title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: West of the elevator banks, two north–south corridors extend to side entrances on 49th and 50th Streets, which each contain two bronze sets of revolving doors. The corridors continue west to the Sixth Avenue entrance. Just west of the elevators, a staircase leads down to the basement and up to the NBC lobby. The stair to the basement contains Champlain marble and ivory marble, while the stair to the mezzanine contains Champlain marble and bronze railings and moldings. Additional stairs to the basement and mezzanine are placed at the point where the corridors continue into 1250 Avenue of the Americas; they also contain Champlain marble and bronze railings and moldings.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: Josep Maria Sert was originally hired to paint four murals in the northern lobby corridor: "Time"; "Spirit of Dance"; "Man's Triumph in Communication"; "Conquest of Disease"; "Abolition of Bondage"; "Fraternity of Men"; and "Contest-1940", depicting different aspects of the world and mankind. Frank Brangwyn painted four murals on the southern corridor, all of which symbolize humans' relationship with spirituality; he complemented these murals with stencils of the themes that were represented. Rockefeller Center's managers had asked Brangwyn to omit a depiction of Jesus Christ from one of the panels; the artist ultimately depicted Jesus with his back turned. Brangwyn's and Sert's corridor murals measure each. Architectural writer Robert A. M. Stern described Brangwyn's murals as "insipid", a quality worsened by the fact that the themes were stenciled onto the murals. By contrast, Stern said: "Sert at least allowed the meaning of his paintings to fall into happy obscurity."


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: After the building had opened, Sert was commissioned to paint the mural "American Progress" at the center of the lobby, measuring . The mural was installed in 1937. It depicts a vast allegorical scene of men constructing modern America and contains figures of Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The space occupied by "American Progress" was originally taken up by Diego Rivera's "Man at the Crossroads" mural, which was controversial because of its communist imagery and was destroyed in 1934. Rockefeller officials commissioned a sixth mural from Sert, representing the past, present, and future, which they installed in the lobby in 1941. The mural measures and is installed on the ceiling.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: Below the lobby is the complex's shopping concourse, connected to the lobby via escalators. The building has a direct entrance to the New York City Subway's 47th–50th Streets–Rockefeller Center station via the concourse. Until 1950, the building's concourse had also contained Rockefeller Center's post office.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: The mezzanine contains balconies overlooking the lobby. The floors of the mezzanine are black terrazzo, while the walls are made of marble and plaster separated by a bronze molding. Offices from the outer walls open onto the mezzanine balconies. There are staircases from the lobby to both the concourse and mezzanine, west of the lobby's elevator banks. When the building opened, it contained a rotunda at the mezzanine level, measuring across with a photomural surrounding it. The mural was taken apart in the 1950s and the rotunda itself was demolished in the 1970s. A new rotunda was constructed from 2014 to 2015, accessed from the ground floor by a staircase; the rotunda contains two LED displays, each measuring wide and tall. From 1960 to October 1993, the building's mezzanine level housed the New York City weather forecast office of the National Weather Service. The mezzanine level also contained a control room, from which all of Rockefeller Center's mechanical systems could be monitored.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: When the building was constructed, RCA's chief engineer O. B. Hanson was faced with designing an area of the building that was large enough to host 35 studios with as few structural columns as possible. As such, the studios were all placed in the windowless center section of the building, which would have otherwise been used as an unprofitable office space. The central part of the building could also use fewer columns, which was suitable for large broadcast studios but not for the bases of skyscrapers. Over of utility wires stretched through this part of the building, which was powered by direct current. Two floors were reserved for future TV studios, and five more stories were reserved for audience members and guests. The floor, wall, and ceiling surfaces of the studios were suspended from the superstructure, insulating the studios. In addition, there were double- and triple-height spaces for exhibitions, plays, and other events.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: NBC, ABC, and CBS (collectively the Big Three TV Networks) had offices on Sixth Avenue and studios in Midtown during the mid-20th century. The first television shows at the NBC Studios were taped at studio 3H in 1935, and TV shows started taping there after World War II. During the RCA Building's early years, NBC housed both the Red Network and the Blue Network there, and ABC channel WJZ-TV was also headquartered there. When the building opened, it also hosted daily tours of the NBC Studios; the tours were canceled in 1977 due to declining attendance. NBC was the only one of the Big Three that retained studios in Midtown by the mid-1980s.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: Studio 8H, which hosts "Saturday Night Live", is the largest of the studios at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, with a capacity of 1,200 or 1,400 guests. Studio 8H was once the largest radio studio in the world and was originally home to the NBC Symphony Orchestra before being converted into a television studio in 1950. Another major studio at 30 Rockefeller Plaza is Studio 6B, which hosted "Texaco Star Theater", the first comedy-variety show on television to become popular. "The Tonight Show" was also broadcast from Studio 6B until 1972, returning there in 2014 under the name "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon". "Tonight"s companion program, "Late Night" (branded "Late Night with Seth Meyers" ) is also taped in the building. The "Today Show" was also broadcast from 30 Rockefeller Plaza until 1994, when it moved to 10 Rockefeller Plaza.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: The Rockefeller family's office, Room 5600, occupied the entire 56th floor. The family's Rockefeller Foundation rented the entire floor below, and two other organizations supported by the Rockefellers also moved into the building. Daniel Okrent, author of the book "", said the Rockefellers' offices resembled an "18th-century English baronial mansion". The space was decorated with art by Paul Gauguin, Piet Mondrian, Paul Signac, and Joan Miró.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: By 1937, there were 392 employees of Room 5600. After World War II, Room 5600 comprised the entire 54th through 56th floors. The family offices became a hub for the family's political activity, with ties to both the Democratic and Republican parties at the city, state, and national levels. Visitors to Room 5600 have included Frank Sinatra, Shirley MacLaine, Nelson Mandela, Richard Gere, and Bono. Even in the late 1980s, when Room 5600 had downsized to 175 people, it still managed $900 million of Rockefeller family wealth. The family moved out during 2014.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: The 65th floor of the building is an event room and restaurant named the Rainbow Room. The space was designed by Wallace K. Harrison of Associated Architects. Interior designer Elena Bachman Schmidt, a one-time apprentice of Elsie de Wolfe, contributed to the design of the interior decor, such as the furniture, curtains, and elevator doors. Vincente Minnelli was assigned to help Schmidt select the colors of the walls. The restaurant opened in 1934, it was the highest restaurant in the United States for decades, though it was closed during much of the 1940s. The most recent version of the restaurant opened in 2014 after a restoration by Gabellini Sheppard Associates.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: The Rainbow Room occupies the eastern part of 30 Rockefeller Plaza's 65th floor, which covers . The central part of the floor has elevator banks, restrooms, a gallery, and a private dining room. The western part houses Bar SixtyFive and an outdoor terrace. The dining room itself is a space. The restaurant has a rotating dance floor. The seats of the Rainbow Room are organized in tiers, and there is also a platform for bands and a shallow balcony for entertainers. There are stairs and a dumbwaiter behind the platform, as well as several banquet rooms on the 64th floor. Above the dance floor hang several concentric "rings" that recess into the ceiling.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: The roof of the building's central section contained a "Garden of the Nations" (alternatively "Gardens of the Nations"), which opened in April 1935 on the 11th floor. The garden used of soil; of rock from as far as England; 100,000 bricks; 2,000 trees and shrubs; 4,000 small plants; and 20,000 bulbs for flowers. Originally, the garden included thirteen nation-specific gardens, whose layouts were inspired by gardens in the respective countries they represented. Each of the different gardens were separated by barriers. The "International Garden", a rock garden in the center of the themed gardens, featured a meandering stream and 2,000 plant varieties. The Garden of the Nations also contained a children's garden, a modern-style garden, and a shrub-and-vegetable patch. The garden was staffed by hostesses who wore costumes, and the plantings lit up at night.