Native Student Alleges Freedom of Speech Violation by Burney High School Principal
Honeygirl McCloud stands outside with a red hand painted over her mouth. The image has become a symbol of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women movement. Photo courtesy of Honeygirl and Maria McCloud.
12.13.23 10:08 am: The story has been updated to clarify that Honeygirl McCloud and her aunt Maria McCloud, have not yet received direct confirmation from the school or district that the original quote will be allowed.
In mid-November Honeygirl McCloud, a senior at Burney Jr. Sr. High School, was doing what many high school seniors across the country were doing, preparing to have her senior photo taken and selecting a quote to be published next to her photo in the 2023/24 yearbook.
McCloud, a member of the Karuk Tribe, and a descendent of Pomo and the Atsuge band of Pit River people, says she was surprised when her quote, “MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women),” was initially rejected by her principal, Ray Guerrero.
Shasta Scout was unable to confirm or deny that allegation via Guerrero, who did not respond to two emails and a phone call last week.
A review of district policies and the California education code indicates that McCloud and other students’ right to freedom of speech is protected in the choice of their senior quote so long as that quote isn’t “obscene, libelous, or slanderous.”
According to McCloud, Guerrero originally refused to let her use the quote saying it was “really negative.” After some discussion, she says he told her she could use “MMIW” but would need to change the second portion of the quote, a decision she objected to.
In a Facebook video about the incident posted by her aunt Maria McCloud, on November 16, Honeygirl McCloud said her mother is among the many Indigenous women who have been murdered, making her choice of quotation both personal and political.
Her right to use the full quote appears to be protected by Fall River Unified School District’s policy 5145.2 which states that, “free inquiry and exchange of ideas are essential parts of a democratic education” and indicates that the school board will respect “students’ rights to express ideas and opinions, take stands on issues, and support causes, even when such speech is controversial or unpopular.”
The District policy also quotes California law that protects students’ rights to free speech in the distribution of printed materials.
Guerrero’s boss, Fall River Joint Unified School District Superintendent Greg Hawkins confirmed last week by email that McCloud will be allowed to use her quote. He did not address whether Principal Guerrero had initially refused the quote instead telling Shasta Scout in a follow-up phone call that, “What you have is one side of the story and it won’t do me any good to tell you the other.”
Maria McCloud told Shasta Scout on December 13 that she reached out to the district on Monday, December 11, to confirm that Honeygirl McCloud will be allowed to use her original quote but has not heard from anyone at the school or district confirming this. A school administrator confirmed for Shasta Scout on the morning of December 13 that Maria McCloud’s request for information was given to Hawkins earlier this week. Shasta Scout is still pending a response from Hawkins on whether he has confirmed with the student or family that she will be allowed to use her original quote.
“This is a very small community,” Maria McCloud said, “and for [Honeygirl] to go this way and talk to the other students and raise awareness, it was a great way to get [information] out there [about MMIW]. We thank everyone for the encouragement, Honeygirl is super brave.”
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San Benito County Sheriff Eric Taylor told BenitoLink the county auditor’s office discovered “hundreds of thousands” of dollars in misappropriated funds used to purchase merchandise under fraudulent accounts from the San Benito County Free Library.
“We believe one person was involved,” Taylor said. “Potentially, a family member was involved as well. We are confirming that.”
The county has oversight of the library, Taylor said, and when the auditors’ office found a discrepancy, they called the sheriff’s department to investigate.
“That’s how we were involved initially,” Taylor said. “The investigation got to the point where we needed to call in for support from the FBI because we don’t have the expertise in forensic accounting.”
Finding what Taylor characterized as an amount “in the hundreds of thousands,” one task the FBI was brought in to resolve was the actual amount of money embezzled.
“We also don’t know how long it was going on,” Taylor said. “They are trying to get to the bottom of the actual number.”
Taylor said that the alleged suspects opened up a number of accounts that allowed them to order merchandise. No actual cash had been taken, he said, and an internal audit established that none of the library’s supply of Chromebooks, which had been purchased through a $11.8 million federal grant from the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act, were involved.
While merchandise, including camping equipment and electronics, were found at the home of the suspects, Taylor said he did not know if they planned to resell the goods.
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“Every Kid, Every Option”: In Far Northern California, Educators Encourage Post-Secondary Education Amidst Critical Workforce Gaps
Students work on metal projects during an after-school lab for the Manufacturing and Robotics Career Technical Education track at Shasta High School. Photo by Annelise Pierce.
