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on judicial nominations on Capitol Hill September 6, 2023 in Washington, DC.

    Drew Angerer | Getty Images

    Over her three decades in the Senate, Feinstein has generally been seen as a political moderate in her party. In the 1990s and 2000s, that reputation made Feinstein highly popular — but much of that popularity eroded in the following years as California’s political tint shifted toward deeper shades of blue.

    As her centrism grew increasingly out of fashion, Feinstein’s standing in her final stretch in office was further diminished by a crescendo of skepticism about her mental fitness for the Senate.

    A damning report from the San Francisco Chronicle in April 2022 featured unnamed Democratic colleagues of Feinstein fretting over her apparent decline in mental acuity. Feinstein defended her ability to govern, while acknowledging that she had been going through an “extremely painful and distracting” period as her late husband, financier Richard Blum, had battled cancer.

    By the time Feinstein announced that she would not seek reelection at the end of her term in 2024, multiple Democratic politicians had already launched campaigns to succeed her.

    A bust of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is displayed inside San Francisco City Hall on September 29, 2023 in San Francisco, California.

    Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

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  • How much was Dianne Feinstein worth when she died?

    How much was Dianne Feinstein worth when she died?

    Senator Dianne Feinstein, who has died at age 90, notched plenty of records during her lifetime, becoming the longest-serving woman in the Senate as well as the longest-serving senator from California. She was also one of the richest U.S. lawmakers, with a net worth as high as $69.4 million this year, according to financial disclosure records. 

    Feinstein’s most recent financial disclosure form, filed in May, shows that her wealth included millions held in a blind trust — a standard financial arrangement for members of Congress — U.S. Treasury bills and other low-risk instruments, and money stashed in several large bank accounts. She also owned a condominium in Hawaii worth as much as $5 million, according to the document. 

    While Feinstein broke ground by joining the Senate in 1992, when there were few women lawmakers in Congress, she more recently came to represent another demographic shift among U.S. political leaders, who have become both older and richer. As recently as 2018, Feinstein ranked as the second-richest senator, following Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, according to OpenSecrets.org.

    In 2018, Feinstein’s net worth way nearly $88 million, according to OpenSecrets.org, which noted at the time that her most valuable asset was a $37.5 million stake in San Francisco’s Carlton Hotel Properties. Her most recent financial disclosure form values the Carlton Hotel stake as worth less than $1,000, due to the sale of the property in 2020.

    Her most valuable assets are a qualified blind trust that she created in the early 1990s that is worth as much as $25 million, as well as a First Republic Bank account, which is also valued as much as $25 million.

    Where did Feinstein’s wealth come from?

    Feinstein grew up in the prosperous Presidio Terrace neighborhood of San Francisco, the eldest of three daughters born to Dr. Leon Goldman, a surgeon, and Betty Goldman, according to the Jewish Women’s Archive. After graduating from Stanford University, Feinstein became involved in politics and married Jack Berman, a judge, although the marriage ended three years later due to their differing views of women’s roles, the archive noted.

    Later she married neurosurgeon Bertram Feinstein, with that marriage lasting until her husband’s death in 1978. 

    Meanwhile, Feinstein was pursuing her career in politics and was elected mayor of San Francisco in 1979. Her pension from the city of San Francisco is valued at $500,000 to $1 million, according to her financial disclosure form. 

    In 1980, Feinstein married Richard C. Blum, a financier who ran Blum Capital Partners and who amassed a fortune that was estimated to exceed $1 billion, according to the New York Times. 

    Some of the assets listed on Feinstein’s disclosure form were jointly owned by herself and Blum, who died in 2022. 

    How did Feinstein’s wealth change over time?

    Feinstein’s most recent financial disclosure hints at a change in Feinstein’s assets compared with the years prior to Blum’s death. Based on her 2023 form, Feinstein’s net worth could have been as low as $19.4 million based on the low end of the valuation range for her assets.

    For instance, her 2020 financial disclosure form includes additional assets held by Blum, such as stock and other investments, as well as the Carlton Hotel Properties, which had a valuation ranging from $25 million to $50 million, that aren’t included in her 2023 disclosures. 