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: The garden was designed by Ralph Hancock and Raymond Hood and was one of several rooftop gardens in the complex. Upon opening, the Garden of the Nations attracted many visitors because of its collection of exotic flora, and it became the most popular garden in Rockefeller Center. In its heyday, the Center charged admission fees for the Garden of the Nations. However, the nation-themed gardens were demolished by 1938, and the rock garden was left to dry up, supplanted by flower beds that were not open to the public. In 1936, the central roof temporarily housed a prototype of an apartment, which was used to advertise the Rockefeller Apartments between 54th and 55th Streets.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: From 1937 onward, the roof of the eastern tower contained neon letters spelling "RCA". The letters each measured wide by tall; at the time of the building's completion, the letters were the world's highest neon signs. These were replaced by "GE" letters in 1988. The letters were replaced again with the new united Comcast/NBC logo, rendered in longer-lasting LED lighting. The new signs consist of a tall Comcast wordmark and NBC logo on the northern and southern elevations, as well as a NBC logo on the building's western elevation.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: In 1960, a , weather radar dish for the National Weather Service was installed atop the roof when the building became the NWS's headquarters. KWO35, the NOAA Weather Radio station serving the majority of the Tri-State area, transmitted from atop the building and remained there until 2014. Due to interference with a U.S. Coast Guard radio channel, the transmitter was eventually relocated atop the MetLife Building. The weather radar station was used as "Doppler 4000" during WNBC-TV's local newscasts. It was operational until February 1, 2017, when StormTracker 4, an S-band weather radar at Rutgers University's Cook Campus, started operating.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: Top of the Rock, the 70th-story observation deck atop the skyscraper, opened in 1933 and is above street level. In addition to the deck, the attraction includes a triple-story observatory on the 67th to 69th floors. Top of the Rock competes with the 86th-floor observation deck of the Empire State Building 200 feet (61 m) higher, as well as a distant view of the Empire State Building. Top of the Rock is accessed from its own entrance on 50th Street, where two elevators (converted from freight elevator shafts) ascend to the 67th floor. The shafts are illuminated, while the elevator cabs contain ceiling panels with historical photographs. There is a double-height indoor observatory on the 67th floor, where escalators lead to the 69th floor. A parapet of frameless safety glass runs around the perimeter of the deck; it dates to the 2005 renovation.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: The deck originally had dimensions of and was decorated in the style of an ocean liner, with such furnishings as slatted chairs. The observation deck was closed in 1986 because a renovation of the Rainbow Room had cut off the deck's only access point. The observation deck has been known since 2005 as Top of the Rock, when it reopened after a renovation by Gabellini Sheppard Associates. The original limestone and cast aluminum architectural details were conserved. In 2011, the observation deck had 2.5 million visitors a year and grossed $25 million. Additional attractions at Top of the Rock were announced in 2022. The 69th story would contain a ride themed to the photograph "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper", where visitors would be strapped on beams and lifted above the 69th-story terrace. The 70th story would include a rotating "skylift" ride, a spherical rooftop beacon, and new floor tiles with a celestial pattern.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: The construction of Rockefeller Center occurred between 1932 and 1940 on land that John D. Rockefeller Jr. leased from Columbia University. The Rockefeller Center site was originally supposed to be occupied by a new opera house for the Metropolitan Opera. By 1928, Benjamin Wistar Morris and designer Joseph Urban were hired to come up with blueprints for the house. However, the new building was too expensive for the opera to fund by itself, and it needed an endowment. The project ultimately gained the support of John D. Rockefeller Jr. The planned opera house was canceled in December 1929 due to various issues, with the new opera house eventually being built at Lincoln Center, opening in 1966.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: With the lease still in effect, Rockefeller had to quickly devise new plans so that the three-block Columbia site could become profitable. Raymond Hood, Rockefeller Center's lead architect, came up with the idea to negotiate with the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and its subsidiaries, National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO), to build a mass media entertainment complex on the site. By May 1930, RCA and its affiliates had made an agreement with Rockefeller Center managers. RCA would lease of studio space; get naming rights to the western part of the development; and develop four theaters, at a cost of $4.25 million per year. A skyscraper at 30 Rockefeller Plaza's current site was first proposed in the March 1930 version of the complex's blueprint, and the current dimensions of the tower were finalized in March 1931. The skyscraper would be named for RCA as part of the agreement; the RCA name became official in May 1932.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: The designs for Radio City Music Hall and the RCA Building were submitted to the New York City Department of Buildings in August 1931, by which time both buildings were to open in 1932. Work on the steel structure of the RCA Building started in March 1932. Several artists were hired to design artwork for the RCA Building. Lee Lawrie was hired to design the RCA Building's eastern entrance in June 1932, at which point the sunken plaza in front of the building was also announced. The next month, Barry Faulkner was commissioned to create a large glass mosaic on the western entrance facing Sixth Avenue. Gaston Lachaise received the commission for bas-reliefs on the Sixth Avenue entrance in September 1932. The same month, Hood and the complex's manager John Todd traveled to Europe to interview five artists for the lobby. Frank Brangwyn, Josep Maria Sert, and Diego Rivera were hired the following month, despite John Rockefeller Jr.'s hesitance to hire Rivera, a prominent communist. Henri Matisse had been reluctant to commission a highly visible lobby mural, and Pablo Picasso had refused to even meet with Hood and Todd.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: Installation of the exterior stonework began in July 1932 and proceeded at a rate of per day. Window installation began the same month. The building's structural steel was up to the 64th floor by September 16, 1932. The photograph "Lunch atop a Skyscraper" was taken on September 20, 1932, during the construction of the 69th floor; it was part of a publicity stunt promoting the RCA Building. The building was topped out on September 26, 1932, when an American flag was hoisted to the top of the primary 66-story tower on Rockefeller Plaza. The Indiana limestone cladding had been erected to the 15th floor on the Rockefeller Plaza wing, and the facade of the Sixth Avenue wing had been completed. The stone was fabricated at four factories in New York state and then shipped to New York City. Two traveling cranes lifted the stone from the ground to two hoists high, which then raised the stone to the upper floors. The stonework of the primary tower was completed on December 7, 1932, without fanfare. Officials said at the time that they did not host a ceremony for the stonework's completion because the elevators only ran to the 55th floor. It had taken only 102 workdays to install the of stonework.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: Rockefeller Plaza was added to the city's official street map in January 1933, and the RCA Building gained the address 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The next month, John D. Rockefeller III honored 27 mechanics for their work on the RCA Building. At the time, "The New York Times" reported that 1,600 workers were busy completing the interior work. According to the main contractors, the laborers, plasterers, and metal lathers involved in the project would need to be compensated the equivalent of 25,000 eight-hour workdays. The building would require of plasterwork, covering about . By April 6, 1933, there were 1,400 mechanics working to complete the RCA Building, which was 90 percent complete; the upper floors were mostly finished, but the base was still incomplete. As late as April 24, more than 1,000 workers were still fitting out the RCA Building. As a result of the Depression, building costs were cheaper than projected. The final cost of the first ten buildings, including the RCA Building, came to $102 million (equivalent to $ billion in dollars).


