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Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic powerbroker who served California and her political party for 30 years, died Thursday night, a family member has told The New York Times. She was 90.
Feinstein had been in ill health recently, suffering from memory issues that prompted widespread calls, even within her own party, to step down.
According to the Times, Feinstein’s staff was informed of her death at 9 a.m. today.
Feinstein, considered by some to be a centrist Democrat and to the Right a far-left advocate, was the oldest sitting U.S. senator at the time of her death. Elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1969, she became the board’s first female president in 1978, the same year San Francisco was rocked by the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk at City Hall byformer supervistor Dan White.
Feinstein, who found Milk’s lifeless body, became a central figure in the fight for LGBTQ rights, as well as for environmental issues, gun control and reproductive rights.
Feinstein left her post as the Judiciary panel’s top Democrat after the 2020 elections due to her increasingly poor health. Just this year, she announced she would not serve as the Senate president pro tempore.
Born on June 22, 1933, in San Francisco, Feinstein graduated in 1955 from Stanford University in 1955, and In 1961 was appointed by Governor Pat Brown to the women’s parole board. She then ran for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Among her early achievements was an amendment banning sales of certain assault weapons, a bill signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1994. The weapons ban expired after a decade.
This is a developing story.
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