Dianne Feinstein facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Dianne Feinstein
Official portrait, 2004
United States Senator from California
In office November 4, 1992 – September 29, 2023
Preceded by	John Seymour
Succeeded by	Laphonza Butler
Committee leaderships Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee In office January 3, 2009 – January 3, 2015 Preceded by Jay Rockefeller Succeeded by Richard Burr Chair of the Senate Narcotics Caucus In office January 3, 2009 – January 3, 2015 Preceded by Joe Biden Succeeded by Chuck Grassley Chair of the Senate Rules Committee In office January 3, 2007 – January 3, 2009 Preceded by Trent Lott Succeeded by Chuck Schumer
38th Mayor of San Francisco
In office November 27, 1978 – January 8, 1988
Preceded by	George Moscone
Succeeded by	Art Agnos
President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors
In office January 9, 1978 – December 4, 1978
Preceded by	Quentin L. Kopp
Succeeded by	John Molinari
In office January 8, 1974 – January 8, 1975
Preceded by	Ron Pelosi
Succeeded by	Quentin L. Kopp
In office January 8, 1970 – January 8, 1971
Preceded by	John A. Ertola
Succeeded by	Ron Pelosi
Member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors
In office January 8, 1970 – December 4, 1978
Preceded by	William Blake
Succeeded by	Louise Renne
Constituency	At-large district (1970–1978) 2nd district (1978)
Personal details
Born	Dianne Emiel Goldman (1933-06-22)June 22, 1933 San Francisco, California, U.S.
Died	September 29, 2023(2023-09-29) (aged 90) Washington, D.C., U.S.
Resting place	Colma, California
Political party	Democratic
Spouses	Jack Berman ​ ​ (m. 1956; div. 1959)​ Bertram Feinstein ​ ​ (m. 1962; died 1978)​ Richard C. Blum ​ ​ (m. 1980; died 2022)​
Children	Katherine
Parent	Leon Goldman (father)
Education	Stanford University (BA)
Signature

Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein ( FYNE-styne; born Dianne Emiel Goldman; June 22, 1933 – September 28, 2023) was an American politician who served as a United States senator from California from 1992 until her death in 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served as Mayor of San Francisco from 1978 to 1988.

In the 2012 election, she received 7.86 million votes, the most popular votes received by any U.S. Senate candidate in history. Feinstein authored the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban. She was the first woman to have chaired the Senate Rules Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee and the first woman to have presided over a U.S. presidential inauguration. Feinstein chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee from 2009 to 2015 and was the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2017 to 2021.

Aged 91, she was the oldest sitting U.S. senator and member of Congress. She was also the longest-serving U.S. senator from California, the longest-tenured female senator in history, and the senior Democratic member of the Senate. In February 2023, Feinstein announced she would not seek reelection in 2024. During her final years in office, as she grew older and her health declined, there were concerns about her mental acuity and fitness to serve. Feinstein died in office on September 28, 2023, at the age of 90.

Early life and education

Feinstein was born Dianne Emiel Goldman on June 22, 1933 in San Francisco to Leon Goldman, a prominent surgeon; and his wife Betty (née Rosenburg), a former model. Her paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Poland. Her maternal grandparents, the Rosenburgs, were from Saint Petersburg, Russia. Although they were of German-Jewish ancestry, they practiced the Russian Orthodox (Christian) faith, as was required for Jews in Saint Petersburg. Christianity was passed down to Feinstein's mother, who insisted on her transferral from a Jewish day school to a prestigious local Catholic school, but Feinstein listed her religion as Judaism.

She graduated from Convent of the Sacred Heart High School in 1951 and from Stanford University in 1955 with a Bachelor of Arts in history.

Early political career

Feinstein in the late 1970s. (Future husband Richard C. Blum is standing behind her.)

Feinstein was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1969 and served as the board's first female president in 1978, during which time the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk drew national attention. Feinstein succeeded Moscone as mayor and became the first woman to serve in that position. During her tenure, she led the renovation of the city's cable car system and oversaw the 1984 Democratic National Convention. Despite a recall attempt in 1983, Feinstein was a popular mayor and was named the most effective mayor in the country by City & State in 1987.

After losing a race for governor in 1990, Feinstein was elected to the U.S. Senate in a 1992 special election.

U.S. Senate

Official portrait, 2000s

In November 1992, Feinstein became California's first female U.S. senator; shortly after, she became the state's senior senator after Alan Cranston retired in January 1993. Feinstein was reelected five times.

Feinstein has been described as "a titan of US political history who notched countless legislative achievements" in her Senate career. She was known for her work on gun control issues. In 1994, she spearheaded the passage of a federal assault weapons ban. In the 2000s and 2010s, she investigated "the Central Intelligence Agency’s program of detention and interrogation after the Sept. 11 attacks".

