From Los Angeles …

LEGEND GONE: California Senator Diane Feinstein, a powerful figure in American politics, has died at age 90, according to the Associated Press. Her health had seriously declined in recent months and there had been talk of her resigning.

  She served in the Senate for 30 years, only yesterday voting on a resolution to keep the government open during the current political fight about the budget.

  Feinstein had said she was done with politics after nine years on the San Francisco board of supervisors when an historical event launched her to a national profile. On November 27^th, 1978, Dan White, a disgruntled former supervisor, shot and killed Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States. By the rules of succession, Feinstein became mayor, the first woman to hold that position in San Francisco.

  She was mayor for nine years and elected to the Senate in 1992. That was what’s called The Year of the Woman when 24 new women went to the House of Representatives and the number of female senators rose to six.

  Feinstein was not a by the book liberal. She favored the death penalty but campaigned for gun control. She was an author of the 1994 assault rifle ban. She supported same-sex marriage and abortion rights.

  “I’ve lived a feminist life,” Feinstein once told an interviewer. “I had to quit a job because there was no maternity leave. I raised a child as a single mother. I put together legislation. I haven’t been a marcher, but I’ve lived it.”

DELAY DENIED: A New York appeals court yesterday denied Donald Trump’s attempt to delay his trial for business fraud. Trump had sued the presiding judge in his civil case, Arthur Engoron, seeking to delay the trial and even get some of the accusations dismissed.

  Erdogan has already found Trump, his company, and two adult sons guilty of fraud in the case accusing them of exaggerating his net worth in some years by as much as $2.2 billion to obtain favorable loan terms from banks insurance companies. Trump’s lawyers have argued that just the name “Trump” on an asset makes it more valuable that your normal building. But he was found to have described his Trump Tower triplex home as being three times its actual size.      

  Engoron’s summary judgment found Trump liable for fraud and strips him of control over his New York real estate.

  Still to be determined at trial are penalties. New York Attorney Gen. Letitia James is seeking $250 million.

  Trump’s lawyers have argued that there was no fraud in the case of business loans because he paid the debts on time and the lenders made a profit. The state has says that you don’t have to have done actual harm in order to have committed fraud.

  In another legal development, Trump announced that he will not try to get his Georgia election meddling case moved to federal court. 

BIDEN SPEAKS UP: Too much Donald Trump today, we know, but President Biden finally pulled out his six guns and blasted Trump during a speech in Arizona, accusing the former and would-be president of being power hungry and plotting to undermine the Constitution.

  “This is a dangerous notion, this president is above the law, no limits on power,” Biden said at the Tempe Center for the Arts. “Trump says the Constitution gave him, quote, the right to do whatever he wants as president, end of quote. I never heard a president say that in jest. Not guided by the Constitution or by common service and decency toward our fellow Americans but by vengeance and vindictiveness.”

ORANGE ALERT: A story we ignored on Monday was Donald Trump’s visit to a South Carolina gun store where he said he handled a pistol with his face engraved on the handle.

  Our friend Lucian Truscott points out in his incisive Substack column that choosing the Palmetto State Armory in Summerville was no accident, it was a signal of sympathy to racists and gun nuts. Palmetto Armory is where the racist shooter in Jacksonville, Florida bought the guns he used to kill three Black people at a Dollar General store in late August. The shooter painted a swastika on his gun right near the armory logo.

  “Trump knew this,” Truscott writes.  “And he also knew that memories of his racist base voters are just as strong, and their racist emotions are just as raw, waiting for him to signal that he’s with them.”

  Truscott compares Trump’s visit to Ronald Reagan declaring for the presidency in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the infamous 1964 murders of three civil rights workers. It’s a wink to racist voters. Truscott says, “Donald Trump went to the one gun store in the nation associated specifically with a mass-killing of Black people.”

THE SPIN RACK: A Philippine national living in California pleaded guilty this week to federal charges of arranging as many as 600 sham marriages over a period of six years for clients trying to obtain green cards to live legally in the US. He charged his customers up to 35,000 in cash.  — A 16-year-old British boy has been arrested and accused of cutting down a famous 200-year-old sycamore tree that has stood for 200 years almost like a guardian on Britain’s Roman-built Hadrian’s Wall. Standing in a tight little valley between two hills, the tree was one of the most photographed in all of England.

BELOW THE FOLD: We ignored Wednesday night’s Republican presidential candidate debate but regret having missed one delightful moment.

  Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, the man with the smile of a used car dealer, said he joined TikTok to reach “the next generation of young Americans,” while also cautioning that children under the age of 16 should be banned from social media.

  A stunned former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley retorted, “Every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber.”

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