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: Todd, Robertson, Todd Engineering Corporation, which was constructing Rockefeller Center, relocated to the RCA Building on April 22, 1933, becoming the first tenants. The RCA Building was slated to officially open on May 1, 1933. Its opening was delayed until mid-May because of a controversy over Rivera's "Man at the Crossroads", which in large part stemmed from the communist motifs of the mural. On May 10, 1933, Rivera was ordered to stop all work on the mural, which was covered in stretched canvas and left incomplete. Brangwyn's murals were also incomplete at the time of the building's opening. Rivera's mural remained covered until February 1934, when workmen peeled the mural off the wall. Columbia University originally owned most of Rockefeller Center's land as well as the complex's buildings, including the RCA Building. However, Columbia received no rental income; Rockefeller Center's managers collected the rent and owned the land under the western part of the complex, including a section of the RCA Building West.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: The RCA offices moved to the RCA Building's 52nd and 53rd floors in June 1933. The Rockefeller family took up space throughout the building to give potential tenants the impression of occupancy. Their Rockefeller Foundation, as well as the General Education Board and the Spelman Fund of New York, had leased space, and the Rockefeller family's Standard Oil Company moved into the RCA Building in 1934. NBC was one of the first tenants in the new RCA Building and, with 35 studios packed into the base, it was also one of the largest tenants. Westinghouse moved into the 14th through 17th floors of the RCA Building, receiving the contract for the building's elevators as a result. American Cyanamid took four floors and part of another. Other space was taken by the Greek consulate, the Chinese consulate, the National Health Council, and a branch of the Chase National Bank. A double-height space at the center of the ground story, which had been difficult to rent, opened as the Municipal Art Exhibition in February 1934. The space, referred to as the Forum, had contained a large stairway leading up to a second-story balcony with exhibition rooms. Despite the large number of tenants, Rockefeller Center was only 59 percent rented by the end of 1933.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: Shortly after the RCA Building's opening, there were plans to use the building above the 64th floor as a public "amusement center". That section of the building had several terraces, which could be used as a dance floor, observation deck and landscaped terrace gardens. On the 65th floor, there was also a two-story space for a dining room with a high ceiling. Frank W. Darling quit his job as head of Rye's Playland to direct the programming for the proposed amusement space. In July 1933, the managers opened an observation deck atop the RCA Building, which consisted of terraces on the 67th, 69th, and 70th floors. The 40-cents-per-head observation deck saw 1,300 daily visitors by late 1935. Meanwhile, the floors below the observation deck were planned as a restaurant, solarium, game room, and ballroom, which would later become the Rainbow Room. The Rainbow Room opened on October 3, 1934.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: A revolving beacon was installed atop 30 Rockefeller Plaza in 1935, the first such beacon to be installed in Manhattan. That September, the ground-floor retail space was fully leased. The New York Museum of Science and Industry leased the Municipal Art Exhibition space shortly afterward after Nelson Rockefeller became a trustee of the museum. Subsequently, Edward Durell Stone removed the partitions on the second floor of the exhibition space, and the museum opened there in February 1936. The central wall of the main lobby remained empty until 1937, when Jose Maria Sert's "American Progress" was installed. At the time, the RCA Building was 84 percent leased. By 1938, the NBC studios at the RCA Building received 700,000 annual visitors, while the observation deck had 430,000 annual visitors.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: Two 24-ton cooling machines were installed in the basement of the RCA Building in 1940. The air-conditioning units supplemented the RCA Building's existing units and also served 1230 Sixth Avenue, 10 Rockefeller Plaza, and 1 Rockefeller Plaza. The lobby was then renovated in 1941. As part of the project, an overpass at mezzanine level was removed, the lighting was brightened, and another mural by Jose Maria Sert was installed. An air-raid siren was installed atop 30 Rockefeller Plaza in 1942 during World War II. The Rainbow Room and Grill atop the RCA Building was closed at the end of that December because of staffing shortages. In 1943, Rockefeller Center's managers purchased the lots at 1242–1248 Sixth Avenue and 73 West 49th Street, part of RCA Building West; these lots had previously been held under a long-term lease. By the next year, the RCA Building was almost fully rented.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: During the war, the RCA Building's Room 3603 became the primary location of the U.S. operations of British Intelligence's British Security Co-ordination, organized by William Stephenson. It also served as the office of Allen Dulles, who later headed the Central Intelligence Agency. The revolving beacon, which had been darkened during the war, was reactivated in 1945 after the air-raid siren was dismantled, but the Rainbow Room restaurant remained closed until 1950. The Museum of Science and Industry moved out of the RCA Building's lower floors in 1950. Rockefeller Center's managers hired Carson and Lundin to design two new levels of retail space with about of new floor area. The retail space was twice as profitable as the museum; the remaining street-level space was transformed into a studio for the "Today" Show. In mid-1953, Columbia bought all of Rockefeller Center's land along Sixth Avenue, including the western part of RCA Building West, for $5.5 million. Rockefeller Center then leased the land back from Columbia.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: The building's largest tenants, RCA and NBC, renewed their leases in 1958 for 24 years. The National Weather Service's radar was placed on the roof in June 1960, adjacent to RCA's and NBC's antennas, and the NWS offices relocated to the building that December. The Singer Manufacturing Company became another major tenant, leasing six floors in 1961; this required the installation of a dedicated air-conditioning system on the 58th floor for that company. In addition, the Rainbow Room atop the building was refurbished in 1965. An anti-Vietnam War bombing occurred on the 19th floor in 1969, causing substantial damage, though no one was hurt. Also in 1969, the RCA sign atop the building was updated in neon lights. The RCA Building maintained high occupancy through this time. Even at its lowest point during the 1973–1975 recession, the building was 88 percent occupied and Rockefeller Center's managers were able to lease space at the building above market rate.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: In 1973, the RCA sign atop the building was turned off to conserve energy, the first time it had not lit up since World War II. The next January, RCA renewed its lease for 20 years, having previously considered relocating from New York City. RCA's chief executive Robert Sarnoff also announced that the company would construct a "management and conference center" atop the central section of the building. The conference center would have been designed by Ford & Earl Design Associates and Justin Lamb and would have been powered by solar heat. RCA applied for permission to build the conference center in September 1975, but the project was canceled after Sarnoff resigned that December. The RCA Building's central location and consistent upkeep meant that it was 93 percent occupied by 1975, despite a relatively high vacancy rate in New York City office buildings. Several law firms had moved into the building during this time. Singer moved out of the RCA Building in 1978, freeing up a large block of office space, but RCA and NBC renewed their leases on a combined two years later.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: Columbia University was not making enough money from Rockefeller Center leases by the 1970s, and the university started looking to sell the land beneath Rockefeller Center, including the RCA Building, in 1983. That year, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) held hearings to determine how much of Rockefeller Center should be protected as a landmark. The Rockefeller family and Columbia University acknowledged that the buildings were already symbolically landmarks, but their spokesman John E. Zuccotti recommended that only the block between 49th and 50th Streets be protected, including the RCA Building and RCA Building West. By contrast, almost everyone else who supported Rockefeller Center's landmark status recommended that the entire complex be landmarked. The LPC granted landmark status to the exteriors of all of the original complex's buildings, as well as the interiors of the International Building's and 30 Rockefeller Plaza's lobbies, on April 23, 1985. Rockefeller Center's original buildings also became a National Historic Landmark in 1987.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: Columbia had agreed to sell the land to the Rockefeller Group, an investment company owned by the Rockefeller family, for $400 million in February 1985. The Rockefeller Group formed Rockefeller Center Inc. that July to manage the RCA Building and other properties. By late 1985, NBC began planning to relocate, leaving half the RCA Building's space vacant. The network needed of space and the RCA Building's facilities required hundreds of millions of dollars in renovations. The same year, General Electric acquired NBC and began looking to save money. The developers of Harmon Meadow and Television City had both made offers to NBC, but demand for office space in New York City was starting to decrease, which led the building's owners to focus on keeping NBC at the RCA Building. NBC agreed to stay at 30 Rockefeller Plaza at the end of 1987 after city and state officials offered $72 million in tax exemptions, $800 million in industrial bonds, and sales-tax deferments on $1.1 billion worth of purchases. These incentives would not need to be repaid as long as NBC stayed at the building until 2002, or for 15 years. NBC extended its lease by 35 years so that it would last into 2022 and secured an option to buy the western and central sections of the skyscraper.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: Meanwhile, the Rockefeller Group had begun expanding the Rainbow Room. The observation deck closed in 1986 because the expansion cut off the only access between the observation deck and its elevators. The Rainbow Room also reopened in December 1987 after the Rockefeller Group conducted an extensive renovation. The RCA Building was renamed the GE Building in July 1988, and the signage atop the building was changed accordingly, despite concerns that it could be confused with the General Electric Building on 570 Lexington Avenue. Mitsubishi Estate, a real estate subsidiary of the Mitsubishi Group, purchased a majority stake in the Rockefeller Group in 1988, including the GE Building and Rockefeller Center's other structures. Despite the renaming, 30 Rockefeller Plaza continued to be popularly known as the RCA Building. Subsequently, Rockefeller Center transferred some of the unused air rights above the British Empire Building and La Maison Francaise to the Rockefeller Plaza West skyscraper on Seventh Avenue. In exchange, the Rockefeller Group had to preserve the original buildings between 49th and 50th Streets under a more stringent set of regulations than the rest of the complex. While the GE Building's air rights were unaffected, the structure fell under the new regulations.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: The Rockefeller Group filed for bankruptcy protection in May 1995 after missing several mortgage payments. That November, John Rockefeller Jr.'s son David and a consortium led by Goldman Sachs agreed to buy Rockefeller Center's buildings for $1.1 billion, beating out Sam Zell and other bidders. The transaction included $306 million for the mortgage and $845 million for other expenses. As that sale progressed, GE and Goldman Sachs discussed selling part of the GE Building to its namesake, allowing GE to lower its occupancy costs on the that it occupied. In May 1996, GE bought the space for $440 million, as well as an option to renew the lease on the "Today Show" studios at 10 Rockefeller Plaza. Before either transaction was finalized, GE subleased of that space. Goldman Sachs made numerous upgrades to the building and allowed brokers to finalize leases more quickly. In addition to GE, other large tenants at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in the late 1990s included law firm Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine and Chadbourne & Parke. Cipriani S.A. took over the Rainbow Room in 1998.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: Tishman Speyer, led by David Rockefeller's close friend Jerry Speyer and the Lester Crown family of Chicago, bought the original 14 buildings and land in December 2000 for $1.85 billion, including the GE Building. The next year, Tishman Speyer began planning a renovation of the rooftop observation deck, which would be rebranded Top of the Rock. Kostow Greenwood Architects also started designing a renovation for NBC Studios. The observation deck plans were announced publicly in November 2003. Two existing elevator shafts were lengthened so that the observation deck could be accessed without going through the Rainbow Room to get to the "shuttle" elevators. In addition, a ground-floor entrance was created on 50th Street and a three-level storefront was converted into an observation deck entrance. The deck reopened in November 2005 after a renovation by Gabellini Sheppard Associates.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: During the late 2000s, the building retained an 85 percent occupancy rate. The WNBC-TV newsroom was renovated during 2008, after NBC had announced earlier the same year that it would start a 24-hour news channel. In addition, Tishman Speyer hired EverGreene Architectural Arts to restore the lobby, and a two-year restoration commenced in 2009. The Rainbow Room closed that year after Rockefeller Center Inc. ended Cipriani's lease. The LPC designated the Rainbow Room as an interior landmark in 2012, and the restaurant reopened in October 2014 under new management. Additionally, the rotunda above the lobby was restored starting in 2014.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: Comcast, which had bought a 51 percent ownership stake in NBCUniversal in 2009, bought the remaining ownership stake from GE in 2013. By then, GE occupied only two stories in the building. The sale included NBC's portion of 30 Rockefeller Plaza and the building's naming rights. In June 2014, the LPC granted Comcast permission to modify 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Comcast planned to rename the building and replace the signage on the roof. Additionally, a new marquee was added to the Sixth Avenue entrance, advertising it as the home of "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon". The GE signage was dismantled starting in September 2014, and 30 Rockefeller Plaza was officially renamed the Comcast Building on July 1, 2015. Toy store FAO Schwarz opened a store at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in November 2018. Tishman Speyer proposed installing additional visitor attractions at Top of the Rock, which the LPC approved in April 2022.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: As Rockefeller Center was being developed, "Variety" magazine wrote: "The main building of the Rockefeller Center group is a notable structure and forms a fitting climax to half a decade of super-skyscraper construction, which, with this one exception, was abruptly brought to an end" by the 1929 crash. A "Hearst's International" magazine article described the RCA Building as "soaring to an incredible petrous peak", with the sunken plaza "shimmering in brilliant floodlight" at its base. After 30 Rockefeller Plaza was completed, the Federal Writers' Project observed in 1939: "Its huge, broad, flat north and south facades, its almost unbroken mass, and its thinness are the features that impelled observers to nickname it the 'Slab'." According to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the RCA Building's massing "marked the emergence of a new form of the skyscraper", namely the slab-like form.


