- After Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein died on Friday, her vacancy in the Senate must be filled by an appointee of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.
- Newsom previously vowed to only appoint a black woman to Feinstein’s seat, as well as someone who was not seeking the office for a full term in the 2024 general election.
- “The idea that a Black woman should be appointed only as a caretaker to simply check a box is insulting to countless Black women across this country,” said Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee of California, a black woman who is running for the seat.
(Daily Caller)—After Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California passed away on Friday, the Daily Caller News Foundation compiled a list of politicians who may be appointed to her seat by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, in keeping with his pledge to name a black woman to the position.
Newsom pledged to nominate a black woman to temporarily fill a potential vacancy in Feinstein’s seat in March of 2021, when health complications had raised questions about whether she would complete her term. After Newsom updated his pledge on Sept. 10, saying that he would only appoint someone who isn’t currently a candidate for the seat, the DCNF compiled a list of Democratic black women politicians from California who may be appointed based on his requirements.
1. London Breed
Breed is currently the mayor of San Francisco, a position previously held by both Feinstein and Newsom. She is also running for re-election to a second full term in 2024 but is facing primary challenges from Daniel Lurie, a philanthropist and an heir to the Levi Strauss & Co. denim jeans manufacturing fortune, as well as Democratic San Francisco Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, who represents the 11th district.
Breed has been heavily criticized by Republicans and some Democrats for homelessness, sanitation drug use and crime in San Francisco. The number of encampments in the city recently reached its highest level since 2020, while the number of opioid deaths also exceeded a previous record on Sept. 19.
From the office of Senator Dianne Feinstein: pic.twitter.com/rvcAmVk8O0
— Senator Dianne Feinstein (@SenFeinstein) September 29, 2023
In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson shared a statement from Breed where she said that “this decision is the Governor’s responsibility and that conversation can be saved for another day.”
2. Lori Wilson
Wilson is currently the majority whip in the California Assembly as well as the chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus, two high-ranking positions in the state’s Democratic establishment. She represents areas around the state capital of Sacramento and previously served as the mayor of Suisun City.
Wilson has recently criticized Newsom for vetoing Assembly Bill 957, a bill she had sponsored that would have threatened the custodial rights of parents who do not agree with their child’s transgenderism. “The veto … is a profound disappointment. Across this nation, transgender children are being targeted and erased,” Wilson wrote in a joint statement with the California Legislature’s LGBTQ caucus, adding “[t]his veto is a missed opportunity to remind the nation that California is a safe haven for transgender and non-binary children.”
3. Karen Bass
Bass is currently the mayor of Los Angeles, having been elected to the role in 2022. She previously served for eleven years in Congress, which included two years as chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, as well as the Speaker of the California General Assembly from 2008 to 2010 while in the state legislature.
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It is unclear whether Bass, who has served less than a year as mayor, is willing to relinquish her office for a temporary appointment to Feinstein’s former seat. A spokesperson for Bass said that she is not interested in the seat, according to a report by the Los Angeles Times.
“Senator Feinstein was a trailblazer on whose shoulders I, and women in elected office all across America, will always stand,” Bass wrote on Twitter regarding Feinstein’s death.
4. Pamela Price
Price is currently the district attorney of Alameda County, which is adjacent to San Francisco and includes the city of Oakland. Price is currently facing a recall effort from business groups who allege that she has failed to combat crime in the city.
“District Attorney Pamela Price has absolutely failed the people of Alameda County. Crime is spiraling out of control. It’s time to stand up for victims of crime and their families to bring justice back to Alameda County,” said Carl Chan, president of the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, who has endorsed the recall effort, to CBS News. Campaigners need to gather 73,195 signatures from Alameda County voters within 160 days to initiate a recall election, CBS reported.
Price’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Feinstein’s death or whether she was seeking Feinstein’s seat.
5. Kamala Harris
Vice President Kamala Harris, like Feinstein, is from San Francisco and served alongside her in the Senate from 2017 to 2021. She also served as the district attorney of San Francisco from 2004 to 2011 and as the attorney general of California from 2011 to 2017.
Harris, who is the ex-officio President of the Senate and is running for re-election with President Joe Biden in 2024, is highly unlikely to resign from the vice presidency to fill Feinstein’s vacancy. However, she meets Newsom’s criteria of being a black woman who is not running for the seat in 2024.
“Senator Dianne Feinstein was one of the greatest public servants that California and our nation has ever known,” Harris wrote in a statement published on Twitter. “I will never forget how I felt in November 1992 as a 28-year-old prosecutor, driving across the bridge from my home in Oakland into San Francisco to celebrate her election to the United States Senate.”
6. Mia Bonta
Bonta serves in the California Assembly as a representative for the 18th district, which covers Alameda County in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is also the wife of Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta of California, who was previously appointed by Newsom to his role.
Bonta, a black woman and member of the state legislature’s Black Caucus, is not currently seeking election to the Senate. If appointed, she would also become California’s first Hispanic woman senator, having been born to Puerto Rican parents who are the descendants of Ghanaian slaves.
“[Feinstein was] a Bay Area native who paved the way for a new generation of women leaders in California and nationwide. Her presence will be deeply missed in #AD18 and throughout the country,” Bonta wrote on Twitter of Feinstein’s passing.
7. Barbara Lee
Lee, the Democratic congresswoman from California’s 12 district, which covers Alameda County, is currently running for Feinstein’s seat in 2024. Were Newsom to appoint her, he would break his vow of Sept. 18 to appoint someone other than a candidate for office to the role.
“I am troubled by the governor’s remarks,” Lee said following Newsom’s announcement that he would only appoint a caretaker to the role. “The idea that a Black woman should be appointed only as a caretaker to simply check a box is insulting to countless Black women across this country who have carried the Democratic Party to victory election after election.”
It is not certain whether, if appointed, Lee would win the election to a full term. She currently ranks third in polls, behind Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Katie Porter, respectively.
“This is a sad day for California and the nation,” Lee wrote on Twitter of Feinstein’s death. “Sen. Feinstein was a champion for our state and served as the voice of a political revolution for women.”
Newsom, Harris, Wilson, Lee, Bonta and Price did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.