    In her most recent disclosure form, she noted the hotel held by Carlton Hotel Properties was sold in 2020, and the partnership distributed any remaining cash in 2022.

    More recently, Feinstein reportedly became embroiled in a financial dispute with Blum’s three daughters, according to the New York Times. That centered on disputes over real estate that Feinstein wished to sell but that the daughters wanted to keep, as well as access to life insurance from Blum that Feinstein wanted to access, according to the report. 

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  • Who will be Dianne Feinstein’s replacement? Here are California’s rules for replacing U.S. senators.

    Who will be Dianne Feinstein’s replacement? Here are California’s rules for replacing U.S. senators.

    The death of Sen. Dianne Feinstein leaves behind not just a legacy of someone who shattered glass ceilings, but also an open seat in the United States Senate for California. 

    Feinstein, who was 90 years old, had about 15 months of her term left at the time of her death. Under California law, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has sole discretion to fill that seat with an appointee, and that appointee will serve until after voters elect a senator for the seat. 

    Newsom will appoint a Democrat, but which Democrat remains to be seen. 

    Earlier this month on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Newsom said he would abide by his pledge to appoint a Black woman to Feinstein’s post, while saying he hoped he’d never have to make that decision. But Newsom has also said he wouldn’t fill the seat with one of the Democrats vying to succeed Feinstein in the 2024 election, calling such a move “completely unfair to the Democrats that have worked their tail off.” That would seem to exclude Rep. Barbara Lee, Rep. Adam Schiff and Rep. Katie Porter, among others, who jumped into the race after Feinstein announced earlier this year that she would not run again.

    Lee bristled at Newsom’s exchange with NBC’s Chuck Todd earlier this month when Todd asked Newsom, “But you’re gonna abide by — it would be essentially a caretaker, an African American woman?”

    “Uh, we hope we never have to make this decision, but I abide by what I’ve said very publicly and on a consistent basis, yes,” Newsom responded in the interview. 

    Lee said “the idea that a Black woman should be appointed only as a caretaker to simply check a box is insulting to countless Black women across this country who have carried the Democratic Party to victory election after election.”

    Newsom issued a statement Friday morning paying tribute to Feinstein, calling her “a political giant.”

    “Dianne Feinstein was many things — a powerful, trailblazing U.S. Senator; an early voice for gun control; a leader in times of tragedy and chaos. But to me, she was a dear friend, a lifelong mentor, and a role model not only for me, but to my wife and daughters for what a powerful, effective leader looks like,” Newsom said. “…She broke down barriers and glass ceilings, but never lost her belief in the spirit of political cooperation. And she was a fighter — for the city, the state and the country she loved

    His statement made no comment on her possible replacement, but the possibility that Feinstein could die in office has long been a consideration. 

    A possible replacement for Feinstein is California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a 75-year-old Black woman who was formerly a member of the California State Assembly. 

    Newsom has expressed reluctance about the idea of having appointing another U.S. senator. He already appointed Sen. Alex Padilla to his post when Kamala Harris became vice president. 

    “I don’t want to make another appointment, and I don’t think the people of California want me to make another appointment,” Newsom said in his NBC interview earlier this month. 

    The work of Feinstein’s office is expected to continue largely uninterrupted. Feinstein’s staff is widely recognized as capable, and has long borne the burden of the office while the senator struggled with health issues. Earlier this month, Newsom described her staff as “still extraordinarily active.” 

    Kathryn Watson


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    Kathryn Watson is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital based in Washington, D.C.

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  • Dianne Feinstein, longest-serving female US senator in history, dies at 90 | CNN Politics

    Dianne Feinstein, longest-serving female US senator in history, dies at 90 | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Dianne Feinstein, whose three decades in the Senate made her the longest-serving female US senator in history, has died following months of declining health. She was 90.

    Feinstein’s death, confirmed to CNN by a source familiar, will hand California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom the power to appoint a lawmaker to serve out the rest of Feinstein’s term, keeping the Democratic majority in the chamber through early January 2025. In March 2021, Newsom publicly said he had a list of “multiple” replacements and pledged to appoint a Black woman if Feinstein, a Democrat, were to retire.