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: Architectural critic Paul Goldberger said, "Nothing is more attuned to romantic fantasies of New York than the RCA Building's black granite lobby, the Rainbow Room's ornamental framing of a 70-story view...". Goldberger wrote that the RCA Building's form was "made sumptuous by its mounting setbacks", contrasting with the "smaller and bulkier" International Building and other structures in the complex. In 2009, a "Crain's New York" reporter wrote: "NBC, which owns its space, lends the building a certain panache. So do the art, Christmas tree, gardens and immaculate condition of the center."


title: 30 Rockefeller Plaza

text: As the central building of Rockefeller Center, 30 Rockefeller Plaza is widely known. The building was also commonly nicknamed 30 Rock, which inspired the title of the NBC sitcom "30 Rock" (2006–2013). Additionally, numerous movies and TV series that feature Rockefeller Center in their establishing shots have used imagery of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Such films have included "Nothing Sacred" in 1937, "How to Marry a Millionaire" in 1953, and "Manhattan" in 1979. Two films have also discussed the destruction of Rivera's "Man at the Crossroads" in the lobby: "The Cradle Will Rock" in 1999 and "Frida" in 2002. Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon, an attraction at the Universal Studios Florida amusement park, is also based on 30 Rockefeller Plaza's design.


title: Party leaders of the United States Senate

text: The positions of majority leader and minority leader are held by two United States senators and members of the party leadership of the United States Senate. They serve as the chief spokespersons for their respective political parties holding the majority and the minority in the United States Senate. They are each elected as majority leader and minority leader by the senators of their party caucuses: the Senate Democratic Caucus and the Senate Republican Conference.


text: By Senate precedent, the presiding officer gives the majority leader priority in obtaining recognition to speak on the floor of the Senate. The majority leader serves as the chief representative of their party in the Senate, and is considered the most powerful member of the Senate. They also serve as the chief representative of their party in the entire Congress if the House of Representatives, and thus the office of the speaker of the House, is controlled by the opposition party. The Senate's executive and legislative business is also managed and scheduled by the majority leader.


text: The assistant majority leader and assistant minority leader of the United States Senate, commonly called whips, are the second-ranking members of each party's leadership. The main function of the majority and minority whips is to gather votes of their respective parties on major issues. As the second-ranking members of Senate leadership, if there is no floor leader present, the whip may become acting floor leader.


text: The Senate is currently composed of 50 Republicans, 47 Democrats, and 3 independents, all 3 caucus with the Democrats.


text: The current leaders are Senators Chuck Schumer (D) of New York and Mitch McConnell (R) of Kentucky. The current assistant leaders, or whips, are Senators Dick Durbin (D) of Illinois and John Thune (R) of South Dakota.


text: By at least 1850, the Senate and House Republican Conferences and the Senate and House Democratic Caucuses began naming chairs, and while conference and caucus chairs carried very little authority, the Senate party floor leader positions arose from the position of conference chair. Senate Democrats began the practice of electing their floor leaders in 1920 while they were in the minority. John W. Kern was a Democratic senator from Indiana. While the title was not official, the Senate website identifies Kern as the first Senate party leader, serving in that capacity from 1913 through 1917 (and in turn, the first Senate Democratic leader), while serving concurrently as chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus. In 1925, the Republicans (who were in the majority at the time) also adopted this language when Charles Curtis became the first (official) majority leader, although his immediate predecessor Henry Cabot Lodge is considered the first (unofficial) Senate majority leader.


text: The United States Constitution designates the Vice President of the United States as president of the Senate. The Constitution also calls for a president pro tempore, to serve as the presiding officer when the president of the Senate (the vice president) is absent. In practice, neither the vice president nor the president pro tempore—customarily the most senior (longest-serving) senator in the majority party—actually presides over the Senate on a daily basis; that task is given to junior Senators of the majority party. Since the vice president may be of a different party from the majority and is not a Senate member subject to discipline, the rules of procedure of the Senate give the Vice President no power beyond the presiding role. For these reasons, it is the majority leader who, in practice, manages the Senate. This is in contrast to the House of Representatives, where the elected speaker of the House has a great deal of discretionary power and generally presides over votes on legislative bills.


text: The Democratic Party first selected a leader in 1920. The Republican Party first formally designated a leader in 1925.


title: Milkha Singh

text: Milkha Singh (20 November 1929 18 June 2021), also known as The Flying Sikh, was an Indian track and field sprinter who was introduced to the sport while serving in the Indian Army. He is the only athlete to win gold at 400 metres at the Asian Games as well as the Commonwealth Games. He also won gold medals in the 1958 and 1962 Asian Games. He represented India in the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome and the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. He was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth-highest civilian honour, in recognition of his sporting achievements.


title: Milkha Singh

text: The race for which Singh was best remembered is his fourth-place finish in the 400 metres final at the 1960 Olympic Games, which he had entered as one of the favourites. He led the race till the 200m mark before easing off, allowing others to pass him. Various records were broken in the race, which required a photo-finish and saw American Otis Davis being declared the winner by one-hundredth of a second over German Carl Kaufmann. Singh's fourth-place time of 45.73 seconds was the Indian national record for almost 40 years.


title: Milkha Singh

text: From beginnings that saw him orphaned and displaced during the Partition of India, Singh has become a sporting icon in his country. In 2008, journalist Rohit Brijnath described Singh as "the finest athlete India has ever produced".


title: Milkha Singh

text: Singh died of COVID-19 complications on 18 June 2021 at the age of 91 five days after his wife, Nirmal Saini.


title: Milkha Singh

text: Milkha Singh was born on 20 November 1929 into a Sikh family. His birthplace was Govindpura, a village from Muzaffargarh city in Punjab Province, British India (now Muzaffargarh District, Pakistan). He was one of 15 siblings, eight of whom died before the Partition of India. He was orphaned during the Partition when his parents, a brother and two sisters were killed in the violence that ensued between the villagers and Muslims who tried to convert them. He witnessed these killings.


title: Milkha Singh

text: Escaping the troubles in Punjab, where killings of Hindus and Sikhs were continuing, by moving to Delhi, India, in 1947, Singh lived for a short time with the family of his married sister and was briefly imprisoned at Tihar jail for travelling on a train without a ticket. His sister, Ishvar, sold some jewellery to obtain his release. He spent some time at a refugee camp in Purana Qila and at a resettlement colony in Shahdara, both in Delhi.


title: Milkha Singh

text: Singh became disenchanted with his life and considered becoming a dacoit but was instead persuaded by one of his brothers, Malkhan, to attempt recruitment to the Indian Army. He successfully gained entrance on his fourth attempt, in 1951, and while stationed at the Electrical Mechanical Engineering Centre in Secunderabad and he was introduced to athletics. He had run the 10km distance to and from school as a child and was selected by the army for special training in athletics after finishing sixth in a compulsory cross-country run for new recruits. Singh has acknowledged how the army introduced him to sport, saying that "I came from a remote village, I didn't know what running was, or the Olympics".


title: Milkha Singh

text: Singh represented India in the 200m and 400m competitions of the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games. His inexperience meant that he did not progress from the heat stages but a meeting with the eventual 400m champion at those Games, Charles Jenkins, both inspired him to greater things and provided him with information about training methods.


title: Milkha Singh

text: In 1958, Singh set records for the 200m and 400m in the National Games of India, held at Cuttack, and also won gold medals in the same events at the Asian Games. He then won a gold medal in the 400m (440 yards at this time) competition at the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games with a time of 46.6 seconds. This latter achievement made him the first gold medalist at the Commonwealth Games from independent India. Before Vikas Gowda won the gold in 2014, Milkha was the only Indian male to have won an individual athletics gold medal at those Games.


title: Milkha Singh

text: Singh was persuaded by Jawaharlal Nehru to set aside his memories of the Partition era to race successfully in 1960 against Abdul Khaliq in Pakistan, where a post-race comment by the then General Ayub Khan led to him acquiring the nickname of The Flying Sikh. Some sources say that he set a world record of 45.8 seconds in France, shortly before the Rome Olympics in the same year but the official report of the Games lists the record holder as Lou Jones, who ran 45.2 at Los Angeles in 1956. At those Olympics, he was involved in a close-run final race in the 400m competition, where he was placed fourth. Singh had beaten all the leading contenders other than Otis Davis, and a medal had been anticipated because of his good form. However, he made an error when leading the race at 250m, slowing down in the belief that his pace could not be sustained and looking round at his fellow competitors. Singh believes that these errors caused him to lose his medal opportunity and they are his "worst memory". Davis, Carl Kaufmann and Malcolm Spence all passed him, and a photo-finish resulted. Davis and Kaufman were both timed at a world-record breaking 44.9 seconds, while Spence and Singh went under the pre-Games Olympic record of 45.9 seconds, set in 1952 by George Rhoden and Herb McKenley, with times of 45.5 and 45.6 seconds, respectively. "The Age" noted in 2006 that "Milkha Singh is the only Indian to have broken an Olympic track record. Unfortunately he was the fourth man to do so in the same race" but the official Olympic report notes that Davis had already equalled the Rhoden/McKenley Olympic record in the quarter-finals and surpassed it with a time of 45.5 seconds in the semi-finals.


title: Milkha Singh

text: At the 1962 Asian Games, held in Jakarta, Singh won gold in the 400m and in the 4 x 400m relay. He attended the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo, where he was entered to compete in the 400m, the 4 x 100m relay and the 4 x 400m relay. He did not take part in either the 400m or the 4 x 100m relay and the Indian team of Milkha Singh, Makhan Singh, Amrit Pal and Ajmer Singh were eliminated when they finished fourth in the heat stages of the 4 x 400m.


title: Milkha Singh

text: There have been claims that Singh won 77 of his 80 races, but these are spurious. The number of races in which he participated is not verified, nor is the number of victories, but he lost a 400m race at the 1964 National Games in Calcutta to Makhan Singh and he did not finish first in any of his four races at the 1960 Olympic Games or the aforementioned qualification races at the 1956 Olympics.


title: Milkha Singh

text: Singh's time in the 1960 Olympics 400m final, which was run on a cinder track, set a national record that stood until 1998 when Paramjit Singh exceeded it on a synthetic track and with fully automatic timing that recorded 45.70 seconds. Although Singh's Olympic result of 45.6 seconds had been hand-timed, an electronic system at those Games had determined his record to be 45.73.