“I’m trying to take the term ‘higher education’ out of my vocabulary.”
That’s what Jake Mangas, CEO of the Redding Chamber of Commerce, told Shasta Scout by phone in late October. He said he’s come to understand that using that term is offensive to some because it’s like saying technical training is a lower form of education.
“And it’s not a lower education,” Mangas emphasized, “it’s a different avenue.”
Mangas lives in rural, far northern Shasta County, California, which has about 181,000 people. Around 90% of the nearly 27,000 students enrolled in the county’s public schools are expected to graduate.
Overall, Shasta County’s poverty rate hovers around 14%, higher than the 12% statewide average. And with the median household income at around $60,000, many of the county’s students will qualify for deeply reduced four-year university tuition based on their family income.
But other obstacles to post-secondary education remain. One of those barriers is what’s known as the high school A–G completion rate, or the percentage of students who are graduating from high school with the foundational courses required for admission to California’s two statewide public university systems.
Last year, only about 31% of Shasta County students completed A–G, a figure that’s essentially unchanged over the last several years. It compares to a significantly higher statewide average of almost 45%. High school academic counselors are working to implement changes in the way courses are structured and scheduled and how students are advised, in order to slowly increase those numbers over time.
As a rural county with a poverty rate above the state average, and a relatively low number of parents who hold bachelor’s degrees, Shasta County faces obvious economic and information barriers to students’ post-secondary opportunities.
But the community also has another, more complex barrier: sociocultural resistance to university education. That’s one reason many educators, including Jim Cloney, superintendent of the Shasta Union High School District, have decided to “honor all choices” in post-secondary achievement, including certificates, the military, two-year degrees and four-year degrees.
“All kids do need training and school beyond high school in today’s economy,” Cloney told Shasta Scout by phone. “But that doesn’t mean that all kids (need to) go to a four-year school.”
Mangas and Cloney hold disparate roles in business and education, but they share a similar understanding of the hesitations some Shasta County parents have about their children attending university.
“It’s the social issues,” Mangas explained, expanding on the viewpoints he says he hears from others. “Like, ‘I don’t want my child to go to the city (for school) and come back with a different perspective on social issues and political issues.’ ”
Unlike most Cailfornians, Shasta County voters overwhelmingly supported former President Donald Trump — twice. And the county is marked by ongoing political divides that include a lack of trust in elections, anger over public health mandates and concerns about the influence of public education on families’ core values and beliefs.
Republican candidates for California’s Senate spoke in Shasta County in November, repeatedly triggering applause during their debate by referring to America’s four-year universities as “liberal, Marxist, woke” schools that are “brainwashing our children,” and saying such education is at the root of “anti-American” sentiment across the nation.
And in 2022, Bryan Caples, controversial superintendent candidate for the Shasta County school system, wrote in his candidate statement that he would empower school districts to eliminate COVID testing and vaccine mandates, establish local control and expand trade school and career technical training opportunities.
“I have seen firsthand,” Caples wrote, “how the State of California has overreached its authority by implementing programs and policies that do not meet the needs of our communities or children.”
But Judy Flores, who beat out Caples in the June 2022 primary to retain her seat as the head of Shasta County’s Office of Education, said California’s education model already includes a strong focus on technical and vocational training during high school.
Flores and Cloney are both participants in Reach Higher Shasta, a “county-wide, cradle-to-career collaborative,” which since its founding in 2012 has focused on increasing pathways to post-secondary achievement in Shasta County.
The program was originally funded by the public health branch of Shasta County’s Health and Human Services Agency. The investment was made because ensuring that more Shasta County students graduate into well-paid careers aligned with workforce needs is one of the most significant ways to improve the public health of the county.
Over the last decade, Reach Higher has already contributed to the comprehensive, cross-school-district planning that has led to reduced gaps in FAFSA completion and helped more students finish A–G requirements.
“We’re working towards better pathways for all kids,” Cloney explained,” not just those kids and parents that seek it out.”
Flores agreed, saying she too sees Reach Higher’s work paying off. “We’re definitely making steps towards a stronger understanding within our community of the value of some education beyond high school,” Flores said.
Funded by an $18 million dollar state grant, Reach Higher now hopes to connect educational outcomes with workforce needs by developing new pathways to careers in two of Shasta County’s most critically impacted professions, education and medical care.
Part of that process includes offering more information to students and parents about the educational options in local high schools and the opportunities and needs in the local workforce.