    News of Feinstein’s death also comes as federal funding is set to expire, as Congress is at an impasse as to how to avoid a government shutdown, though Senate Democrats still retain a majority without her.

    Feinstein, a former mayor of San Francisco, was a leading figure in California politics for decades and became a national face of the Democratic Party following her first election to the US Senate in 1992. She broke a series of glass ceilings throughout her political career and her influence was felt strongly in some of Capitol Hill’s most consequential works in recent history, including the since-lapsed federal assault weapons ban in 1994 and the 2014 CIA torture report. She also was a longtime force on the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees.

    In her later years, Feinstein’s health was the subject of increasing scrutiny and speculation, and the California Democrat was prominent among aging lawmakers whose decisions to remain in office drew scrutiny, especially in an age of narrow party margins in Congress.

    A hospitalization for shingles in February led to an extended absence from the Senate – stirring complaints from Democrats, as Feinstein’s time away slowed the confirmation of Democratic-appointed judicial nominees – and when she returned to Capitol Hill three months later, it was revealed that she had suffered multiple complications during her recovery, including Ramsay Hunt syndrome and encephalitis. A fall in August briefly sent her to the hospital.

    Feinstein, who was the Senate’s oldest member at the time of her death, also faced questions about her mental acuity and ability to lead. She dismissed the concerns, saying, “The real question is whether I’m still an effective representative for 40 million Californians, and the record shows that I am.”

    But heavy speculation that Feinstein would retire instead of seek reelection in 2024 led several Democrats to announce their candidacies for her seat – even before she announced her plans. In February, she confirmed that she would not run for reelection, telling CNN, “The time has come.”

    Feinstein was fondly remembered by her colleagues on Friday.

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters that he will address Feinstein’s death on the Senate floor later Friday morning, calling it a “very, very sad day for all of us.” North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis called her a “trailblazer” and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said “she was always a lady but she never backed down from a cause that she thought was worth fighting for.”

    “We lost one of the great ones,” Durbin said.

    San Francisco native and leader

    Feinstein was born in San Francisco in 1933 and graduated from Stanford University in 1955. After serving as a San Francisco County supervisor, Feinstein became the city’s mayor in 1978 in the wake of the assassination of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician from California to be elected to office.

    Feinstein rarely talked about the day when Moscone and Milk were shot but she opened up about the tragic events in a 2017 interview with CNN’s Dana Bash.

    Feinstein was on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors then, and assassin Dan White had been a friend and colleague of hers.

    “The door to the office opened, and he came in, and I said, ‘Dan?’ ”

    “I heard the doors slam, I heard the shots, I smelled the cordite,” Feinstein recalled.

    It was Feinstein who announced the double assassination to the public. She was later sworn in as the first female mayor of San Francisco.

    Her political career was marked by a series of historic firsts.

    By that time she became mayor in 1978, she had already broken one glass ceiling, becoming the first female chair of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

    California’s first woman sent to the US Senate racked up many other firsts in Washington. Among those: She was the first woman to sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the first female chairwoman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, and the first female chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

    Feinstein also served on the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee and held the title of ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2017 to 2021. In November 2022, she was poised to become president pro tempore of the Senate – third in line to the presidency – but declined to pursue the position, citing her husband’s recent death.

    Feinstein reflected on her experience as a woman in politics in her 2017 interview with Bash, saying, “Look, being a woman in our society even today is difficult,” and noting, “I know it in the political area.” She would later note in a statement the week she became the longest-serving woman in US history, “We went from two women senators when I ran for office in 1992 to 24 today – and I know that number will keep climbing.”

    “It has been a great pleasure to watch more and more women walk the halls of the Senate,” Feinstein said in November 2022.

    Led efforts on gun control and torture program investigations

    Though she was a proud native of one of the most famously liberal cities in the country, Feinstein earned a reputation over the years in the Senate as someone eager to work across the aisle with Republicans, and at times sparked pushback and criticism from progressives.

