The 90-year-old senator played a prominent role in hundreds of laws, but in the last decade of her life, she began to suffer from episodes of confusion and coherence in her speeches.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, a historical figure of the United States Democratic Party, died at the age of 90, the American press reported this Friday.
Feinstein was the first female mayor of San Francisco before serving as a senator from California for more than three decades.
She built a reputation as a tenacious politician and influential pillar of the Upper House of Congress, but the left of the Democratic Party criticized her for several months after a journalistic investigation highlighted her cognitive decline.
Punchbowl News, a media outlet specializing in news from the US Congress, broke the news, as did the ABC channel.
The senator still voted in Congress on Thursday morning.
In February he announced that he was retiring from politics and would not run again in the 2024 elections.
President Joe Biden then praised the qualities of his “friend,” particularly her role as a pioneering woman in politics.
Feinstein was mayor of San Francisco for ten years, after the assassination in 1978 of her predecessor George Moscone and politician Harvey Milk, a figure in the gay movement.
In 1994 he pushed through a ten-year ban on assault rifles.
He also supported former Republican President George W. Bush‘s war in Iraq and had great influence on the intelligence committee. The thousands-page report that exposed the CIA’s lies about torture in the context of the “war on terrorism” has gone down in history.
Throughout her career, she played a leading role in hundreds of laws, but in recent years he has eroded his political capital due to persistent doubts about his coherence.
Former parliamentary aides described episodes of mental confusion, recounted in a New Yorker article in late 2020.
Her memory lapses also came to light during a hearing by former Twitter boss Jack Dorsey before the Senate, to whom he asked the same question, word for word, twice in a row.
Her name came up during debates about the old age of many high-ranking public officials in the country.
Joe Biden, who is running for reelection, is 80 years old, and his Republican rival and predecessor Donald Trump is 77.
Former Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, 83, announced in September that she will run again.
