Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the longest-serving female senator in U.S. history, has died at 90
WASHINGTON ?Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a trailblazer for women in politics in California and Washington who spent more than 30 years in the U.S. Senate, has died. She was 90.
Known for working across the aisle while championing progressive causes, Feinstein planned to retire at the end of her term after facing concerns about her health and calls to resign. The oldest current member of the Senate, she died at her home in Washington, D.C. on Thursday night, according to a statement from her office.
“There are few women who can be called senator, chairman, mayor, wife, mom and grandmother," Feinstein's chief of staff, James Sauls, said. “She left a legacy that is undeniable and extraordinary. There is much to say about who she was and what she did, but for now, we are going to grieve the passing of our beloved boss, mentor and friend.”
President Joe Biden was one of many prominent political and cultural leaders to publicly mourn her passing. In a statement issued by the White House, Biden ? a longtime Senate colleague of Feinstein's ? called her "a pioneering American. A true trailblazer. And for Jill and me, a cherished friend."
"Often the only woman in the room, Dianne was a role model for so many Americans – a job she took seriously by mentoring countless public servants, many of whom now serve in my Administration," Biden said. "She had an immense impact on younger female leaders for whom she generously opened doors."
It is now up to California Gov. Gavin Newsom pick a replacement for Feinstein. Given the Democrats’ slight majority in the Senate, he is already under pressure to act quickly. In the past, he has vowed to appoint a Black woman to the seat. On Friday, though, Newsom made no mention of a successor in a statement marking her death.
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Making history in California, then Washington
Feinstein made history as the first woman elected as mayor in San Francisco and the first woman in the Senate from the state of California. She became the first woman to chair the powerful Senate Rules and Senate Intelligence committees, a perch from which she played an outsized role in some of the most pressing issues of the day, especially after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
Many other parts of American life have been marked by her fingerprints as well, from fighting for an assault weapons ban in 1994 to enshrining marriage equality into law in 2022. She also ushered in Amber Alerts and the Violence Against Women Act.
Feinstein was especially passionate about gun control. Early in her Senate career, Feinstein championed gun control advocacy by authoring the 1994 assault weapons ban which then-President Bill Clinton signed into law. Since the law expired in 2004, Feinstein spearheaded further efforts for stronger gun control legislation.
The last vote Feinstein took was Thursday morning in a Senate effort to prevent a government shutdown.
As news of Feinstein’s passing spread, the House Rules Committee held a moment of silence in honor of the California Democrat during a meeting on a spending package to avert federal closure. “I know many of us had the opportunity to deal with her and certainly all of us on both sides of the aisle respect her,” Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., chair of the House Rules committee, said Friday morning.
Breaking barriers, blazing trails
Former first lady and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said Feinstein “blazed trails for women in politics and found a life's calling in public service. I'll miss her greatly as a friend.”
Feinstein was first elected to the Senate in 1992, dubbed the "Year of the Woman."
She broke another barrier in 1978 when she became the first female president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Feinstein went on to become San Francisco's first female mayor and, in Washington, the first woman to serve as the Judiciary Committee's top Democrat.
"I recognize that women have had to fight for everything they have gotten, every right," she told the Associated Press in 2005. At the time, she was sitting on the Judiciary Committee holding hearings on President George W. Bush's nomination of John Roberts to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court.
Health concerns and other controversies
Feinstein's long tenure was marked by controversy at times, including her position on the U.S. war in Iraq during the George W. Bush administration, and her handling as the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee of the nomination process for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.
During his explosive confirmation hearings, Kavanaugh's nomination was in jeopardy after a woman accused him of sexually assaulting her when they were in high school. Kavanaugh denied it.
But Feinstein became a lightning rod for criticism from then-President Donald Trump ? and, more quietly, from some fellow Democrats ? after she acknowledged that she had received a letter from the woman that she did not share with Senate colleagues and federal law enforcement until months later, as Kavanaugh was coming under fire for a host of allegations during his Senate confirmation hearings.
More recently, Feinstein had been dogged by health problems, which had spurred calls from progressive lawmakers to resign during her last months in office.
For at least three months she had been sidelined from the Senate with shingles. She also was briefly hospitalized after suffering a fall at her California home and had been reportedly confused when taking certain votes. Other reports said the longtime senator had turned her power of attorney over to her daughter.
Hours after House Democrats called for her resignation in April, Feinstein asked to be temporarily replaced on the Judiciary Committee.
Feinstein, who had said she would retire at the end of 2024, gave no estimated date for her return. But her lengthy absence delayed Biden's judicial nominees, causing anger and consternation among members of her own party.
