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, a Democrat, died Thursday night at her home in Washington, her office said in a statement.
Her death hands 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. Newsom has publicly pledged to appoint a Black woman if Feinstein were to vacate her office and told NBC’s “Meet the Press” earlier this month that he would make an “interim appointment” who wouldn’t be any of the candidates who are seeking the seat in next year’s election.
Feinstein’s death also comes as federal funding is set to expire and Congress 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 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.
Leah Millis/Pool/Getty Images
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham looks in the direction of Feinstein during the second day of Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett on October 13, 2020.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi hailed her fellow Californian as a “champion for the Golden State” and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois remembered her as “one of the great ones.” Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, also of California, began his remarks to reporters Friday morning by honoring Feinstein as someone who “blazed a trail for women.”
In emotional remarks on the Senate floor, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer asked for a moment of silence. Per Senate tradition, Feinstein’s desk was draped with a black cloth with a vase of white flowers atop it.
“Dianne Feinstein is not like the others. She’s in a class of her own,” Schumer said, later adding, “America is a better place because of Sen. Dianne Feinstein.”
And President Joe Biden, himself a longtime colleague of Feinstein’s for more than 15 years, called her a “cherished friend.”
San Francisco native and leader
Celeste Sloman/The New York Times/Redux
Sen. Dianne Feinstein poses for a portrait in January 2019 in Washington, DC.
Underwood Archives/Getty Images
Feinstein attends a high school dance in San Francisco in 1950. She was born Dianne Emiel Goldman in San Francisco on June 22, 1933.
Underwood Archives/Getty Images
Feinstein gets her makeup touched up for a photo shoot in San Francisco in 1955.
Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
Feinstein is seen at San Francisco City Hall in 1971. She was the first female president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
Duke Downey/San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images
Feinstein attends a campaign event for her mayoral run in San Francisco in 1971. She lost her bid for mayor that year and in 1975, but took on the title in 1978 after Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated. She served as mayor until 1988.
Clem Albers/San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images
Feinstein campaigns for mayor in 1975.
Janet Fries/Getty Images
Feinstein attends a memorial service for assassinated Supervisor Harvey Milk in San Francisco in 1978.
Clem Albers/San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images
Feinstein pushes a sledder at an event in 1978 where the San Francisco Ice Company spread 17 tons of snow for the annual "Snow-Ball."
Sal Veder/AP
Feinstein takes the stage after being elected as mayor of San Francisco in December 1979, defeating challenger Quentin Kopp.
Georges/AP
Feinstein poses for a picture with her husband Richard Blum in the lobby of their Washington, DC, hotel in July 1980. Feinstein had fallen and injured herself leaving the White House after a meeting with Vice President Walter Mondale, forcing the delay of the couple's honeymoon.
Roger Ressmeyer/CORBIS/VCG/Getty Images
Feinstein poses in the middle of Steiner Street in San Francisco in 1981.
Steve Ringman/San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images
Feinstein speaks at the signing of an anti-gun bill at San Francisco City Hall in 1982.
Jeff Reinking/AP
Feinstein and singer Tony Bennett wave from a cable car in San Francisco before taking a test ride in 1984.
Neal Ulevich/AP
Feinstein touches the nose of a bronze lion at the Forbidden City in Beijing during a visit to China in 1984.
Eric Risberg/AP
Feinstein and Bishop Desmond Tutu dance to the song "We Are The World" performed by a group of school children during a rally in San Francisco in 1985.
Paul Sakuma/AP
From left, Feinstein, California assembly speaker Willie Brown, and Rev. Cecil Williams hold hands during a march in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in San Francisco in 1986.
Kim Komenich/Getty Images
Feinstein works out in her home gym in 1990. She ran an unsuccessful bid for governor of California that year.
Mark Reinstein/Corbis/Getty Images
Feinstein addresses the Democratic National Convention in 1992. She was elected to the United States Senate that year and served in that position until her death.
Alan Greth/AP
Barbara Boxer and Feinstein raise their arms in victory at an election rally in San Francisco in November 1992. The two women claimed victory over their male Republican rivals.
Doug Mills/AP
Feinstein looks on as Supreme Court nominee Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg shakes hands with Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun prior to Ginsburg's confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in 1993.
Charles Tasnadi/AP
Feinstein joins a group of women senators and others on the steps of the Capitol to announce their opposition against restrictions on abortion coverage in federal appropriations bills in 1993.