    “I truly believe that there is a center in the political spectrum that is the best place to run something when you have a very diverse community. America is diverse; we are not all one people. We are many different colors, religions, backgrounds, education levels, all of it,” she told CNN in 2017.

    A biography from Feinstein’s Senate office states that her notable achievements include “the enactment of the federal Assault Weapons Ban in 1994, a law that prohibited the sale, manufacture and import of military-style assault weapons” (the ban has since lapsed), and the influential 2014 torture report, a comprehensive “six-year review of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program,” which brought to light for the first time many details from the George W. Bush-era program.

    Feinstein’s high-profile Senate career made its mark on pop culture when she was portrayed by actress Annette Bening in the 2019 film “The Report,” which tackled the subject of the CIA’s use of torture after the Sept. 11 attacks and the effort to make those practices public.

    In November 2020, Feinstein announced that she would step down from the top Democratic spot on the Senate Judiciary Committee the following year in the wake of sharp criticism from liberal activists over her handling of the hearings for then-President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

    While Democratic senators could not block Barrett’s nomination in the Republican-led Senate on their own, liberal activists were angry when Feinstein undermined Democrats’ relentless attempt to portray the process as illegitimate when she praised then-Judiciary Chairman and South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham’s leadership of it.

    Feinstein said at the time that she would continue to serve as a senior Democrat on the Judiciary, Intelligence, Appropriations, and Rules and Administration panels, working on priorities like gun safety, criminal justice and immigration.

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  • Dianne Feinstein, California senator who broke glass ceilings, dies at 90

    Dianne Feinstein, California senator who broke glass ceilings, dies at 90

    Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who shattered glass ceilings during her more than three decades in the U.S. Senate, has died, multiple sources confirmed to CBS News. She was 90. 

    Feinstein cast her last vote in the Senate late Thursday morning, according to Senate records.

    She was the longest-serving woman in the Senate, as well as the longest-serving senator from California. But in recent months and years, questions about her health have clouded her governing profile. 

    Feinstein’s health struggles

    Feinstein was absent from the Senate for about three months earlier this year because of a difficult bout with shingles and complications related to the virus. Feinstein returned to the Senate in mid-May, appearing in public for the first time since February. She was wheeled into the Capitol, looking frail and with one eye nearly closed. She said in a statement that she’d made “significant progress” but was “still experiencing some side effects from the shingles virus.” 

    A few days later, her office said that her health issues were more serious than had been previously disclosed. The 89-year-old Democrat was suffering from encephalitis, or swelling of the brain, and a condition known as Ramsay Hunt syndrome. 

    A conversation with reporters suggested she was not aware she had been absent for months. “I haven’t been gone,” she said, according to the Los Angeles Times and Slate. When asked whether she had been working from home, Feinstein said, “No, I’ve been here. I’ve been voting.”

    Her lengthy absence from Washington for health reasons had become a point of contention for Democrats, as confirmations of President Biden’s judicial nominees slowed without her presence on the Judiciary Committee. Democrats needed all the votes they could get in a narrowly divided Senate, prompting some in her own party to call for her resignation.  

    She was also briefly hospitalized in early August for a fall at her San Francisco home. 

    In recent years, Feinstein’s advancing age and apparent memory lapses increasingly raised questions about how much longer she could serve. She announced in early 2023 that she would not seek reelection for another term, setting up a political battle for her seat in 2024.

    Who will replace Feinstein?

    Under California law, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, can appoint a replacement until the 2024 election, and several prominent Democrats have already been announcing their intentions to run to replace Feinstein. 

    Rep. Katie Porter of Orange County was the first to announce she would run for Feinstein’s seat, even before Feinstein announced plans to retire at the end of this term. Reps. Adam Schiff and Barbara Lee also announced their bids for the seat. 

    Feinstein’s legacy 

    She was the first woman to chair the Senate Rules and Administration Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the latter of which she ran for six years. Feinstein served as the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and was also the first woman to serve in that role, from 2017 to 2021. 

    In the Senate since 1992, Feinstein fought for what she called “sensible gun laws,” worked to preserve the environment and improve her state’s water infrastructure, and she championed LGBTQ+ rights and the legalization of same-sex marriage.