"This is a moment of crisis for women's rights and voting rights. It's unacceptable to have Sen. Feinstein miss vote after vote to confirm judges who will uphold reproductive rights," Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said in a statement at the time.
Those incidents sparked a larger conversation about the age of U.S. officials, including Biden and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who are in their early 80s.
McConnell had two public health scares this year where he abruptly stopped speaking at press conferences, which raised questions and concerns about his health. First elected in 1984, he also fell at least two other times in previously unreported incidents, USA TODAY learned.
Similarly, Biden’s age has remained a persistent pebble in his shoe with Democratic voters.
Outpouring of emotions by lawmakers
Praise for Feinstein came immediately from both Democrats and Republicans.
In tearful remarks Friday morning, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called for the Senate to observe a moment of silence in her honor.
“Earlier this morning, we lost a giant in the Senate,” he said.
Schumer said Feinstein was “one of the most amazing people who ever graced the Senate” and the country. He highlighted her integrity and her accomplishments, ticking off several like Feinstein’s work fighting for climate justice, marriage equality, reproductive justice and how she has served as the longest-serving female senator in history.
“Dianne Feinstein fought for what was right, even if it was hard and difficult and took months and years to dig in and find out what actually went wrong,” Schumer said.
“Today we grieve. We look at that desk and we know what we have lost,” Schumer added, turning to face Feinstein’s desk which was draped with a black cloth and a vase of white roses.
McConnell, also spoke of Feinstein’s passing Friday morning on the Senate floor, calling her a “truly remarkable individual."
“She was an incredibly effective person at every line, at every level and she was at all of those levels on her way to the Senate,” he said.
Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican, said despite her political differences with Feinstein, they worked together to determine the origins of COVID-19 and to update the Violence Against Women Act to protect women from sexual assault and domestic violence.
“Senator Dianne Feinstein’s life of service blazed a trail for women in politics and the future of girls across the nation,” Ernst said. “Dianne will be missed; she leaves behind an incredible legacy of bipartisanship.”
Barbara Boxer, Feinstein’s junior senator from California for decades, recalled how Feinstein – with a much higher profile than her – helped her win her first Senate race in 1992 and then break one barrier after another in Washington as a powerful two-woman team.
“It would have been very easy for her to say, ‘You're on your own.’ But she didn't. She said we're gonna do this together. She grabbed my hand, literally and figuratively, and she helped me get across the finish line," Boxer told USA TODAY.
Boxer said she and Feinstein faced a lot of prejudice in the Senate, especially in the early days, as women, as Jews and even as legislators from California. Over the years, they disagreed on some political positions, including Feinstein’s initial support for the war in Iraq, “but we never let that get in the way of our friendship, or our working relationship," Boxer said. “So it was a quite a ride that we had.”
The Biden connection
Biden, in particular, had a personal and political connection to Feinstein, he said Friday morning.
He said Feinstein showed enormous poise and courage in the wake of tragedy in San Francisco and went on to become "a powerful voice for American values."
Biden was referring to how Feinstein became mayor of San Francisco in 1978 after then-Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were shot and killed by a disgruntled former county supervisor. She rushed to Milk's office and found his body, and reportedly found a bullet hole when searching for his pulse.
She would later say that galvanized her in her career-long struggle to pass politically unpopular gun control legislation.
"Serving in the Senate together for more than 15 years, I had a front-row seat to what Dianne was able to accomplish. It’s why I recruited her to serve on the Judiciary Committee when I was Chairman – I knew what she was made of, and I wanted her on our team," Biden said.
Biden said there is no better example of Feinstein's "skillful legislating and sheer force of will than when she turned passion into purpose and led the fight to ban assault weapons."
"Dianne made her mark on everything from national security to the environment to protecting civil liberties," Biden said. "She’s made history in so many ways, and our country will benefit from her legacy for generations."
First and foremost, fighting for Californians
In his statement announcing her passing, Feinstein chief of staff Sauls noted that despite her national stature on so many fronts, the veteran senator always fought for her California constituents.
“Her passing is a great loss for so many, from those who loved and cared for her to the people of California that she dedicated her life to serving,” Sauls said.
That included playing a key role in environmental issues affecting the nation’s most populous state.
In a statement four days before her death, Feinstein and fellow California Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla announced that six grants have been awarded to California rail projects by the Department of Transportation. The money will fund projects to improve the safety, efficiency, and reliability of intercity passenger and freight rail.
Feinstein was an especially potent force on climate change issues, given California’s long coastline and role as a breadbasket of American agriculture.
