Dianne Feinstein was the longest-serving female senator and a vocal advocate of gun control legislation. She began serving as a Democratic senator from California in 1992. Prior to that, she served as mayor of San Francisco from 1978 to 1988. During her final years in office, as she aged and her health declined rapidly, there were concerns about the state of her mind. Still in office, she passed away on September 29th at the age of 90.
Dianne Feinstein broke barriers throughout her political career; her influence was strong in some of Capitol Hill’s most consequential works in recent history, including the federal assault weapons ban in 1994 and the 2014 CIA torture reports. Feinstein also served as the first female to chair the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2017 to 202o. 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 handling the hearings for Donald Trump. As a Democrat, she faced a lot of hate and backlash for being not just a woman, but for being old.
Feinstein said that she would continue to serve as a senior Democrat until she couldn’t anymore on the Judiciary, Intelligence, Appropriations, and Rules and Administration panels, working on priorities like gun safety, criminal justice, and immigration. “Senator Feinstein was a force of nature who made an incredible impact on our country and her home state,” her chief of staff said in a statement. Though she was on the older side when she passed, she did help our country in very impactful ways.
