Sen. Dianne Feinstein from California has died, according to media reports. She was 90.
Feinstein was the senior senator from California and one of the first two women elected to the U.S. Senate from California.
“Dianne Feinstein, right from the start, was an icon for women in politics,” former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told ABC News.
Feinstein was the first woman mayor of San Francisco and the first woman president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
She was born in San Francisco on June 22, 1933, and graduated from Stanford University in 1955.
She was elected to the U.S. Senate for the first time in 1992, joining Barbara Boxer.
Feinstein was the first woman to chair the Senate Rules Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee. She authored the Federal Assault Weapons Bam in 1994. The legislation, prompted by the 101 California Street shooting where a gunman opened fire at a law firm in San Francisco’s financial district killing eight people, led to a 10-year restriction on the sale and ownership of certain semi-automatic weapons.
“I worked with Republican and Democrats alike,” said Feinstein in an interview with CSPAN. “Ten Republicans along with 46 Democrats voted in favor of the amendment.”
Feinstein was experiencing health problems in recent years. She was hospitalized with shingles in February 2023, when she was 89. That same month, Feinstein announced she would retire from the U.S. Senate when her term was up in 2024.
Feinstein was married three times and had one daughter, Katherine, from her first marriage. She married her third husband, investment banker Richard Blum, in 1980. They were married until his death from cancer in 2022.
Some of her more notable accomplishments in the U.S. Senate include creating a federal coordination of Amber Alerts, passing the California Desert Protection Act, which protected millions of acres of California deserts and created the Death Valley and Joshua Tree national parks, reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act and authorized the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022 to ensure marriage equality into federal law.