In 2009, Feinstein chaired the first inaugural ceremony of President Barack Obama. Feinstein was the first woman to have chaired the Senate Rules Committee (2007–2009) and the first woman to have chaired the Select Committee on Intelligence (2009–2015). Feinstein became the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017, and was the first woman to hold that position. On March 28, 2021, she became the longest-serving U.S. senator from California in history, surpassing Hiram Johnson. On November 5, 2022, Feinstein became the longest-serving female senator in U.S. history.

Feinstein in June 2023

Committee assignments

Feinstein was the first woman to have chaired the Senate Rules Committee (2007–2009) and the first woman to have chaired the Select Committee on Intelligence (2009–2015). Feinstein became the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017, and is the first woman to hold that position. Her committee assignments for the 118th Congress are as follows:

• Committee on Appropriations
  • Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies
  • Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies
  • Subcommittee on Defense
  • Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development (Chair)
  • Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies
  • Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies
• Committee on the Judiciary
  • Subcommittee on the Constitution (Chair)
  • Subcommittee on Criminal Justice and Counterterrorism
  • Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action and Federal Rights
  • Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law
• Committee on Rules and Administration
• Select Committee on Intelligence

She previously sat on the Foreign Relations committee (104th Congress) and Energy and Natural Resources committee (107th–109th Congress)

Caucus memberships

• Afterschool Caucuses
• Congressional NextGen 9-1-1 Caucus
• Senate New Democrat Coalition (defunct)

Political positions

Feinstein with President George W. Bush and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, October 25, 2007

Feinstein was known for her advocacy for gun control, environmental protection, and a strong national defense.

Capital punishment

Feinstein during the
108th Congress

When Feinstein first ran for statewide office in 1990, she favored capital punishment. By 2018, she opposed capital punishment.

Energy and environment

Feinstein co-sponsored (with Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn) an amendment through the Senate to the Economic Development Revitalization Act of 2011 that eliminated the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit. The Senate passed the amendment on June 16, 2011. Introduced in 2004, the subsidy provided a 45-cent-per-gallon credit on pure ethanol, and a 54-cent-per-gallon tariff on imported ethanol. These subsidies had resulted in an annual expenditure of $6 billion.

In February 2019, when youth associated with the Sunrise Movement confronted Feinstein about why she did not support the Green New Deal, she told them "there's no way to pay for it" and that it could not pass a Republican-controlled Senate. In a tweet following the confrontation, Feinstein said that she remained committed "to enact real, meaningful climate change legislation."

Gun control

Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown (left) with U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (middle) and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom (right) in 2007

Feinstein introduced the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which became law in 1994 and expired in 2004. In January 2013, she and Representative Carolyn McCarthy proposed a bill that would "ban the sale, transfer, manufacturing or importation of 150 specific firearms including semiautomatic rifles or pistols that can be used with a detachable or fixed ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds and have specific military-style features, including pistol grips, grenade launchers or rocket launchers". The bill would have exempted 900 models of guns used for sport and hunting. The bill failed on a Senate vote of 60 to 40.

Health care

Feinstein supported the Affordable Care Act, repeatedly voting to defeat initiatives aimed against it. She voted to expand the Children's Health Insurance Program; override the president's veto of adding 2 to 4 million children to SCHIP eligibility; increase Medicaid rebate for producing generic drugs; negotiate bulk purchases for Medicare prescription drugs; allow re-importation of prescription drugs from Canada; allow patients to sue HMOs and collect punitive damages; cover prescription drugs under Medicare, and means-test Medicare. She voted against the Paul Ryan Budget's Medicare choice, tax and spending cuts; and allowing tribal Indians to opt out of federal healthcare. Feinstein's congressional voting record was rated as 88% by the American Public Health Association (APHA), the figure ostensibly reflecting the percentage of time the representative voted the organization's preferred position.

At an April 2017 town hall meeting in San Francisco, Feinstein was booed when she stated that she did not support a proposal for single-payer health insurance. Feinstein said, "[i]f single-payer health care is going to mean the complete takeover by the government of all health care, I am not there." During a news conference at the University of California, San Diego in July 2017, she estimated that Democratic opposition would prove sufficient to defeat Republican attempts to repeal the ACA. Feinstein wrote in an August 2017 op-ed that Trump could secure health-care reform if he compromised with Democrats: "We now know that such a closed process on a major issue like health care doesn't work. The only path forward is a transparent process that allows every senator to bring their ideas to the table."

Immigration

In September 2017, after Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, Feinstein admitted the legality of the program was questionable while citing this as a reason for why a law should be passed. In her opening remarks at a January 2018 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, she said she was concerned the Trump administration's decision to terminate temporary protected status might be racially motivated, based on comments Trump made denigrating African countries, Haiti, and El Salvador.