title: Milkha Singh

text: Singh was promoted from the rank of sepoy to junior commissioned officer in recognition of his successes in the 1958 Asian Games. He subsequently became Director of Sports in Punjab Ministry of Education, a post he retired from in 1998.


title: Milkha Singh

text: Singh was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth-highest civilian award, following his success in 1958. In 2001, he turned down an offer of the Arjuna Award from the Indian government, arguing that it was intended to recognise young sports people and not those such as him. He also thought that the Award was being inappropriately given to people who had little notable involvement as active sports people at all. He said that "I have been clubbed with sportspersons who are nowhere near the level that I had achieved" and that the award had become devalued.


title: Milkha Singh

text: All of Singh's medals have been donated to the nation. They were displayed at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi and later moved to a sports museum in Patiala, where a pair of running shoes that he wore in Rome are also displayed. In 2012, he donated the Adidas shoes that he had worn in the 1960 400m final to be sold in a charity auction organised by actor Rahul Bose.


title: Milkha Singh

text: Singh was admitted to the intensive care unit at Fortis Hospital in Mohali on 24 May 2021 with pneumonia caused by COVID-19. His condition was, for a while, described as stable, but he died on 18 June 2021 at 11:30pm in Chandigarh. His wife, Nirmal Saini, had died a few days earlier on 13 June 2021, also due to COVID-19. Singh was laid on his funeral pyre with a photo of his wife in his hands.


title: Milkha Singh

text: Singh and his daughter, Sonia Sanwalka, co-wrote his autobiography, titled "The Race of My Life". It was published in 2013. The book inspired "Bhaag Milkha Bhaag", a 2013 biographical film of Singh's life. The film is directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, and stars Farhan Akhtar in the title role, with Sonam Kapoor, Meesha Shafi and Divya Dutta in female lead roles. The film was widely acclaimed in India and won awards including the National Film Award for Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment at the National Film Awards, and 5 awards at the International Indian Film Academy Awards in 2014. The film made over crores. Singh sold the movie rights for one rupee but inserted a clause stating that a share of the profits would be given to the Milkha Singh Charitable Trust. The Trust was founded in 2003 with the aim of assisting poor and needy sportspeople.


title: Milkha Singh

text: In September 2017, Singh's wax statue – created by sculptors of Madame Tussauds in London – was unveiled at Chandigarh. It depicts Singh in running posture during his victorious run at the 1958 Commonwealth Games. The statue is placed at Madame Tussauds museum in New Delhi, India. After winning India's first track and field gold medal at the 2020 Olympics, Neeraj Chopra dedicated his victory to Singh.


title: Milkha Singh

text: , Singh lived in Chandigarh. He met Nirmal Saini, a former captain of the Indian women's volleyball team in Ceylon in 1955; they married in 1962 and had three daughters and a son, the golfer Jeev Milkha Singh. In 1999, they adopted the seven-year-old son of Havildar Bikram Singh, who had died in the Battle of Tiger Hill.


title: Dick Durbin

text: Richard Joseph Durbin (born November 21, 1944) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Illinois, a seat he has held since 1997. A member of the Democratic Party, Durbin has served as the Senate Democratic whip since 2005, the second-highest position in the Democratic leadership in the Senate, and as the Senate majority whip since 2021. He chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, and led the Ketanji Brown Jackson Supreme Court nomination hearings.


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin was born in East St. Louis, Illinois. He graduated from the School of Foreign Service and Georgetown University Law Center. Working in state legal counsel throughout the 1970s, he made an unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor of Illinois in 1978. Durbin was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982, representing the Springfield-based 20th congressional district.


title: Dick Durbin

text: After serving seven House terms, Durbin was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996 and reelected in 2002, 2008, 2014, and 2020. He has served as the Senate Democratic whip since 2005—under Harry Reid until 2017, and under Chuck Schumer since 2017. During that time, he had two stints as Senate majority whip (from 2007 to 2015, and since 2021), and two as minority whip (from 2005 to 2007 and from 2015 to 2021). He is the dean of Illinois's congressional delegation.


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin was born in East St. Louis, Illinois, to an Irish-American father, William Durbin, and a Lithuanian-born mother, Anna ("née" Kutkin; Lithuanian: Ona Kutkaitė). He graduated from Assumption High School in East St. Louis in 1962. During his high school years he worked at a meatpacking plant. He earned a B.S. from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 1966. Durbin interned in Senator Paul Douglas's office during his senior year in college, and worked on Douglas's unsuccessful 1966 reelection campaign. Durbin adopted the nickname "Dick", which he did not previously use, after Douglas mistakenly called him by that name.


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin earned his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1969 and was admitted to the Illinois bar later that year. After graduating from law school, Durbin started a law practice in Springfield. He was legal counsel to Lieutenant Governor Paul Simon from 1969 to 1972, and then legal counsel to the Illinois State Senate Judiciary Committee from 1972 to 1982. Durbin was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for the Illinois State Senate in 1976. He ran for lieutenant governor in 1978 as the running mate of State Superintendent of Schools Michael Bakalis. They were defeated by Republican incumbents Jim Thompson and Dave O'Neal. Durbin then worked as an adjunct professor at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine for five years while maintaining his law practice.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In 1982, Durbin won the Democratic nomination for the now-eliminated 20th congressional district, which included Macon and most of Springfield. He scored a 1,400-vote victory, defeating 22-year incumbent Paul Findley, a U.S. Navy veteran, whose district lines had been substantially redrawn to remove rural farms and add economically depressed Macon, replacing 35% of the voters and including more Democrats as part of the decennial redistricting. Durbin's campaign emphasized unemployment and financial difficulties facing farmers, and told voters that electing him would send "a message to Washington and to President Reagan that our economic policies are not working." Durbin benefited from donations by pro-Israel groups, especially AIPAC, that opposed Findley's advocacy on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization in the year before the election. Durbin was reelected six times, rarely facing serious opposition, and winning more than 55% of the vote in each election except 1994.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In 1996, Durbin defeated Pat Quinn to become the Democratic nominee to replace the retiring incumbent, Senator Paul Simon, a longtime friend. He faced Republican State Representative Al Salvi in the general election. Although the election had been expected to be competitive, Durbin benefited from Bill Clinton's 18-point win in Illinois that year and defeated Salvi by 15 points. He was reelected in 2002, 2008, 2014 and 2020, each time by at least 10 points.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In November 1998, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle appointed Durbin Assistant Democratic Whip. After the 2004 election, Durbin became the Democratic Whip in the 109th Congress. He became the first senator from Illinois to serve as a Senate Whip since Everett Dirksen in the late 1950s, and the fifth to serve in Senate leadership. Durbin served as assistant minority leader from 2005 to 2007, when the Democrats became the majority party in the Senate. He then assumed the role of assistant majority leader, or majority whip.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In addition to his caucus duties, Durbin chairs the Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In 2000, Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore reportedly considered asking Durbin to be his running mate for Vice President of the United States. Gore ultimately chose Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman.


title: Dick Durbin

text: When Majority Leader Harry Reid faced a difficult reelection fight in 2010, some pundits predicted a possibly heated fight to succeed him between Durbin and Senator Chuck Schumer, who is well known for his fund-raising prowess. Reid's reelection rendered such speculation moot. In 2021, Durbin became Senate Majority Whip again for the 117th Congress, as well as becoming chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is the first time that the whip of either party has served as chair of this committee.


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin is considered one of Congress's most liberal members. His voting record typically defers to the Democratic caucus position, consistent with his leadership position as Whip, which has the duty of persuading senators to follow the party line in their votes.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In 2019, Durbin co-signed a Senate resolution affirming support of a Two-State Solution and opposition to a proposed Israeli annexation of the West Bank.


title: Dick Durbin

text: As a congressman, Durbin voted consistently to uphold existing restrictions on abortion or impose new limitations, including supporting a Constitutional amendment that would have nullified "Roe v. Wade". Beginning in his second Senate term, he reversed his position and has since voted to maintain access to abortion, including support for Medicaid funding of it, and opposed any limitation he considers a practical or potential encroachment upon "Roe". Durbin has maintained that this reversal came about due to personal reflection and his growing awareness of potentially harmful implications of his previous policy with respect to women facing dangerous pregnancies. While visiting a home for abused children in Quincy, Illinois, the director, a friend, asked him to speak with two girls who were about to turn 18 and be turned out of state care. Talking with those girls, victims of gang rape and incest, made him reconsider his position on the subject. He says, "I still oppose abortion and would try my best to convince any woman in my family to carry the baby to term. But I believe that ultimately the decision must be made by the woman, her doctor, her family, and her conscience."


title: Dick Durbin

text: In September 2020, Durbin voted to confirm judges Stephen McGlynn and David W. Dugan, who have criticized Supreme Court rulings such as "Roe", to lifetime appointments to the federal judiciary in Illinois. Durbin opposed the 2022 overturning of "Roe v. Wade", saying, "millions of Americans are waking up in a country where they have fewer rights than their parents and grandparents."