“For many students whose parents did not choose for whatever reason to do any education beyond high school,” Flores continued, “they don’t know what options are out there beyond what’s in their immediate circle of family and friends.”
Mangas adds that some parents think they did just fine without going to college. And so will their kids.
That perspective is understandable, says Leo Perez, who works with Cloney as an associate superintendent of Shasta Union High School District. But that way of thinking, he says, is also limited by an outdated idea of the needs in today’s workforce.
Perez oversees SUHSD’s technical education programs, known in California as Career Technical Education or CTE. It’s the kind of training, Perez says, that will help students succeed in Shasta County, but only if paired with an academic curriculum that includes teaching critical thinking skills.
“There are very few jobs (now) where you do the same thing over and over,” Perez explained. “Nowadays you have to adapt and react to various situations which require some level of critical thinking. You have to be an independent thinker, a problem solver that’s not just working out of a manual but taking input out of your education to come up with solutions.”
“Getting a high school degree and going (straight) to work in the mill is no longer a viable job,” Perez continued. “Now we need kids to have the skills to do a lot of problem solving and critical thinking.”
That means teaching more than the basics, or three R’s, of education, he says. The need for a well-rounded education is one that’s widely accepted across much of California, but in Shasta County, where the community’s proud blue-collar tradition was built on mining, lumber mills and dam construction, the idea doesn’t have as much support.
At SUHSD, Cloney and Perez are working to help meet those workforce needs through a number of vocational tracks including manufacturing and robotics, early education and agriculture.
High School teachers Bret Barnes (left) and Brian Grigsby discuss robotics challenges with students during an after school lab that’s part of the Manufacturing and Robotics Career Technical Education track at Shasta High School. Photo by Annelise Pierce.
Their teachers, Bret Barnes and Brian Grigsby said while some of their students will go on to careers in engineering it’s equally important that others get certified to help fill local trade gaps in other fields.
“For a long time we focused on getting kids into a four year university, hands down, forget everything else, that’s the plan to get them there,” Grigsby said.
“And I think that we started to lose some of these trade, skilled positions, some of these really good skills. . . . So we’re really ensuring the fact that while a four year education is an option, we also want to tell kids that there are some really good options available to get certification that don’t require a four year degree. And we need more and more of those because it’s almost a lost art. Really.”
With her father, her brother, her daughter, her husband, three grandchildren, three nephews, two sons-in-law, and three nephews in the military, either serving or retired, Esther LaPore is dedicated to honoring their service with her work at Hollister’s Veterans Auxiliary Post 9242 and the American Legion Auxiliary Post 69.
LaPore’s daughter, Air Force Tech Sergeant Elisa Eclarin Perada, remembers her sending care packages to the ship where her husband, Second Lieutenant Ezra Eclarin, was serving on a record-breaking deployment.
“He was so proud just to have all of these boxes come in and be able to deliver them to the sailors,” said Perada. “It is hard to explain unless you are there and see what service members go through. But I can see its importance and the impact it has on the people around us.”
Esther LaPort with her father’s Veteran of the Year medal. Photo by Robert Eliason.
LaPore, 65, was born and raised in Hollister. Her father, Corporal John Z. Hernandez, Sr., served four years in the Army, including two years of deployment to Korea.
“My dad was always bitter because they called it ‘the Korean Conflict’ when we all knew it was a war,” she said. “But he was a proud American citizen and a patriot. He was the first person in Hollister to be awarded the Veteran of the Year. They gave him a medal, and he was so proud of it that he never took it off.”
John Z. Hernandez Park on Central Avenue is named after her father, in honor of his advocacy for Hollister’s Hispanic community.
“He would advocate and fight for the Westside where we grew up,” she said. “He would go to City Council meetings and be a thorn in their sides. He helped a lot of migrants fill out their paperwork for housing, and he would also go to the courthouse as an interpreter.”
LaPore was introduced to her future husband, Marine Sergeant Brian LaPore, in 1987, when her brother, who served with Brian at Camp Pendleton, brought him to the family’s Thanksgiving. Brian served twice, from 1984-98 and 1990-93.
John Z Hernandez, Sr and his Veteran of the Year medal. Photo by Robert Eliason.
“They would go out on ship for six months,” she said, “and this time, they were back for a four-day weekend, so he brought him home with him. Then they went out on ship again until the next July.”
LaPore’s daughter, Elisa, now retired, currently works in a wound care clinic in Virginia after 20 years in the Air Force.