Marriage

In 1996, Feinstein voted against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defined marriage as an opposite-sex union for purposes of federal law. In 2011, she introduced a bill to repeal DOMA. In 2022, she co-sponsored the Respect for Marriage Act, which repealed DOMA and required the federal government and all state governments to recognize same-sex marriages and interracial marriages.

Military and national security

While delivering the commencement address at Stanford Stadium on June 13, 1994, Feinstein said:

It is time for a rational plan for defense conversion instead of the random closing of bases and the piecemeal cancellation of defense contracts. Otherwise, we risk losing, for both state and nation, the greatest resources of scientific, technical and human capital ever gathered together in human history.

In 2017, she criticized the banning of transgender enlistments in the military under the Trump administration.

Feinstein voted for Trump's $675-billion defense budget bill for FY 2019.

Feinstein has been described as having a "hawkish" stance on matters of national security.

Feinstein voted for the extension of the Patriot Act and the FISA provisions in 2012.

Mass surveillance; citizens' privacy

Feinstein co-sponsored PIPA on May 12, 2011. She met with representatives of technology companies, including Google and Facebook, in January 2012. A Feinstein spokesperson said she "is doing all she can to ensure that the bill is balanced and protects the intellectual property concerns of the content community without unfairly burdening legitimate businesses such as Internet search engines".

Following her 2012 vote to extend the Patriot Act and the FISA provisions, and after the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures involving the National Security Agency (NSA), Feinstein promoted and supported measures to continue the information collection programs. Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss also defended the NSA's request to Verizon for all the metadata about phone calls made within the U.S. and from the U.S. to other countries. They said the information gathered by intelligence on the phone communications is used to connect phone lines to terrorists and that it did not contain the content of the phone calls or messages. Foreign Policy wrote that she had a "reputation as a staunch defender of NSA practices and [of] the White House's refusal to stand by collection activities targeting foreign leaders".

In October 2013, Feinstein criticized the NSA for monitoring telephone calls of foreign leaders friendly to the U.S. In November 2013, she promoted the FISA Improvements Act bill, which included a "backdoor search provision" that allows intelligence agencies to continue certain warrantless searches as long as they are logged and "available for review" to various agencies.

In June 2013, Feinstein called Edward Snowden a "traitor" after his leaks went public. In October 2013, she said she stood by that.

While praising the NSA, Feinstein had accused the CIA of snooping and removing files through Congress members' computers, saying, "[t]he CIA did not ask the committee or its staff if the committee had access to the internal review or how we obtained it. Instead, the CIA just went and searched the committee's computer." She claimed the "CIA's search may well have violated the separation of powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution".

After the 2016 FBI–Apple encryption dispute, Feinstein and Richard Burr sponsored a bill that would likely have criminalized all forms of strong encryption in electronic communication between citizens. The bill would have required technology companies to design their encryption so that they can provide law enforcement with user data in an "intelligible format" when required to do so by court order.

In 2020, Feinstein co sponsored the EARN IT Act, which seeks to create a 19-member committee to decide a list of best practices websites must follow to be protected by section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The EARN IT Act effectively outlaws end-to-end encryption, depriving the world of secure, private communications tools.

Awards and honors

Feinstein was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from Golden Gate University in San Francisco on June 4, 1977. She was awarded the Legion of Honour by France in 1984. Feinstein received with the Woodrow Wilson Award for public service from the Woodrow Wilson Center of the Smithsonian Institution on November 3, 2001, in Los Angeles. In 2002, Feinstein won the American Medical Association's Nathan Davis Award for "the Betterment of the Public Health". She was named as one of The Forward 50 in 2015.

Personal life

Feinstein was married three times. She married Jack Berman (d. 2002), who was then working in the San Francisco District Attorney's Office, in 1956. She and Berman divorced three years later. Their daughter, Katherine Feinstein Mariano (b. 1957), was the presiding judge of the San Francisco Superior Court for 12 years, through 2012. In 1962, shortly after beginning her career in politics, Feinstein married her second husband, neurosurgeon Bertram Feinstein, who died of colon cancer in 1978. Feinstein was then married to investment banker Richard C. Blum from 1980 until his death from cancer in 2022.

Death

Feinstein died at her home in Washington, D.C., on September 28, 2023, at the age of 90.

Images for kids

• 

  President Barack Obama signs the New START in the Oval Office, February 2, 2011. Feinstein is standing fourth from right.

• 

  The main page of Sen. Feinstein's Website, c. September 29, 2023

• 

  Feinstein with President Donald Trump, John Cornyn, and Marco Rubio to discuss school and community safety in the Cabinet Room at the White House, February 28, 2018

See also

In Spanish: Dianne Feinstein para niños

• Women in the United States Senate