title: Dick Durbin

text: In 2019, Durbin and 34 other senators introduced the Child Care for Working Families Act. The bill was expected to create 770,000 new child care jobs and ensure families under 75% of the state median income would not pay for child care, with higher-earning families having to pay "their fair share for care on a sliding scale, regardless of the number of children they have." The legislation also supported universal access to high-quality preschool programs for all three- and four-year-olds. Additionally, it would have changed child care compensation and training to aid both teachers and caregivers. The bill was referred to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, where it did not receive a hearing or vote.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In April 2017, Durbin was one of eight Democratic senators to sign a letter to President Trump noting government-subsidized Chinese steel had been placed into the American market in recent years below cost and had hurt the domestic steel industry and the iron ore industry that fed it, calling on Trump to raise the steel issue with President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping in his meeting with him.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In July 2017, Durbin, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris introduced the Dignity for Incarcerated Women Act, legislation implementing a ban on the shackling of pregnant women and mandating the Bureau of Prisons to form superior visitation policies for parents along with providing parenting classes and health products such as tampons and pads. The bill also restricted prison employees from entering restrooms of the opposite sex except in pressing circumstances.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In December 2018, Durbin voted for the First Step Act, legislation aimed at reducing recidivism rates among federal prisoners by expanding job training and other programs in addition to expanding early-release programs and modifying sentencing laws such as mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, "to more equitably punish drug offenders."


title: Dick Durbin

text: On March 2, 2005, then-Senator Jon Corzine presented the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act (S. 495) to the Senate. Durbin was one of 40 senators to co-sponsor the bill. The bill asked all people involved in or deemed in some way responsible for the genocide in Darfur to be denied visas and entrance to the U.S.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In 2006, Durbin co-sponsored the Durbin-Leahy Amendment to the Supplemental Appropriations bill for emergency funding to instill peace in Darfur. In 2006, he also co-sponsored the Lieberman Resolution and the Clinton Amendment.


title: Dick Durbin

text: On June 7, 2007, Durbin introduced the Sudan Disclosure Enforcement Act, which was aimed "at enhancing the U.S. Government's ability to impose penalties on violators of U.S. sanctions against Sudan." The bill called for the U.N. Security Council to vote on sanctions against the Sudanese Government for the genocide in Darfur.


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin has voted for all Darfur-related legislation. In addition to the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act, he also supported the Civilian Protection No-Fly Zone Act, the Hybrid Force Resolution, and the Sudan Divestment Authorization Act.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In October 2017, Durbin condemned the genocide of the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar and called for a stronger response to it.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In 2005, Durbin compared the U.S. treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base to the atrocities committed by "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime—Pol Pot or others—that had no concern for human beings." Demands that he apologize were initially rebuffed, but Durbin later apologized to the military for his remarks, which he said were "a very poor choice of words."


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin received an "F" grade from the National Rifle Association for his consistent support for gun control.


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin sent Attorney General Jeff Sessions a letter in May 2017 asking for support in expanding the Chicago Police Department's violence prevention programs by expanding access to the Strategic Decision Support Centers and the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network. He also asked the Justice Department to support the Stop Illegal Trafficking in Firearms Act, which would stop illegal state-to-state gun trafficking.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In response to mass shootings, such as the Orlando nightclub shooting and Las Vegas shooting, Durbin has repeatedly called for expanded gun control laws, saying that Congress would be "complicit" in the shooting deaths of people if it did not act.


title: Dick Durbin

text: After the October 2017 Las Vegas shooting, Durbin was one of 24 senators to sign a letter to National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins espousing the view that it was critical the NIH "dedicate a portion of its resources to the public health consequences of gun violence" at a time when 93 Americans die per day from gun-related fatalities and noted that the Dickey Amendment did not prohibit objective, scientific inquiries into shooting death prevention.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In January 2019, Durbin was one of 40 senators to introduce the Background Check Expansion Act, a bill that would require background checks for either the sale or transfer of all firearms including all unlicensed sellers. Exceptions to the bill's background check requirement included transfers between members of law enforcement, loaning firearms for either hunting or sporting events temporarily, providing firearms as gifts to members of one's immediate family, firearms transferred as part of an inheritance, or giving a firearm to another person temporarily for immediate self-defense.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In March 2007, Durbin introduced the African Health Capacity Investment Act of 2007 to the Senate. The bill was designed so that over three years, the U.S. would supply over $600 million to help create safer medical facilities and working conditions, and to recruit and train doctors from all over North America.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In December 2007, Durbin and two other senators co-sponsored Senator John Kerry's Nondiscrimination in Travel and Immigration Act. In March 2007, he joined 32 other senators to co-sponsor the Early Treatment for HIV Act.


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin voted to approve the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists. This act granted the executive broad military powers and was used to justify the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and many later military interventions.


title: Dick Durbin

text: On September 9, 2002, Durbin was the first of four Democratic senators (the others being Bob Graham, Feinstein, and Levin) on the Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), responding to the Bush administration's request for a joint resolution authorizing a preemptive war on Iraq without having prepared a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), to ask Central Intelligence Director George Tenet to prepare an NIE on the status of Iraq's Weapon of mass destruction programs. Durbin was also one of few senators who read the resulting October 1, 2002, NIE, "Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction".


title: Dick Durbin

text: On September 29, 2002, Durbin held a news conference in Chicago to announce that "absent dramatic changes" in the resolution, he would vote against the resolution authorizing war on Iraq. On October 2, at the first high-profile Chicago anti-Iraq War rally in Federal Plaza, he repeated his promise to oppose the resolution in a letter read during the rally.


title: Dick Durbin

text: On October 10, the U.S. Senate failed to pass Durbin's amendment to the resolution to strike "the continuing threat posed by Iraq" and insert "an imminent threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction", by a 30–70 vote, with most Democratic senators voting for the amendment and 21 joining all 49 Republican senators voting against it. On October 11, Durbin was one of 23 senators to vote against the joint resolution authorizing the Iraq War.


title: Dick Durbin

text: On April 25, 2007, Durbin said that as an intelligence committee member he knew in 2002 from classified information that the Bush Administration was misleading the American people into a war on Iraq, but could not reveal this because, as an intelligence committee member, he was sworn to secrecy. This revelation prompted an online attack ad against Durbin by the National Republican Senatorial Committee.


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin authored the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, legislation that corrected some of the imbalance in cocaine sentencing.


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin is the chief proponent of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. The bill would provide certain students who entered or were brought to the nation illegally with the opportunity to earn conditional permanent residency if they arrived in the U.S. as children; graduated from a U.S. high school; have been in the country continuously for at least five years before the bill's enactment; submit biometric data; pass a criminal background check; and complete two years toward a four-year degree from an accredited university or complete at least two years in the military within a five-year period. In 2013, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center presented Durbin with the inaugural Nancy Pelosi Award for Immigration & Civil Rights Policy for his leadership on this issue.


title: Dick Durbin

text: On January 28, 2013, Durbin was a member of a bipartisan group of eight senators, the Gang of Eight, which announced principles for comprehensive immigration reform (CIR).


title: Dick Durbin

text: In April 2018, Durbin was one of five senators to send acting director of ICE Thomas Homan a letter about standards the agency used to determine how to detain a pregnant woman, requesting that pregnant women not be held in custody except in extraordinary circumstances after reports "that ICE has failed to provide critical medical care to pregnant women in immigration detention—resulting in miscarriages and other negative health outcomes".


title: Dick Durbin

text: In July 2018, Durbin said Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen should resign over the Trump administration family separation policy. He argued it "is and was a cruel policy inconsistent with the bedrock values of the nation," adding someone "in this administration has to accept responsibility." Tyler Houlton, a DHS spokesman, replied on Twitter that "obstructionists in Congress should get to work".


title: Dick Durbin

text: In July 2019, after reports that the Trump administration intended to end protections of spouses, parents and children of active-duty service members from deportation, Durbin was one of 22 senators to sign a letter led by Tammy Duckworth arguing that the program allowed service members the ability "to fight for the United States overseas and not worry that their spouse, children, or parents will be deported while they are away" and that the program's termination would cause personal hardship for service members in combat.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In October 2019, Durbin blocked the passage of S.386, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, which aims to eliminate the per-country numerical limitation for all employment-based immigrants and to increase the per-country limitation for all family-sponsored immigrants from 7% to 15%. He was one of the original co-sponsors of a similar bill, in the 112th Congress (2011–2012). The only difference between the two versions is that S.1983 had the language "Includes nationals of Ireland coming to the United States under a treaty of commerce to perform specialty occupation services" in the nonimmigrant E-3 visa category.


title: Dick Durbin

text: The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, argued, "The per country limits caused the backlog to develop unevenly. They result in an inequity between the proportion of applicants from certain countries and the proportion of green cards that nationals of those countries receive. The Indian backlog means that they carry almost the entire burden of the green card shortage. While they wait in line, nationals of other countries get to cut to the front of the line. Going forward, new EB2/EB3 applicants from India in 2019 will face astronomical wait times. At the current pace, it will take 49 years to process the Indian backlog—if people stick it out that long—and nearly 50,000 Indians would die before then. During that entire half century, other immigrants would keep bypassing Indians with almost no wait at all."


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin argued that bill S.386 would prioritize people of Indian and Chinese origin, who have been in the green card backlog for years, at the expense of future immigrants from other countries. After blocking S.386, Durbin proposed his own bill, which would almost triple the number of employment-based green cards and eliminate country caps.


