AOC says Feinstein’s refusal to retire is ‘causing great harm’ to US courts

The New York progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on Monday that the California Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein should retire, amid a long absence from Congress due to ill health which has affected their party's efforts to stock federal courts with liberal judges.

Feinstein, 89, "should retire", Ocasio-Cortez - 33 and commonly known as AOC - wrote on the social media platform Bluesky.

She added: "I think criticisms of that stance as 'anti-feminist' are a farce."

Prominent Democrats including the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and the New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand have labeled calls for Feinstein to quit sexist, because men in similar positions would not face such pressure.

Others have pushed back.

Feinstein was the first woman to be mayor of San Francisco and is now the longest-serving female US senator. But before her current absence began, over a case of shingles, she faced questions about her mental fitness for the job.

She has said she intends to return soon but as a member of the Senate judiciary committee, her absence has affected the pace of confirmation of judges - a key aim of any administration but a priority for Democrats and Joe Biden after Republicans forced the pace of conservative confirmations under Donald Trump.

Having removed the Democrats' majority on the judiciary committee, Feinstein's absence would also hobble any attempt to force John Roberts, the chief justice of the supreme court, or any other justice to testify regarding ethics rules and scandals concerning Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, members of the conservative majority.

Republicans blocked Democratic attempts to appoint a temporary replacement.

Ocasio-Cortez previously said Feinstein should consider retirement. She has now added a powerful voice to calls for the senator to quit.

"Her refusal to either retire or show up is causing great harm to the judiciary - precisely where repro[ductive] rights are getting stripped," the New Yorker said.

A recent Texas ruling which threatened access to mifepristone, a common abortion pill, came from a hard-right judge installed under Trump. The supreme court removed the right to abortion last year.

Feinstein's failure to retire, Ocasio-Cortez added, "means now in this precious window Dem[ocrat]s can only pass GOP-approved nominees".

However, Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, Virginia, recently told the Guardian that Feinstein's absence had "not stopped the Senate from confirming Biden's judicial nominees, but it has made confirming them somewhat more difficult.

"For nominees who lack [bipartisan] support and receive tie votes, Democrats can discharge them from the committee with majority votes on the floor, which consumes valuable floor time," he said.

Bluesky is a relatively new platform, backed by the Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, which operates by invitation. An Ocasio-Cortez spokesperson confirmed her words to CNN, which first reported the post.

The spokesperson also confirmed that Ocasio-Cortez does not intend to challenge Gillibrand for her Senate seat in 2024, the subject of recent speculation.