Dirck Halstead/Getty Images
Feinstein joins California gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Brown and President Bill Clinton on stage at a campaign rally in Los Angeles in 1994.
Gigi Goshko/CQ Roll Call/AP
Feinstein is presented with a basketball by Lisa Leslie at a reception honoring the United States women's national basketball team in 1995.
Douglas Graham/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images
Feinstein attends a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in 1998 on how to protect the nation's critical infrastructure from sabotage and information warfare.
Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images
Feinstein greets first lady Hillary Clinton at the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. Clinton was running for a US Senate seat in New York, which she went on to win.
The Washington Post/Getty Images
In 2003, Feinstein speaks to a fellow senator on the phone as two of her staffers talk in the foreground.
Scott J. Ferrell/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images
From left, Chairman Orrin Hatch, Feinstein, and ranking Democrat Patrick J. Leahy chat in 2003 while considering the nomination of William H. Pryor Jr. to be US Circuit judge for the 11th Circuit.
Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images
California Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger meets with Feinstein on Capitol Hill in 2003. Schwarzenegger was in Washington seeking funds for his cash-strapped state.
Rick Friedman/Corbis/Getty Images
Feinstein speaks while standing among California delegates at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Chuck Kennedy/McClatchy-Tribune News Service/Getty Images
Condoleezza Rice sits with Feinstein before Rice's confirmation hearing in 2005 after her nomination by President George W. Bush to succeed Colin Powell as the secretary of state.
Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Feinstein asks questions during the final day of confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Chief Justice nominee John Roberts in 2005.
Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/AP
Feinstein talks to her 14-year-old granddaughter, Eileen Mariano, before a Senate Rules and Administration Committee hearing in 2006 on the Fair Elections Now Act, which sought to reform the finance of Senate elections. Mariano was interning in the senator's office.
Jay L. Clendenin/Pool/Getty Images
A fire official briefs California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, President George W. Bush and Feinstein at Kit Carson Park after touring a neighborhood of destroyed homes in the Rancho Bernardo area of San Diego in 2007.
Ralf-Finn Hestoft/Corbis/Getty Images
President Barack Obama shakes hands with Feinstein after he was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States in 2009. Feinstein served as the head of the Inaugural Committee.
Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images
Feinstein waits for the arrival of Pakistan's Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar before a lunch with other members of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the Capitol in 2012.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton greets Feinstein during a fundraiser in San Francisco, California, in 2016.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
Reporters surround Feinstein as she arrives on Capitol Hill for a vote in 2018.
Tom Williams/Pool/Getty Images
Sen. Chuck Grassley and Feinstein listen as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testifies during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of Brett M. Kavanaugh to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court in 2018. Ford accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her during a party in 1982 when they were high school students in suburban Maryland. Kavanaugh denied Ford's allegations. The Senate confirmed Kavanaugh's nomination by a vote of 50-48.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Feinstein talks to reporters during a break in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump in 2020.
Bonnie Cash/Pool/Getty Images
Feinstein questions Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett as she testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in 2020. Barrett went on to replace the late Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Samuel Corum/Pool/AFP/Getty Images
Feinstein embraces Chairman Lindsey Graham as Barrett's confirmation hearings come to a close in 2020. She angered her democratic colleagues for
praising Graham and his handling of the hearings while Democrats were trying to characterize them as an illegitimate sham.
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
President Joe Biden holds Feinstein's hand after signing into law the Victims of Crime Act in the East Room at the White House in 2021.
Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/AP
Feinstein hugs US Olympic gymnast Simone Biles after a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the FBI's handling of the Larry Nassar investigation in 2021. Gymnasts Aly Raisman, Maggie Nichols and McKayla Maroney also testified.
Oliver Contreras/Pool/AFP/Getty Images
Feinstein pays her respects as former US Sen. Bob Dole lies in state in the US Capitol Rotunda in 2021.
Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
Feinstein leaves the Senate Chamber following a vote in 2023. She announced she would not run for reelection, marking the end to one of the most storied political careers.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer escorts Feinstein as she arrives at the Capitol following a long absence due to health issues in 2023.
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.
Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
Dianne Feinstein, president of the board of supervisors, holds a press conference following the killing of Mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey milk. Feinstein, who was Moscone's designated successor, was in her office a few feet away from the shootings. "I heard shots. I heard three," she said.
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.
Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc./Getty Images
Feinstein and Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, hold a news conference in the Capitol on Wednesday, October 4, 2017.
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.