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin agreed that his bill would not pass in the current administration and promised for a bipartisan agreement to pass S.386.


title: Dick Durbin

text: "The point is, it cannot pass. Not with Trump in office", said Aman Kapoor, the leader of Immigration Voice, an activist group. "Indians need a solution now", Kapoor said. "Every day, you see someone in the backlog is dying. Or kids are aging out. People are very stressed out because of the backlog." Proponents of S.386 argue the bill will be a fair first-in-first-out system in place of the current discriminatory system that has resulted in a decades-long backlog of high-skilled immigrants who have already applied for a green card. They also argue that basing employment green card allotment on an immutable characteristic like national origin goes against the spirit of Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlaws national origin discrimination in employment, since national origin has no place in employment decisions. But opponents of the bill, mostly those who currently benefit from the birth-country reservation, argue that the discrimination argument is flawed, as getting a green card is not a protected right of any foreign worker. Opponents also argue that legislative proposals such as S.386 do not address the issue of too few employment-based green cards for an economy that has doubled in size since the law establishing their current statutory limits was passed in 1990. Opponents want to keep the per-country reservation in place in skilled immigration until visa numbers are increased.


title: Dick Durbin

text: Congressional Research Service (CRS) published a report stating that with the current immigration laws, the wait time for an Indian national of FY2020 would be 195 years, for a Chinese national 18 years, and for a national from any other country 0 years. Under amended S.386, the wait time for all applicants would be 37 years, regardless of their national origin by FY2030. Increasing green card numbers, along with ending per-country limits on employment-based green cards would be an ideal solution.


title: Dick Durbin

text: The immigrants in backlog frustrated by Durbin's silence conducted several rallies, including a peaceful rally on July 4. On August 31, 2020, he released his hold and agreed to pass the bill with unanimous consent. But Senator Rick Scott blocked the bill, seeking an 18,000 green-card reservation for people from certain countries.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In 1987, Durbin introduced major tobacco regulation legislation in the House. The bill banned cigarette smoking on airline flights of two hours or less. Representative C. W. Bill Young joined him in saying that the rights of smokers to smoke ends where their smoking affects other people's health and safety, such as on airplanes. The bill passed as part of the 1988 transportation spending bill. In 1989, Congress banned cigarette smoking on all domestic airline flights.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In March 1994, Durbin proposed an amendment to the Improving America's Schools Act that required schools receiving federal drug prevention money to teach elementary and secondary students about the dangers of tobacco, drugs, and alcohol. The amendment also required schools to warn students about tobacco and teach them how to resist peer pressure to smoke.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In February 2008, Durbin called on Congress to support a measure that would allow the Food and Drug Administration to oversee the tobacco industry. The measure would require companies to disclose the contents of tobacco products, restrict advertising and promotions, and mandate the removal of harmful ingredients from tobacco products. It would also prohibit tobacco companies from using terms like "low risk," "light," and "mild" on the packaging.


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin attributes his stance against tobacco smoking to his father, who smoked two packs of cigarettes a day and died of lung cancer.


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin spearheaded a nonbinding resolution in July 2018 "warning President Trump not to let the Russian government question diplomats and other officials". The resolution states the U.S. "should refuse to make available any current or former diplomat, civil servant, political appointee, law enforcement official or member of the Armed Forces of the United States for questioning by the government of Vladimir Putin". It passed 98–0.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In December 2018, after United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the Trump administration was suspending its obligations in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 60 days if Russia continued to violate the treaty, Durbin was one of 26 senators to sign a letter expressing concern over the administration "now abandoning generations of bipartisan U.S. leadership around the paired goals of reducing the global role and number of nuclear weapons and ensuring strategic stability with America's nuclear-armed adversaries" and calling on Trump to continue arms negotiations.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In 2007, speaking as Senate Majority Whip, Durbin said on record that "It's time to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine."


title: Dick Durbin

text: In 2010, Durbin cosponsored and passed from committee the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, a bill to combat media piracy by blacklisting websites. Many opposed to the bill argue that it violates First Amendment rights and promotes censorship. The announcement of the bill was followed by a wave of protest from digital rights activists, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, calling it censorship and stating that action could be taken against all users of sites on which only some users are uploading infringing material.


title: Dick Durbin

text: On April 27, 2009, in an interview with WJJG talk radio host Ray Hanania, Durbin accused banks of creating the financial crisis of 2007–2010. Durbin expressed a belief that many of the banks responsible for creating the crisis "own the place", referring to the power wielded by the banking lobby on Capitol Hill.


title: Dick Durbin

text: On September 18, 2008, Durbin attended a closed meeting with congressional leaders, then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, and was urged to craft legislation to help financially troubled banks. That same day (trade effective the next day), Durbin sold mutual fund shares worth $42,696 and reinvested it all with Warren Buffett.


title: Dick Durbin

text: On February 26, 2009, Durbin introduced the Protecting Consumers from Unreasonable Credit Rates Act of 2009, calling for a maximum annual interest rate cap of 36%, including all interest and fees. The bill was intended to put an end to predatory lending activities.


title: Dick Durbin

text: Shortly after Governor Rod Blagojevich's arrest on federal corruption charges on December 9, 2008, Durbin called for the Illinois legislature to quickly pass legislation for a special election to fill then-President-elect Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat. He stated that no United States Senate appointment of Blagojevich's could produce a credible replacement.


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid led all 50 members of the Senate Democratic Caucus in writing Blagojevich to urge him to resign and not name a successor to Obama following Blagojevich's arrest.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In January 2005, Durbin changed his longstanding position on sugar tariffs and price supports. After several years of voting to keep sugar quotas and price supports, he now favors abolishing the program. "The sugar program depended on congressmen like me from states that grew corn", Durbin said, referring to the fact that, though they were formerly a single entity, the sugar market and the corn syrup market are now largely separate.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In May 2006, Durbin campaigned to maintain a $0.54 per gallon tariff on imported ethanol. He justified the tariff by joining Barack Obama in stating that "ethanol imports are neither necessary nor a practical response to current gasoline prices", arguing instead that domestic ethanol production is sufficient and expanding. The American Coalition for Ethanol gave him a rating of 100%.


title: Dick Durbin

text: Among Durbin's legislative causes are environmental protection, particularly the protection of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The League of Conservation Voters gives him a rating of 89%. Sierra Club gives him a 90% rating.


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin has also been a major proponent of expanded Amtrak funding and support. In October 2007, he opposed a bill in the Illinois General Assembly that would allow three casinos to be built, saying, "I really, really think we ought to stop and catch our breath and say, 'Is this the future of Illinois? That every time we want to do something we'll just build more casinos?'"


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin reintroduced the Fair Elections Now Act during the 112th Congress. The bill would provide public funds to candidates who do not take political donations larger than $100 from any donor.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In April 2013, Durbin chaired a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights about the moral, legal and constitutional issues surrounding targeted killings and the use of drones. Durbin said, "Many in the national security community are concerned that we may undermine our counterterrorism efforts if we do not carefully measure the benefits and costs of targeted killing."


title: Dick Durbin

text: In August 2013, Durbin was one of 23 Democratic senators to sign a letter to the Defense Department warning of some payday lenders "offering predatory loan products to service members at exorbitant triple-digit effective interest rates and loan products that do not include the additional protections envisioned by the law" and asserting that service members and their families "deserve the strongest possible protections and swift action to ensure that all forms of credit offered to members of our armed forces are safe and sound."


title: Dick Durbin

text: In March 2018, Durbin was one of 10 senators to sign a letter spearheaded by Jeff Merkley lambasting a proposal by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai that would curb the scope of benefits from the Lifeline program during a period when roughly 6.5 million people in poor communities relied on Lifeline to receive access to high-speed internet, arguing that it was Pai's "obligation to the American public, as the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, to improve the Lifeline program and ensure that more Americans can afford access, and have means of access, to broadband and phone service." The senators also advocated insuring that "Lifeline reaches more Americans in need of access to communication services."


title: Dick Durbin

text: In March 2019, Durbin was one of 10 Democratic senators to sign a letter to Salman of Saudi Arabia requesting the release of human rights lawyer Waleed Abu al-Khair and writer Raif Badawi, women's rights activists Loujain al-Hathloul and Samar Badawi, and Dr. Walid Fitaih. The senators wrote, "Not only have reputable international organizations detailed the arbitrary detention of peaceful activists and dissidents without trial for long periods, but the systematic discrimination against women, religious minorities and mistreatment of migrant workers and others has also been well-documented."


title: Dick Durbin

text: In April 2019, Durbin was one of 34 senators to sign a letter to Trump encouraging him "to listen to members of your own Administration and reverse a decision that will damage our national security and aggravate conditions inside Central America", asserting that Trump had "consistently expressed a flawed understanding of U.S. foreign assistance" since becoming president and that he was "personally undermining efforts to promote U.S. national security and economic prosperity" by preventing the use of Fiscal Year 2018 national security funding. The senators argued that foreign assistance to Central American countries created less migration to the U.S. by helping to improve conditions in those countries.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In April 2019, Durbin was one of six senators to send CFPB director Kathy Kraninger a letter expressing concern that "CFPB leadership has abandoned its supervision and enforcement activities related to federal student loan servicers" and opining that such behavior displayed "a shocking disregard for the financial well-being of our nation's public servants, including teachers, first responders, and members of the military." The senators requested that Kraninger clarify the CFPB's role in overseeing the Public Service Loan Forgiveness's student loan servicers handling since December 2017, such as examinations.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In April 2019, Durbin was one of 41 senators to sign a bipartisan letter to the housing subcommittee praising the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development's Section 4 Capacity Building program as authorizing "HUD to partner with national nonprofit community development organizations to provide education, training, and financial support to local community development corporations (CDCs) across the country" and expressing disappointment that Trump's budget "has slated this program for elimination after decades of successful economic and community development." The senators wrote of their hope that the subcommittee would support continued funding for Section 4 in Fiscal Year 2020.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In June 2019, Durbin was one of 15 senators to introduce the Affordable Medications Act, legislation intended to promote transparency by mandating that pharmaceutical companies disclose the amount of money going toward research and development in addition to both marketing and executives' salaries. The bill also abolished the restriction that stopped the federal Medicare program from using its buying power to negotiate lower drug prices for beneficiaries and hinder drug company monopoly practices used to keep prices high and disable less expensive generics entering the market.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In August 2019, Durbin, three other Senate Democrats, and Bernie Sanders signed a letter to Acting FDA Commissioner Ned Sharpless in response to Novartis falsifying data as part of an attempt to gain the FDA's approval for its new gene therapy Zolgensma, writing that it was "unconscionable that a drug company would provide manipulated data to federal regulators in order to rush its product to market, reap federal perks, and charge the highest amount in American history for its medication."


