And when she comes back, she can take back her spot. Someone else can fill her spot on a temporary basis. Right, the Democrats just put someone in her place on the Judiciary Committee - very sensible. The obvious thing here in a normal world would be that someone else replaces her on that committee so that they can do their work and move ahead. So that means with Feinstein gone, the committee has 10 Democrats, 10 Republicans. Senate Democrats have a single seat majority. What you have to understand is that the math of a committee like this is very tight by design. Soon, a rather vague term when your entire party is trying to get a committee to do the one important thing that it can do for your side of the aisle. And she has not given many updates at all about how she’s doing, only that she says she’s recovering and that she’ll be back soon. Shingles is pretty serious when you’re 89 years old. Right now, she is absent because she was diagnosed with shingles in February. michael barbaroĪnd remind us what happened to Feinstein. The problem for them is they can’t do any of that because of this strange situation involving the absence of a single senator, Dianne Feinstein. They wanted to use this Committee to move forward an aggressive agenda on confirming as many progressive judges as possible and to investigate Supreme Court justices who have increasingly gotten into a lot of ethics troubles, like Clarence Thomas.

Their goal is to re-balance the courts after there was a flurry of judicial appointments made by Republicans during the Trump era. So for Democrats, the one thing they can do in this moment is to try and appoint federal judges, a process that does not involve the House at all. And there’s no real hope of passing meaningful legislation.

And this matters because the Committee is very important, especially in a moment when the government is divided. So the Judiciary Committee is facing a crisis and could come to a complete standstill soon if she doesn’t return. Today, my colleague Annie Karni on the growing political crisis surrounding Senator Dianne Feinstein.Īnnie, tell us about the drama that’s been unfolding inside this really crucial corner of the US Senate for Democrats, which is the Senate Judiciary Committee. And for now, there’s no simple solution in sight. This is “The Daily.”įor the past two months, a single lawmaker has prevented Democrats from carrying out their agenda in Congress. michael barbaroįrom The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email with any questions. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. This transcript was created using speech recognition software. Transcript The Democrats’ Dianne Feinstein Problem The senator’s absence is at the center of a growing political crisis.

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