From New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is Adaling.

For the past two months, a single lawmaker has prevented Democrats from carrying out

their agenda in Congress. And for now, there's no simple solution inside.

Today, my colleague, Annie Cardin, on the growing political crisis surrounding Senator

Diane Feinstein.

It's Wednesday, May 3rd.

And he tells us about the drama that's been unfolding inside this really crucial corner

of the U.S. Senate for Democrats, which is the Senate Judiciary Committee.

So the Judiciary Committee is facing a crisis and could come to a complete stand still

soon if she doesn't return. And this matters because the committee is very important, especially

in a moment when the government is divided. Republicans control the House and Democrats

control the Senate. And there's no real hope of passing meaningful legislation. So for

Democrats, the one thing they can do in this moment is to try and appoint federal judges,

a process that does not involve the House at all.

Their goal is to rebalance the courts after there was a flurry of judicial appointments made

by Republicans during the Trump era. They wanted to use this committee to move forward

and aggressive agenda on confirming as many progressive judges as possible.

And to investigate Supreme Court justices who have increasingly gotten into a lot of ethics

troubles like Clarence Thomas. The problem for them is they can't do any of that because of this

strange situation involving the absence of a single Senator Diane Feinstein.

And remind us what happened to Feinstein. Why is she not there?

Right now she is absent because she was diagnosed with shingles in February.

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