“I’m most proud of her because of what she accomplished and where she is now in life,” she said. “You wouldn’t have thought, back when she was going through high school and giving me problems, that the Air Force would have been the best thing for her. I miss her the best, the most.”
Following the death of her father, LaPore joined the American Legion Auxiliary in 2013 and the Veterans Auxiliary in 2015.
“I wish I would have joined while he was alive,” she said. “My dad never asked us to join, but after that, I got my mom, my daughters, and my granddaughters to all join up to help with all of the good things that we do.”
As part of her service, LaPore works with a spinal cord unit in Palo Alto, providing food and clothing for patients, as well as blankets and things to entertain them. The unit also offers services for visiting families.
“We provide supplies for Fisher’s house and the Defenders Lodge at the hospital,” she said. “It’s where if your husband was having an appointment in the morning, you could stay overnight in a room, and it doesn’t cost anything.”
She also works to support Blue Star Moms, a nonprofit organization that provides assistance to families of service members, and G.I. Josie, which offers support for women in the service who suffer from PTSD.
“A motto we have says, ‘Remember your “Why?’”, she said. “‘Why are you doing all of these things?’ My why is my family, my kids and my grandkids who went into the service. Like my grandsons Lance and Ezra. We serve our veterans first and foremost and honor the sacrifices that veterans have made.”
Pointing out that 22 veterans nationally commit suicide every day, LaPore says there is a need for more volunteers at the auxiliaries and more attention paid to veterans’ issues.
“I just finished on June 30 being the district president of the American Legion auxiliary,” she said, “On July 1, I became the district president of the VFW, so I feel like I’m doing double duty because, in our small organization in Hollister, we need to step up and get new recruitment our small organizations in Hollister so that we can someone can follow me.”
LaPore said that she is concerned the organizations might be fading out, which would leave service members and veterans in need.
“If we die away, then who’s going to be there for our veterans when it comes time to take up for them?” she asked. We have to support our Legion Post and VFW Post in their endeavors. We’re right behind them and right with them doing what they do for veterans.”
Members of Esther LaPore’s military family
Parker Anderson, Sergeant, Marine Corps – son-in-law
Ezra Eclarin, Second Lieutenant, Marine Corps – grandson
Elisa Eclarin-Perada, Tech Sergeant, Air Force – daughter
Arthur Hernandez, Tech Sergeant, Air Force – nephew
Gabriel Hernandez, Lance Corporal, Marine Corps – grandson
John A. Hernandez, Sergeant, Marine Corps – nephew
John Z. Hernandez, Jr., Master Sergeant, Marine Corps -brother
John Z. Hernandez, Sr., Corporal, Army – father
Richard Hernandez, Staff Sergeant, Marine Corps – nephew
Derrick Jackson, Seaman, Navy – grandson
Brian LaPore, Sergeant, Marine Corps Airborne -husband
Jenner Pereda, Senior Chief, Navy – son-in-law
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Breaking: Voting Rights Advocates Ask California’s Secretary of State To Monitor Shasta County’s Upcoming Elections
Shasta County Clerk and Registrar of Voters Cathy Darling Allen stands next to California’s Deputy Secretary of State, Susan Lapsley, as she speaks to the Shasta County Board of Supervisors on February 28, 2023.
Six nonprofit voting rights advocacy groups have formally requested California’s Secretary of State, Shirley Weber, to provide monitoring and support for Shasta County’s upcoming elections. Among other requests, they’re asking her to deploy in-person monitoring of the local elections process both during the November 2023 and March 2024 elections.
Intervention by Weber’s office, the advocates write, could have “tremendous benefits . . . not only for the citizens of Shasta County but for all of the people who are watching these events unfold.”
Logos for the six organizations who participated in contacting California’s Secretary of State.
The nonpartisan coalition includes the California Voter Foundation, American Civil Liberties Union, California Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, Verified Voting, Disability Rights California, and the California Voter Foundation. The same group of voting advocacy organizations worked together earlier this year both in February and in March to contact the Shasta County Board of Supervisors about concerns with changes to the county’s voting system after a contract with Dominion Voting Inc. for voting machines, was canceled.
Yesterday, October 24, the advocates sent a joint letter to Weber asking her to respond to what they refer to as “grave concerns” about Shasta County’s election system stability which, they said, “call for urgent, decisive, and sustained response.” As California’s Secretary of State, Weber is the state’s chief election officer. Her duties include ensuring “that elections are efficiently conducted and that state election laws are enforced.”
