WASHINGTON –
California Senator Dianne Feinstein’s health concerns threaten to jeopardize President Biden’s push to remake the federal judiciary, but for now, the White House is willing to be patient.
“It’s her decision when it comes to her future,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Wednesday. “It’s completely wrong to look for partisan gain in a colleague’s health problems.”
On Tuesday, Republicans blocked a Democratic bid to temporarily replace Feinstein on the Senate Judiciary Committee, where the lack of a decisive Democratic vote has left some Biden candidates for judicial office languishing. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (DN.Y.) could bring the issue to a floor vote, but Democrats don’t have the 10 Republican votes they need to succeed.
Democrats have few options but to wait for Feinstein’s return, but when that might happen remains unclear as she works from her San Francisco home. The predicament has left Democrats divided on how to deal with the 89-year-old senator’s long absence that threatens to derail a judicial nomination at a time when party priorities, including abortion rights, are being challenged in federal courts.
Feinstein has not voted since Feb. 16 and missed about 60 of the 82 votes held in the upper house this session. She announced in March that she had been hospitalized with shingles, and last week said her return to Washington was delayed due to complications.
Several Democrats in Congress, including Rep. Ro Hannah (D-Fremont), urged Feinstein to step aside. Co-chair of Oakland Democratic Party member Barbara Lee’s campaign to replace Feinstein, Hannah was perhaps the most vocal of the group. tweet last week that “silence undermines the credibility of us as the elected representatives of the people.”
For now, the White House has sided with a majority of Democratic lawmakers who say Feinstein should be given time to decide if she can serve the remainder of her term, which ends in 2024. Senate Judiciary Chairman Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said the Democrats will try to give Feinstein a chance to “get back as quickly as possible,” while Schumer said he spoke to her last week and that she hopes to be back “in soon”.
But that view may change depending on the length of Feinstein’s absence and its profound impact on the Senate’s ability to carry the White House agenda. Biden has made it his mission to change the makeup of the federal court in both the number and diversity of judges.
Democrats confirmed presidential nominations relatively quickly, placing 97 judges, including Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, on the federal bench during Biden’s first two years in office and confirming 22 more this year. Democrats raced to outrun 231 justices, including three Supreme Court justices who were confirmed by Senate Republicans for key judicial vacancies under former President Trump.
Biden is unlikely to surpass his predecessor, said Russell Wheeler, a Brookings Institution scholar who monitors the judiciary. While Feinstein’s absence has slowed the pace, the lack of vacancies to fill will also prevent him from keeping up with Trump.
“It’s probably too early to worry too much about the problems created by Feinstein’s absence,” Wheeler said. “The big problem is that without a vacancy, no one will go anywhere.”
While Republicans are reluctant to honor Feinstein’s request to appoint a replacement in her absence, the Republican Senate Judiciary Committee agreed to advance bipartisan nominations, according to Rep. Durbin.
Negotiations are still ongoing over which candidates will be put to the vote, but about 10 are eligible, the spokesman said.
According to the agency, 15 judge candidates have passed hearings but are awaiting a committee vote. American Constitutional Society, progressive legal organization. Eighteen judicial nominations have already been voted on by the commission and may be taken to the Senate floor for a full vote, and some of them may be approved without Feinstein.
But this isn’t the first time Democrats have clashed with Feinstein, the party’s oldest member and longest-serving woman in the upper house.
She has been getting more and more questions about her cognitive health in recent years, and in 2020 she stepped down as the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee after facing pressure. The most senior member of the Democratic Party caucus, she also turned down the role of interim president of the Senate, which would have placed her third in line for the presidency.
Feinstein’s mental state and age is a politically sensitive issue for Biden, who at 80 is the country’s oldest president and faces questions about whether he should run for another term.
While in the Senate, he hired Feinstein to serve on the bench, and the two former colleagues are longtime friends. She supported Biden, not Vice President Kamala Harris, when the then junior California senator ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.
But as the White House and Democrats continue to urge patience over Feinstein’s recovery, speculation has begun about what might happen if she chooses not to return. California Gov. Gavin Newsom promised to appoint a black woman if there is a vacancy in the Senate.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who has served in the House of Representatives for more than a decade, spoke out Wednesday during a visit to Capitol Hill.
When asked if Newsom should stick to his promise to nominate a black woman, Bass said, “That’s what he said. He promised.”
Regarding Feinstein, Bass said, “I just hope she gets better soon. And obviously we need her back here so we can get these judges to work.”