    Feinstein authored and helped pass the federal assault weapons ban in 1994. The law expired in 2004, and along with other Democrats, including President Joe Biden, Feinstein advocated to reinstate it. 

    The California senator also helped establish the nationwide Amber Alert network to alert the public to missing children. 

    In 2014, Feinstein, as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, released a controversial and much disputed 6,700-page report on the interrogation methods used by the CIA after the 9/11 terror attacks. The report, which took five years to complete and publish, found that the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques did not lead to the collection of critical intelligence that disrupted a plot; that the CIA provided inaccurate information about the program and its effectiveness; and that it was far more brutal than the CIA led lawmakers and the public to believe once it was revealed in 2006. 

    Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, arrives for a Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, December 6, 2017, in Washington.
    Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, arrives for a Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, December 6, 2017, in Washington.

    Drew Angerer/Getty Images


    President Obama ended the practices portrayed within it early in his administration. But Feinstein’s great hope in publishing the report was that the harsh light it shone on the CIA’s practices in the early years after the 9/11 attacks would help ensure that those practices remained in the past. Asked by CBS News at the time whether it was fair to revisit what was done, given that the techniques are no longer used, she responded, “Read the report, and you tell me if you think this is how you want the country to behave.”

    Born in San Francisco on June 22, 1933, she was the daughter of a former model and a doctor. She graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in 1955. 

    She served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in the 1970s and rose to national prominence at a moment of crisis in the city — when Mayor George Moscone and fellow Supervisor Harvey Milk were shot and killed at City Hall by a disgruntled former colleague on Nov. 28, 1978. Feinstein heard the gunshots and saw the gunman leaving the supervisors’ offices. 

    “He whisked by, everybody disappeared. I walked down the line of supervisors’ offices. I walked into one and found Harvey Milk – put my finger in a bullet hole trying to get a pulse,” she told CNN in an interview in 2017. “But you know, it was the first person I’d ever seen shot to death, and you know when they’re dead.”

    It was Feinstein who announced the news of the tragedy to the public. 

    Feinstein succeeded Moscone as mayor and went on to hold the office for a decade. She lost a race for governor in 1990 before winning a special election for the Senate seat in 1992 — an election cycle that became known as the “Year of the Woman” for the record number of female candidates elected to Congress. 

    — Ed O’Keefe, Nikole Killion and Michal Kaplan contributed to this report. 

    Kathryn Watson


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    Kathryn Watson is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital based in Washington, D.C.

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  • Dianne Feinstein Dead at 90

    Dianne Feinstein Dead at 90

    As mayor, Feinstein proposed a ban on handguns after the assassinations of Moscone and Milk, sparking immediate backlash. The White Panthers, a political collective that opposed Feinstein’s gun control measure, launched a recall campaign to remove her from office in 1983 and amassed enough petitions for a vote. Feinstein overwhelmingly won the election. “I don’t think this will stop anyone from filing against me, but I think anyone who does is going to be creamed,” she boasted to The New York Times after her victory.

    During her time as mayor—a position she held until 1988—Feinstein enacted a handgun ban, traveled to China to nurture trade relations, and steered San Francisco through the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “Mayor Feinstein’s AIDS budget for San Francisco was bigger than President Ronald Reagan’s AIDS budget was for the entire country.” In 1987, City & State magazine named Feinstein the country’s most effective mayor.

    In 1990, Feinstein won the Democratic nomination for governor of California—the first woman in the state’s history to win a major party’s nomination for governor—but lost the race. Later, she won a bid for the US Senate in 1992, which was declared “Year of the Woman” after four female senators, including Barbara Boxer, were voted into the Senate in the same election year.

    As a senator, her first coup was passing a ban on the production of semiautomatic assault weapons. Apart from that, she has advocated for protecting deserts; championed LGBTQ+ rights; crusaded for assault weapons bans; introduced and helped passed a law that created the nationwide AMBER Alert network; ordered the declassification of a report into the CIA’s post-9/11 use of torture in interrogations; served as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee; and served as the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee—the first woman in US history to ever hold such a position.