The coalition of voter rights advocates say Shasta County voters are being subject to a “torrent of misinformation and disinformation” which “can be seen at nearly every Board of Supervisors meeting (and) truly threatens the electorate’s ability to discern the truth about how their upcoming elections will be administered and their confidence that their votes will be counted accurately and in accordance with the law
Voting advocates are particularly concerned about Board Supervisor Patrick Jones’s public statements saying he does not plan to follow new state law, AB 969, which requires the county to use machine, not hand, counting to tally election ballots. They also expressed concern about ongoing misinformation about the election process that’s being shared in public meetings, including by officials themselves. In particular, the coalition of advocates expressed concern about Jones’ statement that the county’s new Hart voting machines are “unauthorized,” which, they emphasized, undermines confidence in the election process.
Voter rights advocates also pointed in their letter to Weber that the need to deal with these extraordinary pressures has diverted time and resources from Shasta County Elections Office staff as they work to deploy a new voting system for the first time. A situation, they wrote, that endangers “the smooth administration of the upcoming elections and thus the rights of voters, including voters with disabilities.”
Advocates have asked Weber to respond by monitoring elections in-person during the upcoming November 7 special election and again next spring for the March 5, 2024 election. They’d also like her to provide any assistance required by Shasta County’s Registrar of Voters, Cathy Darling Allen, to ensure she is able to fulfill her election duties without interference, including interference from the newly-formed county Citizen Elections Advisory Committee.
Advocates also say they hope the state will work to supplement and support voter education efforts in Shasta County, including providing more information to voters about the safety and security of the voting system, including the California certification process.
You can read the full letter sent to the Secretary of State embedded below, or by following this link.
The full letter sent to the Secretary of State.
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Mendocino County announces one year building permit amnesty starting Nov. 1
Thirty-Five Days Before an Election, Shasta Supervisors Seek Expanded Citizen And Board Authority Over Process
A photo inside the Shasta County Elections Office on November 8, 2022. Photo by Annelise Pierce.
On Tuesday the Board of Supervisors will vote on whether to approve a new county ordinance that would bolster the role and power of their freshly formed Citizens Elections Advisory Committee (CEAC). The board approved the five person committee on September 12, and appointed the first committee members last Tuesday, September 26.
One committee member was appointed by each of the five supervisors. They include Dawn Duckett, Susanne Baremore, Lisa Michaud, Bev Gray, and Ronnean Lund. All have been vocal public speakers over recent months with Duckett and Baremore often opposing the board majority on elections changes and Machaud, Gray, and Lund all supporting changes and expressing concern about election fraud.
Less than a week after approving the committee members, the board is looking to modify and expand CEAC powers by codifying its role into law with a local ordinance that would allow it to “provide oversight . . . over all elections related activities in Shasta County.”
The ordinance appears to also remove the committee’s previously-stated end-date and give members the power to access records, make copies of public records, observe all election-related activities, and receive “timely” answers of members’ questions from all election officials. The new ordinance would also give the board’s chair, currently Supervisor Patrick Jones, authority to request and serve subpoenas. The committee’s powers seem to be limited to providing the board with information and asking the board’s permission to request subpoenas. It is unclear if the committee will need to agree in order to exercise those powers, or what the board will be able to do with the information gathered.
According to Tuesday’s agenda packet, the county’s newly-seated legal counsel has “reviewed the proposed ordinance” and “found it legally insufficient and unenforceable” but it has nevertheless been moved forward by Chair Jones for the board’s vote this week.
If passed, the ordinance would take effect immediately. It will be voted on just 35 days before the county’s next scheduled election on November 7 for a local school board and fire safety district board. It will also be voted on the same day that the board should respond to certified signatures by calling a special election for the potential recall of Supervisor Kevin Crye, which must occur some time between January and March of 2024 according to state law.
It’s unclear to what extent this ordinance is intended to give the Board a greater role in the upcoming certification of a recall election for Supervisor Kevin Crye. The ordinance does specifically mention the certification of attempted recalls and this recall attempt specifically, saying that, “the recall validation process is precursor and is part and parcel to the entire special election process.”
Signatures for Crye’s recall election were just certified to move forward by elected County Clerk and Registrar of Voters, Cathy Darling Allen, earlier this week and will be presented to the Board later in the same meeting this week. Speaking to Shasta Scout by phone today, Crye said he will meet with County Counsel Monday to determine whether or not he should recuse from the agenda item on the elections committee. He says he definitely plans to recuse from the second agenda item regarding the certification of his recall process.
