Feinstein's health stirs angst among Senate peers

For some senators, the Democratic effort to temporarily replace ailing 89-year-old Dianne Feinstein on the Judiciary Committee is about speeding up confirmation of President Joe Biden’s federal court nominees. But for others, particularly her most long-serving peers, it’s personal.

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who is the same age as the California Democrat and has worked with her for three decades on the committee, said he thinks Democrats have been trying to force her out of office “because she’s old.” He called that “anti-human.”

The attempt to replace her on the committee is “disrespectful and not in keeping with her many contributions,” said Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican who is close friends with Feinstein.

Feinstein is not the first senator to take an extended medical absence or face uncomfortable questions about age or cognitive abilities. But the open discussion over her capacity to serve shows just how much the Senate has changed in recent years, with high-stakes partisanship replacing a more collegial, clubby atmosphere.

It also highlights the difficulty, and the sensitivity, surrounding Democrats’ uphill efforts to replace Feinstein’s vote on the influential committee as she recovers from a case of the shingles. Her absence, which comes as her health and memory has noticeably declined in recent years, means that some of Biden’s picks for the federal bench are stalled in committee.

Democrats say Republicans snubbed a sick colleague when they blocked Feinstein’s unusual request to be temporarily replaced.

“It is flat wrong to seek partisan advantage from health issues of a colleague,” White House press secretary Karine Jeanpierre said Wednesday. “The American people reject that kind of scorched earth approach to governing.”

Republicans say Democrats are unfairly trying to force her off one important committee — she serves on others — simply to game the system because they lack the votes to move Biden’s most partisan nominees.

It is a marked difference from the Senate of years past.

Collins said Feinstein has been treated differently from men in the Senate who have had memory or health issues. Examples include Republican Sens. Thad Cochran of Mississippi and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Democratic Sen. Robert

Byrd of West Virginia.

Cochran and Byrd remained atop the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee after their health began to fail; Byrd eventually stepped down from the position voluntarily; Cochran resigned from Congress.

“The contrast is pretty sharp,” said Collins, who served with all three men and has worked closely with Feinstein for years. Collins said senators were more collegial and respectful of each other in the past, and there was less pressure on the men to resign or step down from a committee.

She said she believes the efforts to push Feinstein off the committee are sexist. “We’re all human, and senators get ill,” Collins said. “Because the Senate has been disproportionately male for so long, I think what we’re seeing now is a different standard being applied.”