Posted on 09/29/2023 6:07:41 AM PDT by Red Badger
KEY POINTS
* Dianne Feinstein, the oldest member of the U.S. Senate and the longest-serving senator from California, has died at age 90.
* Feinstein’s death leaves vacant her powerful Senate seat, requiring Gov. Gavin Newsom to appoint a temporary successor.
* The Democratic senator’s decades-long career was studded with major legislative achievements on issues including gun control and the environment.
* Ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) attends a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing examining issues facing prisons and jails during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic on Capitol Hill June 2, 2020 in Washington, D.C.
Dianne Feinstein, the oldest member of the U.S. Senate and the longest-serving senator from California, has died at age 90, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News on Friday.
The Democrat’s passing marks the end of a boundary-pushing political career that spanned more than half a century, studded with major legislative achievements on issues including gun control and the environment.
Feinstein had planned to retire at the end of her current term in 2024.
Feinstein’s death leaves vacant her powerful Senate seat, requiring Gov. Gavin Newsom to appoint a temporary successor.
A San Francisco native, Feinstein cleared a path for women in politics as she rose the ranks of leadership. 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 of the city later that year, after then-Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk, her colleague on the board of supervisors, were assassinated by Dan White, a former member of the same board.
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. She was appointed mayor a week later, again becoming the first woman elevated to the office.
The tragedy had the side effect of jumpstarting Feinstein’s political career, but the trauma of the day stuck with her even decades later.
“I never really talk about this,” Feinstein said with a sigh when asked about the murders in a CNN interview in 2017.
Her streak of firsts continued at the national level. Feinstein lost a gubernatorial bid in 1990, but two years later won a special election to the U.S. Senate, becoming California’s first female senator.
Weeks later, the state’s second female senator, Barbara Boxer, was sworn into office, making California the first state in the U.S. to be represented in the Senate by two women.
Their 1992 elections helped define the “Year of the Woman,” in which four Democratic women were newly elected to the Senate — more than doubling the chamber’s female representation.
In the Senate, Feinstein clinched some of her biggest legislative achievements. She wrote and championed the 1994 assault weapons ban, both a landmark bill and 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.
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 proceeding 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.
She’s just pinin’ for the fjords!
I wont say RIP to a person who’s fingerprints are all over the destruction of a once great country
One down and a lot more to go.....
Mirror......................
Very good, indeed. How apropos on the day the evil spawn croaked.
We will end up with someone even worse. Will her replacement have a Chinese spy driving him/her/they/it around?
China lowers their flags to half staff.................
“What is the backstory about her personal chauffeur, the Chinese man, and his connection to the Communist ruling party????”
They hushed that up very quickly, didn’t they? To my knowledge, no details were revealed or what intel he might have gathered. Just like that other California Swalwell trailer who was on the Intel Committee and the Chinese spy he was boinking. What did she get and transmit to her masters? That went away very quickly.
Just like the investigation into the former Head of DNC, Debbie Shula, who had those two moslem IT Spies in the house, Imran Awan. There was an investigation but it, too, faded away quickly.
There is no outrage over these spies getting into Congress. It’s just sickening.
Hmmm. Must be a Mandela effect thing.
Apparently, the family vultures had been circling for quite some time prior to her passing:
“The best case scenario is that 202 was stolen. The worst case scenario is that it wasn’t.”
LOL. I like your thinking!
Yep, possibly Barbara Lee (Communist, Black Separatist). The situation there isn't likely to improve, though it'd be entertaining if the trans crowd decides to make a fight of it.
“Well Hell has a new member….”
Even Hell wouldn’t take her.
Now we must pass incredible spending bills and cease impeachment inquiries for 90 days in her honor. The democrats will grab another spending bill and gun confiscation bill out of the drawer and rename it after her and try to guilt congress into passing it.
Oh, it's for sale alright. You can count on it.
The sale just won't be be as clumsily implemented
as that Chicago fiasco with Obama's seat. Somehow
Newsome will be paid very quietly.
Caution, the coffee is VERY hot there.
Uhhh...
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