Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has handed over power of attorney to her daughter, even as she remains in the U.S. Senate.

Feinstein has prompted concern if not outright alarm in recent years amid numerous mental lapses in the public eye. Earlier this year, she missed more than two months due to shingles. When she returned, a reporter asked Feinstein about her absence, but the senator’s response suggested she was unaware she had been away from Washington, D.C.

On Thursday, the New York Times reported that Feinstein, 90, gave power of attorney to her daughter Katherine Feinstein, 66. The Times said Katherine is currently engaged in a nasty legal dispute with the three daughters of her mother’s late husband Richard Blum, who died in 2022:

In one legal dispute, the family is fighting over what’s described as Senator Feinstein’s desire to sell a beach house in an exclusive neighborhood in Stinson Beach, north of San Francisco. In another disagreement, the two factions are at odds over access to the proceeds of Mr. Blum’s life insurance, which Senator Feinstein says she needs to pay for her growing medical expenses.

[…]
Katherine Feinstein, 66, Senator Feinstein’s only child, who has power of attorney over her mother’s legal affairs, filed two lawsuits against Senator Feinstein’s co-trustees. The first lawsuit, over the beach house, says the property is in disrepair, that Senator Feinstein no longer wishes to use it, and that she wants to sell it this summer or fall.

Feinstein is not running for reelection in 2024, but she has rebuffed calls to resign from the Senate, which Democrats control 51 to 49. During her absence earlier this year, several of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees stalled in the Judiciary Committee, as Feinstein was not present to cast tie-breaking votes.

In an Appropriations Committee hearing last week, Feinstein began speaking about a defense spending bill at a time when she was simply supposed to cast a vote for or against the legislation. “Just say aye,” a fellow senator instructed her.

In May, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) said Feinstein’s struggles are “painful to watch” and called on her to resign.

A federal appeals court has ruled that Kentucky can continue to enforce a gender-affirming care ban that also requires trans youth already receiving this care to detransition.

Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote in the decision that “The people of Kentucky enacted the ban through their legislature” and “that body–not the officials who disagree with the ban–set the Commonwealth’s policies.”

The lawsuit, Doe v. Thornbury, challenged S.B. 150, a sweeping anti-trans bill that passed into law over the veto of Gov. Andy Beshear (D) in March. It is one of the most extreme among several laws enacted recently in Republican-dominated legislatures.

In addition to banning gender-affirming care for trans youth, the bill denies use of bathrooms aligning with gender identity in schools, conflates and excludes LGBTQ+-related topics and information on sexually transmitted diseases from sex education, and prohibits school staff and students from properly addressing trans minors. The lawsuit, however, focused solely on the provision banning gender-affirming care.

In a statement earlier this summer, the ACLU called the new law an egregious government overreach into families’ personal decision-making.

“These are merely political attacks from groups with a fundamental opposition to transgender people being able to live openly, freely, and affirmed as who they really are,” Shapiro said. “Banning medically necessary care for trans youth is not supported by science or reputable major medical organizations.”

But Judge Sutton disagreed. In a similar decision allowing a gender-affirming care ban in Tennessee to take effect, Sutton reportedly wrote that the support for gender-affirming care by major medical organizations was “surely relevant” but “not dispositive.”

In Gov. Beshear’s veto statement of the bill, he said it “strips freedom from parents to make personal family decisions” and that it would “cause an increase in suicide among Kentucky’s youth.” He also said that the bill would turn teachers into “investigators” who would pry into students’ lives.

After the legislature overrode the veto, ACLU-KY’s executive director Amber Duke blasted the body for rushing the law through “in a deliberately secretive process at the 11th hour.”

“Trans Kentuckians, medical and mental health professionals, and accredited professional associations pleaded with lawmakers to listen to the experts, not harmful rhetoric based in fear and hate. Their pleas fell on deaf ears as the general assembly passed the bill in a matter of hours.”

Estimated read time: 3 minutes

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Hello everyone! If you have not yet seen it, @ernest has handed over moderation to @Drusas @Entropywins @ Frog-Brawler (the tag system consistently messes up the link to FB's username lol) and myself here in !politics.

First order of business is for you all to weigh in on the community guidelines that you would like to see here. As the mod team, we will weigh all suggestions and then add them to the side bar as magazine/community rules. I'm going to give about 48 hours for users to see this thread and add a comment or discuss.

Please know that the goal is not to create an echo chamber here in !politics, but we want to ensure that there is not an encroachment of rage bait and toxicity. It brings down the quality of the magazine and it discourages community engagement.

For the time being, the mod tools are pretty sparse, so I want to manage expectations about the scope of moderation we're able to do right now. For now, our touch will be light. Expect increased functionality as time progresses, though. We have 3 weeks of reports on file, so please know we see them. Give us some time to establish how to handle those before you start to see any movement.

https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/statement.html

Wanted to share this as a resource since I started doing a deep dive on the financial implications during one's retirement years of being a homemaker earlier today in light of a new law in Florida stopping the practice of lifetime alimony.

I have been joking to a couple of friends today who were also redditors that I've been feeling withdrawals from reddit throughout the day. Like I knew I was addicted, I just never thought I was going to have to face the consequences of withdrawals!

But there's also a major part of me that's feeling a sense of loss. I had two reddit accounts that were 11+ years old. I used an app called Redact last night to totally expunge my comment and submission history, and I just was hit by so many emotions watching my old content turn to ashes.

Reddit is where I always spent my depression spirals, but it was also where I found hobbyist communities and group help support. I found sexual partners through reddit, and used to even moderate in my early days. It's where I used to keep up with a TON of current events but also read from so many diverse perspectives with expertise on topics.

As much as I am tentatively excited for the culture and community we can build on kbin, I truly am feeling the inconsequential reality of all that karma and browsing. Reddit felt like it was going to be immortal, but even the mighty fall.

Anyone else bummed??