Earlier this year, on January 24, Shasta County’s Board voted to cancel the county’s contract with Dominion Voting Systems for electronic voting equipment. While the board dumped Dominion machines in order to implement a manual count of election ballots, the action was taken without having a legally approved system to manually tally votes in place.
At the end of March, the board instructed the Elections Office to develop a plan for the upcoming November 7 special election, leaving Elections Clerk Darling Allen with 8 months to create and submit a new system to the California Secretary of State for approval, implement state suggestions, perform any needed testing, make necessary system changes, and conduct the election.
Darling Allen still does not have access to a state approved system to run elections, which will occur in just over a month. She did submit a hand tally plan, which the Secretary of State provided suggestions on. The Elections Office has also scheduled an October 5 open house for members of the public to observe a mock election using the hand tally process.
Meanwhile, AB 969, which would make hand counting ballots in elections where there are over 1,000 eligible, registered voters illegal, has been passed by the California house and senate and is sitting on California Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk to be signed into state law. He has until October 14 to sign, approve without signing, or veto all remaining bills.
“As an independently elected official, I’m going to continue to do the job that voters elected me to do.” Cathy Darling Allen, the elected County Clerk and Registrar of Voters told Shasta Scout on September 8 in response to questions about the original resolution. “The Shasta County Clerk’s office is a nonpartisan entity dedicated to making sure that every vote is counted and every voice in our community is heard,” she said.
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Dianne Feinstein dies, leaving a complicated legacy on climate issues
Senator Dianne Feinstein, who died on Thursday evening at the age of 90, leaves behind a long and complex legacy on climate and environmental issues. Feinstein represented California as a Democrat in the U.S. Senate for more than 30 years, becoming the longest-serving woman in Senate history, and during that time she brokered a number of significant deals to protect and restore the natural landscapes of the West. In recent years, as politics shifted, she found herself on the receiving end of criticism over her approach to tackling the climate crisis.
After taking office in 1992 following a decade as the mayor of San Francisco, Feinstein established herself as a champion for conservation. She worked to pass legislation that would protect millions of acres of California wilderness from development and extractive industry, using her deft skills as a negotiator to bridge disputes between competing interests. She succeeded in that conservation effort where her predecessors had failed, spearheading a 1994 bill that created the Death Valley and Joshua Tree national parks, which encompass millions of acres. She later passed bills to protect Lake Tahoe, the California redwoods, and the Mojave Desert.
Even so, as a compromise-oriented legislator from California, she often had to weigh the competing interests of farmers, ranchers, and environmentalists, and at times she angered all of them. This tendency toward centrism was evident in her legislative work on water in the state’s Central Valley. She brokered a monumental restoration agreement on the valley’s overstressed San Joaquin River in 2009, but then helped override species protections for fish on that same river in 2016.
“That is wrong, it is shocking,” her colleague Senator Barbara Boxer said at the time, according to E&E News.
Even so, as the pace of the climate crisis advanced, Feinstein attracted criticism from the left for not supporting more ambitious policies to tackle climate change, and her reputation as a broker of compromise came back to haunt her. In early 2019, a group of activists with the Sunrise Movement confronted Feinstein in the Capitol building, urging her to support progressive calls for Green New Deal legislation.
Feinstein rebuffed the protestors.
“I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I know what I’ve been doing,” she said in a viral video. “You come in here and say it has to be my way or the highway.” Her office later released a statement on the incident that mistakenly referred to the protestors as part of the “Sunshine Movement.”
In the following years, following reports that Feinstein was experiencing a loss of her mental faculties, some politicians called for her to step down from the Senate. She resisted those calls and instead said she would retire at the end of her current term, which would have lasted through next year’s election.
The senator’s death will create even more turmoil in Washington, D.C., as lawmakers tangle over a looming government shutdown. The Senate has moved closer to passing a resolution to fund the federal government over the course of the week, but it’s unlikely to pass the House of Representatives thanks to a revolt from hardline Republicans.
Feinstein cast her final vote on Thursday morning on a procedural item relating to the Federal Aviation Administration, but she didn’t vote on an environmental bill later that afternoon. In the vote she missed, Republican lawmakers tried to override President Biden’s veto of a bill that would have rolled back endangered species protections for the prairie chicken. The final vote total was 47 Republicans to 46 Democrats, not enough to override the veto.
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the outcome of a vote on endangered species protections.
