Journalist Rebecca Traister set out to write a profile of the oldest sitting U.S. senator, Dianne Feinstein of California, who turns 89 on June 22. And while Traister's feature piece does center on Feinstein's long and storied career, it also evokes questions about the senator's cognitive health.
NPR's All Things Considered spoke with Traister, a writer for The Cut, about a worrying call she had with Feinstein two days after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
"It felt to me to be deeply disconnected from the very urgent and chilling realities that we are very much in the midst of," Traister said on All Things Considered.
...
"Really, for the last couple of years, I've been hearing that Dianne Feinstein has been struggling, particularly with short-term memory issues, so that her staff will brief her and then she'll forget what she's been told or that she's been briefed at all," Jane Mayer of The New Yorker told All Things Considered in 2020.
...
The current political system rewards those with seniority, providing incentives for elected officials to stretch out their tenures as long as possible. Not only are individuals able to maintain power, but there are also benefits for states to have senior officials, Traister noted.
"We are run by a gerontocracy on both the Democratic and Republican sides," Traister said. "The Senate works by offering increased power to those who've been there for the longest."