The Cut - Dianne Feinstein, the Institutionalist

On election night in San Francisco in 1969, a 36-year-old woman who had run a campaign for the Board of Supervisors that featured the unconventional use of just her first name, Dianne, was waiting anxiously for results in a race she was not expected to win. The local media had barely covered her. She had earned the endorsement of only one elected official, the state assemblyman Willie Brown. She had initially run the race out of her own house and had taken a risky, forward-looking tactical approach: cultivating support from the city’s growing population of gay voters and environmental conservationists.

As the returns began to trickle in, “it soon became clear that a big local story was unfolding,” Jerry Roberts later wrote in his 1994 book, Dianne Feinstein: Never Let Them See You Cry. “Dianne was not only winning, she was topping the ticket, an unheard-of showing for a nonincumbent, let alone a woman.”

In the largest trial of its kind, thousands of U.K. workers are starting a four-day workweek with no cut to their pay. For all our sake, let’s hope it goes very well. In other news, the U.S. has wasted over 82 million COVID-vaccine doses since December 2020. Is Poland’s pregnancy registry a suggestion of America’s own abortion-surveillance future? This week, the moon waxes as it travels through Virgo, Libra, and Scorpio — find out what that means for your horoscope. A word of warning: Don’t come for Harry Styles or you’ll have Lizzo to answer to. That’s all for today! Hope you’re somersaulting into another week with the verve and enthusiasm of Jack Black.

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