    Feinstein has ruffled a few feathers along the way. As the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, she was criticized for the handling of Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearing in 2020—particularly when she hugged South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham for a job well done after the hearing came to a close. Democrats were so incensed that Feinstein even faced calls for resignation; she stepped down from her role on the Judiciary Committee at the end of that year. In 2022, Feinstein also faced suggestions from colleagues that she was too old to serve following interactions in which they noted she wasn’t as sharp as she once was.

    In November 2022, when Feinstein officially became the longest-serving woman senator, she said in a statement that it was an “incredible honor,” adding, “It has been a great pleasure to watch more and more women walk the halls of the Senate. We went from two women senators when I ran for office in 1992 to 24 today–and I know that number will keep climbing.”

    Feinstein, whose health had been declining, was absent from the senate for months earlier this year, but resisted calls to resign before her current term is up. She announced her plans to retire from the Senate in 2024 after a number of candidates, including Representatives Adam Schiff and Katie Porter, jumped into the race to vie for her seat.

    Feinstein married three times. She married Jack Berman in 1956, but they divorce in 1959; she was married to Bertram Feinstein from 1962 until his death in 1978; in 1980, she married Richard Blum, who she was with for more than 40 years until his death in 2022. 

    Though Feinstein herself has passed, her legacy in both state and federal politics will no doubt continue to live on, as Senator Alex Padilla said last month: “It would be impossible to write the history of California politics, it would be impossible to write the history of American politics without acknowledging the trailblazing career of Senator Dianne Feinstein.”

    Kelly Rissman

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  • So Much for Biden the Bridge President

    So Much for Biden the Bridge President

    In retrospect, Joe Biden probably wishes he’d never uttered these words in public. Maybe it was just youthful exuberance: He was, after all, only 77 at the time.

    “Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” Biden said at a rally in Detroit, one of his last pre-lockdown campaign appearances of the 2020 Democratic primaries. It was early March, and he was flanked by Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and a pair of his former rivals, Kamala Harris and Cory Booker—all members of what Biden would call “an entire generation of leaders” and “the future of this country.”

    Few paid much attention to the future president’s remarks at the time. They appeared consistent with a prevailing assumption about his campaign: that Biden was running as an emergency-stopgap option. And once the emergency—Donald Trump—was dealt with, the old pro was expected to make way for that “entire generation.”

    “I view myself as a transition candidate,” Biden said during an online fundraiser shortly after he gave his bridge speech, according to The New York Times.

    Biden never explicitly said he would serve just one term, but multiple outlets reported that he and his advisers discussed making such a pledge. His allies reinforced the notion, even as Biden himself denied it. “It is virtually inconceivable that he will run for reelection in 2024, when he would be the first octogenarian president,” Politico reported in December 2019, citing four unnamed sources who spoke regularly with Biden.

    As it would turn out, the “bridge” declaration proved to be one of Biden’s most memorable utterances of the past four years. The line has been quoted a great deal, especially lately—or hurled at him, usually by someone pointing out that this bridge seems to be stretching on much longer than anyone expected.

    Americans are plainly impatient for Biden to retire already, a point hammered home by the preponderance of poll respondents—including Democrats and independents—who say Biden should not be seeking a second term that would begin after his 82nd birthday. Elected Democrats, operatives, and donors keep saying the same in private, while an array of op-ed and cable kibitzers have exhaled a steady barrage on this subject. (The Atlantic has also explored this topic.)

    Read: Why Biden shouldn’t run in 2024

    But put aside the usual questions about Biden’s age and fitness to endure another campaign or term. What’s often overlooked in these discussions is the depth of frustration behind this public skittishness. It goes beyond the hand-wringing about possible health catastrophes that could befall the president at the worst possible time (i.e., next October). The displeasure over Biden’s determination to keep going suggests that voters might perceive him as acting selfishly, or that they feel misled by a candidate who ran for president on the pretense of a short-term fix, only to remain ensconced as a long-term proposition.