Feinstein implored her constituents to reduce their carbon footprint by adopting more efficient technologies, promoting zero-emission vehicles and embracing renewable energy sources. At the same time, she said, the United States must prepare for more extreme weather patterns and build its infrastructure to be more resilient.
“Changing course won’t be easy. It will require us to manage problems that previous generations never faced,” Feinstein wrote.
Sitting in a coffee shop in San Francisco Castro District, a longtime haven for the LGBTIQ+ community, Mike Karpa, 63, of San Francisco, said Friday that he and his older sister and younger brother in a group text began sharing their memories of Feinstein after hearing of her passing.
"We had a big party at my house when she won her seat to the Senate in 1992," Karpa recalled. "It was a really momentous occaision."
Karpa said they recalled when Feinstein made history as the city's first female mayor after the assassinations of then-Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Milk, her work on the federal assault weapons ban and her fighting for same-sex marriage.
"As a gay man, I appreciated what she did to this day," said Karpa, a writer, teacher and Japanese translator. "I thought that took some courage."
San Francisco native Carmen Alfaro-Rojas, 45, said she was reminiscing with her mother on the phone about Feinstein after learning about the senator's death.
"I'm incredibly sad. As Latinos, we take a lot of pride in a lot of the activism the senator did on our behalf," said Alfaro-Rojas, whose family migrated to San Francisco from El Salvador in the 1960s. "And as a woman, and as a mother, like myself, she showed that we can be seen and heard as effective leaders. She paved the way."
An office manager for a local construction company, Alfaro-Rojas said she wasn't surprised that Feinstein remained in the Senate, despite the constant calls for her to step down, until she took her final breath.
"She wanted to serve her country, state, and even this city no matter what," Alfaro-Rojas said. "I'm glad she showed the strength and tenacity to hold on right until the end."
Sauls, Feinstein’s chief of staff, said his boss “never backed away from a fight for what was just and right. At the same time, she was always willing to work with anyone, even those she disagreed with, if it meant bettering the lives of Californians or the betterment of our nation.”
Nowhere was that more evident, perhaps, than in Feinstein’s work on national and global security matters.
Upholding the rule of law, protecting the nation
As a senior senator on both the Judiciary and Intelligence committees, Feinstein played a particularly critical role in the U.S. response to the al-Qaeda terrorist attacks, championing the so-called Global War on Terror on some occasions and reining it in on others.
Even in her last months, Feinstein was active in the deliberations over the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Set to expire at the end of this year without congressional action, the controversial section authorizes the U.S. intelligence community to collect the emails, texts and other digital communications of foreigners located abroad who communicate using the platforms of American tech and social media companies.
Feinstein also used her powerful Senate perch to document the CIA's torture of foreign terrorism suspects in the turbulent aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, when "black site" prisons were established in friendly nations overseas.
As a longtime member of the Senate intel committee, Feinstein was known for digesting huge volumes of classified information and then using it to ask pertinent – and sometimes bluntly critical questions – during the panel’s public and closed-door hearings.
That was the case in the aftermath of the Iraq War and during the deadly rise of the Islamic State, or ISIS. And it was even more so when Feinstein was questioning the powerful authorities granted to the U.S. intelligence community after 9/11 to allow it to prevent future attacks.
As chair of the Senate Intel Committee, Feinstein faced fierce resistance from U.S. intelligence officials and Republican lawmakers when she insisted on investigating the CIA's network of clandestine overseas facilities where al-Qaeda suspects were detained and interrogated following the worst-ever terrorist attacks.
The CIA claimed that its so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques saved lives and disrupted attacks.
But the committee, at Feinstein’s direction, issued a November 2014 report that described those methods as torture, and concluded that they played no role in thwarting terrorist plots or capturing al-Qaeda leaders ? including Osama Bin Laden before his death at the hands of U.S. special forces in Pakistan three years earlier.
Feinstein gave a dramatic hourlong speech on the Senate floor to explain why her committee was releasing a heavily redacted 500-page executive summary of top-secret report, which was based on a five and a half year review of the CIA's detention and interrogation program. The actual report, she said, weighed in at 6,700 pages, including 38,000 footnotes.
"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,” Feinstein said. “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.'”
In closing, she said, the landmark study was “bigger than the actions of the CIA.”
"It's really about American values and morals. It's about the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, our rule of law,” Feinstein said.
She added: “These values exist regardless of the circumstances in which we find ourselves. They exist in peacetime and in wartime. And if we cast aside these values when convenient, we have failed to live by the very precepts that make our nation a great one.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Sen. Dianne Feinstein, longest-serving female senator, has died at 90
