--- title: Dianne Feinstein: 5 Things You Didn't Know Abut the Spybuster description: She knew Harvey Milk, she roasted Ted Cruz, and she made Hillary and Barack make up canonical: https://time.com/22000/five-ways-dianne-feinstein-has-kicked-butt/ author: Charlotte Alter article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-03-12T21:14:47.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:55:00.192Z og:title: 5 Things You Didn't Know About Spybuster Dianne Feinstein og:description: She knew Harvey Milk, she roasted Ted Cruz, and she made Hillary and Barack make up og:url: https://time.com/22000/five-ways-dianne-feinstein-has-kicked-butt/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8e664cc89e6a75ce/698684ef1eebf7157f36fc3b/477822935-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1500 og:image:height: 844 og:image:alt: Dianne Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, speaks with reporters in the Capitol after a speech on the Senate floor that accused the CIA of searching computers set up for Congressional staff for their research of interrog og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 5 Things You Didn't Know About Spybuster Dianne Feinstein twitter:description: She knew Harvey Milk, she roasted Ted Cruz, and she made Hillary and Barack make up twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8e664cc89e6a75ce/698684ef1eebf7157f36fc3b/477822935-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Five Ways Dianne Feinstein Has Kicked Butt > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays to 40,000 subscribers as of August 2026. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters.  by [Charlotte Alter](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/)  ## Charlotte Alter Senior Correspondent Mar 12, 2014 9:14 PM UTC  Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, speaks with reporters in the Capitol after a speech on the Senate floor that accused the CIA of searching computers set up for Congressional staff for their research of interrogation programs, March 11, 2014. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, speaks with reporters in the Capitol after a speech on the Senate floor that accused the CIA of searching computers set up for Congressional staff for their research of interrogation programs, March 11, 2014. Tom Williams—CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images  by [Charlotte Alter](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/)  ## Charlotte Alter Senior Correspondent Mar 12, 2014 9:14 PM UTC In case you didn’t know already, Tuesday’s speech made it clear that Senator Dianne Feinstein is a lean, mean spybusting machine. The longtime California Senator and Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee publicly turned on the CIA Tuesday when she accused the spy agency of illegally hacking into Senate computers used to investigate Bush-era intelligence practices. But this isn’t the first time Feinstein has spoken truth to power. Here are a few of her greatest hits: 1) You wouldn’t know it from her speech Tuesday, but Feinstein had a late night Monday night. That’s because the octogenarian was part of an [all-night](http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2014/03/10/senators-boxer-feinstein-warn-of-climate-change-in-all-night-session/) congressional session to raise awareness about climate change. “If we do nothing, the Sierra Nevada spring snowpack could drop by as much as 60 to 80 percent by the end of the century, eliminating the water source for nearly 16 million people,” the Senator said. 2) It was Feinstein who tried to push an assault weapons ban through Congress after the Newtown shootings, but her ban failed in a 40-60 vote. In her final [appeal ](http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/17/news/la-pn-dianne-feinstein-assault-weapons-vote-20130417)to her colleagues to vote to ban assault weapons, she demanded that the rest of the Senate “show some guts.” “The most important duty a government has is to protect its citizens’ safety,” she said. “When 20 beautiful first-graders are slaughtered, our government has failed that duty.” She spoke next to an image of the front page of the New York Daily News that read “Shame on U.S.” 3) In her continued fight for an assault weapons ban, Feinstein delivered an epic takedown of colleague Ted Cruz when he tried to mansplain the Constitution to her (via [Daily Beast](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/14/dianne-feinstein-won-t-abide-ted-cruz.html)) --- > “” --- BOOM! Who needs a bazooka when you have Dianne Feinstein? 4) She worked closely with gay rights leader Harvey Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, and she was there the day they were assassinated by ex-supervisor Dan White in 1978\. White murdered Milk and Moscone because he wanted his government seat back, and when Feinstein learned that Moscone was planning to give it to someone else, she tried to track down White to explain the situation. She described that day to the [San Francisco Chronicle: ](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Feinstein-recalls-S-F-s-day-of-infamy-3260395.php) --- > “” --- Feinstein later went on to replace Moscone as Mayor of San Francisco. **MORE:** [Top Lawmaker Accuses CIA of Illegally Snooping on Senate](http://time.com/19995/dianne-feinstein-john-brennan-cia-senate-spying/) 5) She’s also a peacemaker: Feinstein hosted the first meeting between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama after Obama nabbed the 2008 nomination. She set up two chairs and put out some water, and then left the candidates [alone](http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/the-obama-clinton-meeting/) to talk it out: --- > “” --- Keep doing what you’re doing, Dianne! ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/22000/five-ways-dianne-feinstein-has-kicked-butt/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/22000/five-ways-dianne-feinstein-has-kicked-butt/"},"headline":"Five Ways Dianne Feinstein Has Kicked Butt","datePublished":"2014-03-12T21:14:47.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:55:00.192Z","description":"She knew Harvey Milk, she roasted Ted Cruz, and she made Hillary and Barack make up","url":"https://time.com/22000/five-ways-dianne-feinstein-has-kicked-butt/","keywords":["Living","Hillary Clinton","Barack Obama","politics","Surveillance","CIA","ted cruz","Dianne Feinstein","spy"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8e664cc89e6a75ce/698684ef1eebf7157f36fc3b/477822935-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Charlotte Alter","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8e664cc89e6a75ce/698684ef1eebf7157f36fc3b/477822935-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Dianne Sen. 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