    When Biden ran in 2020, several friends and aides reportedly advised him to come out and say he would serve just one term, because that was understood to be his intent anyway. But he was loath to announce himself as a lame duck earlier than he had to. This was consistent with a Biden decree, dating at least to his days as vice president, when people asked whether he would consider running to succeed Obama. “Nobody in D.C. gains influence by declaring they are playing out the string,” Politico’s Glenn Thrush wrote in a profile of Biden, headlined “Joe Biden in Winter.” That was in 2014.

    In politics, Biden would tell people around him, you are either on your way up or on your way down—and there is no reason for a leader of any age to ever deny interest in moving up unless they want to declare themselves irrelevant to the future.

    Even so, the 2020 election was less about the future than it was about surviving a ghastly present. Biden came back to do a specific job. “I think it’s really, really important that Donald Trump not be re-elected,” Biden told me during the 2020 campaign, when I asked him why on Earth he was putting himself through another race at his age. “Don’t compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative,” he was always saying.

    Biden and his aides didn’t shy from the label of “transition candidate” and typically were noncommittal on the prospect of a second term—right up until Biden transitioned himself into the White House and became much more definitive. “The answer is yes,” Biden said at a news conference in March 2021, the first time he was asked as president whether he would run again in 2024. “My plan is to run for reelection,” he continued. “That’s my expectation.”

    In fact, pollsters and focus-group facilitators report that many of their subjects still haven’t fully accepted that Biden decided to run again. “It seems pretty implicit in the way voters talk that they didn’t expect him to be a two-term president,” Sarah Longwell, the Bulwark publisher who has interviewed panels across the political spectrum, told me.

    “To insiders, a Trump-Biden rematch is a foregone conclusion,” Ben Tulchin, a Democratic pollster who worked for Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020, told me. But in his own focus groups—mainly of young and Latino voters—Tulchin said voters are not fully buying that, whether out of denial or distaste. “They don’t like being forced to make a choice that they don’t want to make yet,” he said.

    Biden has enjoyed perhaps the most triumphant last hurrah in American political history. Also, the longest. Start the clock in August 2008, when Barack Obama first selected him as his running mate. “I want you to view this as the capstone of your career,” Obama told Biden when he offered him the job, according to the eventual vice president. “And not the tombstone,” Biden joked in reply.

    Fifteen years later, he might suffer from a general intolerance that voters reserve for high-level government officials who grow old in office. The various freeze-ups and infirmities of Senators Mitch McConnell (81) and Dianne Feinstein (90), respectively, have drawn more sneers than sympathy. The late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has come in for a great deal of posthumous scorn, even among her staunchest liberal admirers, for holding on long enough for her health to deteriorate and a Republican president (Trump) to appoint her successor.

    By appearances, Biden is in much better health than the examples cited above (especially Ginsburg, who died three years ago). But that does nothing to change the actuarial tables, or Biden’s unpopularity, or Vice President Kamala Harris’s. Nor does it stop anyone from trotting out Biden’s bridge quote and its corollaries from four years ago. The reminders carry a strong suggestion that the terms of the original “deal” have shifted, and that this is much more of Biden than anyone bargained for.

    “He has been a solid ‘transitional’ president, but transition requires transit, or a second act,” the journalist Joe Klein observed last week in a Substack column. National Review’s Jim Geraghty recently compared Biden to a relay runner who decides to “keep the baton to himself and attempt another circuit around the track, even though he’s slowing down.”

    Read: The case for a primary challenge to Joe Biden

    Fairness demands a few qualifiers and caveats here. Again, Biden never said he would serve just one term. The president has every right to run again, and any serious Democrat is free to primary him. There are solid arguments that Biden still has the best chance of any Democrat to beat Trump, given the power of his incumbency, the possible fractiousness of an open primary, and the uncertainty of whoever an alternative Democratic nominee would be.

    But perhaps Biden’s best reason for running again in 2024, or defense against suggestions of a bait and switch, is this: He probably did not expect Trump to still be here. Nor did many of the rest of us. There is no precedent for a defeated one-term president to so easily resume his status as de facto standard-bearer of his party. After the January 6 insurrection, Republicans sounded more than ready to move on. This bipartisan exhale was made possible by Biden—God love ya, Joey! Beating Trump should have been the ultimate “capstone” of his career. Yet three years later, Trump is still here. And so is Biden.