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin was participating in the 2021 United States Electoral College vote count when pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Along with other senators and staff, Durbin ran out of the Senate Chamber after the attackers, whom he called "extremists", breached the Capitol. He then evacuated to a secure location with Pelosi, McConnell and Schumer. Durbin blamed Trump for the attack. He also said Senator Josh Hawley was partially responsible for the storming. He called for Trump's removal through the invocation of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution or impeachment.


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin received media attention on June 14, 2005, when in the U.S. Senate chambers he compared interrogation techniques used at Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay, as reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to those utilized by such regimes as Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and the Khmer Rouge:


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin's comments drew widespread criticism that comparing U.S. actions to such regimes insulted the United States and victims of genocide. Radio host Rush Limbaugh and White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove accused him of treason, while former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich called on the Senate to censure him. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, whose son Patrick was serving in U.S. Army, also called on Durbin to apologize for his remarks, saying that he thought it was a "disgrace to say that any man or woman in the military would act like that." John Wertheim, Democratic state party chairman of New Mexico, and Jim Pederson, Arizona Democratic party chairman, also criticized Durbin's remarks. The leader of the Veterans of Foreign Wars also demanded an apology, as did the Anti-Defamation League


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin initially did not apologize, but on June 21, 2005, he went before the Senate, saying, "More than most people, a senator lives by his words ... occasionally words fail us, occasionally we will fail words."


title: Dick Durbin

text: Former "The New Republic" editor Andrew Sullivan praised Durbin for raising serious moral issues about U.S. policy. Other commentators, including commentator Markos Moulitsas Zúniga of "Daily Kos", condemned Durbin for apologizing to his critics, arguing he made a mistake in making himself, rather than detention and torture concerns at Guantanamo Bay, the focus of media coverage.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In July 2014, Americas PAC, a Political Action Committee designed to elect conservative Republicans, released a radio advertisement attacking Durbin's staff salaries. This was based on a "Washington Times" article that stated Durbin's female staff members made $11,000 less annually than his male staffers. In response, lawyers representing Durbin submitted a letter claiming the information in the ad was false and that the radio stations would be liable for airing the ad, with the possibility of losing their FCC license. The radio station stated the sources provided to back up the information provided by Americas PAC were checked and verified and that they would keep the ad on air.


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin and his wife Loretta have had three children, Christine, Jennifer and Paul. After several weeks in the hospital with complications due to a congenital heart condition, Christine died on November 1, 2008, at age 40.


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin's wife was a lobbyist, and it was reported by the "Chicago Tribune" in 2014 that some of her "clients have received federal funding promoted by [Durbin]". In addition to announcing the award of monies to ten clients of his wife's lobbying firm, these conflicts included her lobbying firm receiving a one-year contract with a housing nonprofit group around the time Durbin went to bat for the organization; a state university receiving funds through an earmark by Durbin when his wife was its lobbyist; and Durbin arranging federal money for a public health nonprofit when his wife was seeking state support for the same group. The Durbins maintain that they try to avoid conflicts of interest.


title: Dick Durbin

text: Durbin is Roman Catholic. In 2004, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield in Illinois barred him from receiving communion because he voted against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. The current bishop of the diocese said Durbin stays away from his Springfield parish because "he doesn't want to make a scene". Durbin responded to the communion ban in 2004 that he is accountable to his constituents, even if it means defying Church teachings. In 2018, Bishop Thomas John Paprocki affirmed the decision to deny Durbin communion in the Springfield Diocese after Durbin's vote against the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.


title: Dick Durbin

text: In 2017, Durbin was criticized for requesting a clarification from then Court of Appeals nominee Amy Coney Barrett during her Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing about her self-descriptive terminology "orthodox Catholic." He contended that might unfairly characterize Catholics who may not agree with the church's positions about abortion or the death penalty. She contended, "litigants and the general public are entitled to impartial justice, and that may be something that a judge who is heedful of ecclesiastical pronouncements cannot dispense." Barrett opined that judges aren't bound by precedent conflicting with the Constitution. She wrote that judges could recuse themselves from hearing matters if their faith conflicted with issues to be decided in cases they might otherwise hear. An article in the "National Review" contended, "Senators must inquire about these issues when considering lifetime appointments because ensuring impartiality and fidelity to precedent are critical for the rule of law." The issue prompted questions regarding the application of Article VI, Section 3 of the Constitution, which mandates: "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."


title: Aditya Dhar

text: Aditya Dhar (born 12 March 1983) is an Indian director, screenwriter and lyricist who works in Hindi films. He started his career as a writer and lyricist for "Kabul Express, Aakrosh and Haal-e-Dil". Dhar made his directorial debut in 2019 with the war film "" which he also co-wrote. The film received high critical acclaim and ranks among the highest-grossing Hindi films of all time. It won him the National Film Award for Best Director and the Filmfare Award for Best Debut Director.


title: Aditya Dhar

text: Dhar was born on 12 March 1983 in New Delhi, India. He married Yami Gautam on 4 June 2021. Dhar is a Kashmiri Pandit.


title: Aditya Dhar

text: In 2019, Dhar made his directorial debut with "", an action film based on the 2016 Uri attack, starring Vicky Kaushal, Yami Gautam and Paresh Rawal in pivotal roles and produced by Ronnie Screwvala under the RSVP Movies banner. Filmed in Serbia, the film is fictionally dramatised account of the true events of the retaliation to the 2016 Uri attack. "Uri" earned in India, and over worldwide, making it the tenth highest-grossing Indian film domestically. Dhar was awarded with the National Film Award for Best Director and the Filmfare Award for Best Debut Director.


title: Aditya Dhar

text: Dhar launched his own production company named Aditya Dhar Films in 2021. He is set to re-team with Kaushal in the mythological based superhero movie "The Immortal Ashwatthama" co-starring Sara Ali Khan. It is a planned trilogy backed by Ronnie Screwvala. The film was announced on the second anniversary of the release of "Uri" and was set to start filming in mid-2021 but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in India and budget concerns.


title: Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66

text: The Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66, also known as the Indonesian genocide, Indonesian Communist Purge, or Indonesian politicide (), were large-scale killings and civil unrest primarily targeting members of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI). Other affected groups included communist sympathisers, Gerwani women, ethnic Javanese Abangan, ethnic Chinese, atheists, alleged "unbelievers" and alleged leftists. It is estimated that between 500,000 to 1,000,000 people were killed during the main period of violence from October 1965 to March 1966. The atrocities were instigated by the Indonesian Army under Suharto. Research and declassified documents demonstrate the Indonesian authorities received support from foreign countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom.


title: Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66

text: It began as an anti-communist purge following a controversial attempted "coup d'état" by the 30 September Movement. According to the most widely published estimates at least 500,000 to 1.2 million people were killed, with some estimates going as high as two to three million. The purge was a pivotal event in the transition to the "New Order" and the elimination of PKI as a political force, with impacts on the global Cold War. The upheavals led to the fall of President Sukarno and the commencement of Suharto's three-decade authoritarian presidency.


title: Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66

text: The abortive coup attempt released pent-up communal hatreds in Indonesia; these were fanned by the Indonesian Army, which quickly blamed the PKI. Additionally, the intelligence agencies of the United States, United Kingdom and Australia engaged in black propaganda campaigns against Indonesian communists. During the Cold War, the United States, its government, and its Western allies had the goal of halting the spread of communism and bringing countries into the sphere of Western Bloc influence. Britain had additional reasons for seeking Sukarno's removal, as his government was involved in an undeclared war with the neighbouring Federation of Malaya, a Commonwealth federation of former British colonies.


title: Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66

text: Communists were purged from political, social, and military life, and the PKI itself was disbanded and banned. Mass killings began in October 1965, in the weeks following the coup attempt, and reached their peak over the remainder of the year before subsiding in the early months of 1966. They started in the capital, Jakarta, and spread to Central and East Java, and later Bali. Thousands of local vigilantes and Army units killed actual and alleged PKI members. Killings occurred across the country, with the most intense in the PKI strongholds of Central Java, East Java, Bali, and northern Sumatra.


title: Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66

text: It is possible that over one million suspected PKI members and alleged communist sympathizers were imprisoned at one time or another. Sukarno's balancing act of "Nasakom" (nationalism, religion, and communism) unravelled. His most significant pillar of support, the PKI, was effectively eliminated by the other two pillars—the Army and political Islam; and the Army was on the way to gaining unchallenged power. In March 1967, Sukarno was stripped of his remaining authority by Indonesia's provisional parliament, and Suharto was named Acting President. In March 1968, Suharto was formally elected president.


title: Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66

text: The killings are skipped over in most Indonesian history textbooks and have received little attention by Indonesians due to their suppression under the Suharto regime, as well as receiving little international attention. The search for satisfactory explanations for the scale and frenzy of the violence has challenged scholars from all ideological perspectives. The possibility of returning to similar upheavals is cited as a factor in the "New Order" administration's political conservatism and tight control of the political system. Vigilance and stigma against a perceived communist threat remained a hallmark of Suharto's doctrine, and it is still in force even today.