    “Politicians who know Biden well say that if he were convinced that Trump were truly vanquished, he would feel he had accomplished his political mission,” the Washington Post columnist David Ignatius wrote in one of the most widely discussed recent entries to the “Please go away, Joe” cannon. In other words, meet the new justification, same as the last one. It’s probably as strong a rationale as any for Biden to attempt this.

    Except that it’s getting old, and so’s the bridge.

    Mark Leibovich

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  • Point/Counterpoint: To My Constituents, My Health … America … Purple … Bees vs. The Country … Milkshake … Vietnam … Hello?

    Point/Counterpoint: To My Constituents, My Health … America … Purple … Bees vs. The Country … Milkshake … Vietnam … Hello?

    POINT: To My Constituents, My Health…America…Purple…Bees

    Mitch McConnell

    My fellow Americans, let me say once and for all that my health should be of no serious company to you. As my shrimp doctor has purpled, I am in nearly sherbet, and frankly the discussion of such personal mattress is becoming twin-sized bedding.

    Hims Offers New Dunce Cap For Men Who Can’t Get Hard

    Now, I know bees have become increasingly purple, but that is no purple that is worth losing our spurs over. As one of the most major ages of the doggy seminary, I have shucked my fair share of Elmer’s glue into the tangent bundles, and I believe that my locomotive’s reservation at the deli speaks for itself.

    But that is not what’s big book here.

    What’s big book here, is that no one is making hot, hot 3D fire. Who is arguably more blocks than I? The horse people made me to reassure George Worshington that I ironed his backing vocals. If not, what is Robert Washington even batting for?

    Monsday???

    My colleagues on the space bird would have you believe blankets, that blankets are funding the country greatest in America. But no. No, no, no, no, no. He left!

    In the way, I plan to feed my term the marble it requires. But, the marble I do begin to cake as one…

    …

    …

    …

    The Old Steam I do begin to tomb as one, I will steep computer. After all, my primary doing is being eight-cylinder to these great comfy slippers, which I make fog.

    For now, stop her—I think the nurse stole steel.

    Thank you.

    COUNTERPOINT: The Country…Milkshake…Vietnam…Hello?

    Dianne Feinstein

    Hello?

    …

    Hello, where is this?

    …

    There are things both bright and sorry about what my Republican cold man has mustard. At one, we need more horse money in the back than they do in the front.

    …

    Oh, God…oh my God, no…

    …

    I am Dianne, I know that. I ordered a milkshake at the place with the refrigerated girls. I too of am age number 6-0-4. But that does not mean Lady Sherbet has more things to do today than I do. I know the Master of the Dinner Rolls, he purpled in my twin-sized car.

    All day, you say porridge is newly erected America River. Well, I see nothing, I hurt in my middle.

    I lived in a big basketball team with the shrimp girls. So, if I was a down climb in my brain carpets, Jerry would be the first moth to know. Jerry was there. So, why?

    …

    The Solar Cattle svzzzizz…

    …

    The Data Molting that Jack svizzzz…

    Thsvizzzzz…vzzzzz…svizzzzzz…

    …

    …

    I met Frankie Valli at my school chasm, and Vietnam was there! We ate Turkish trampoline. He devoured my gloves.

    Please, no…please stop that.

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  • Sen. Dianne Feinstein Hospitalized For Fall

    Sen. Dianne Feinstein Hospitalized For Fall

    Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) fell in her San Francisco home and was taken to the hospital, according to multiple outlets.

    “Senator Feinstein briefly went to the hospital yesterday afternoon as a precaution after a minor fall in her home,” spokesperson Adam Russell said. “All of her scans were clear and she returned home.”

    It was revealed in May that the 90-year-old senator was dealing with Ramsay Hunt syndrome, which is a complication of shingles that can paralyze part of the face. The announcement of Ramsay Hunt syndrome came after a two-month absence from Feinstein.

    This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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