WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said Wednesday he will not seek reelection in 2026, ending his more than four-decade career representing Illinois and accelerating a generational shift in Senate Democratic leadership where he has long held the No. 2 position.
Durbin, 80, is in his fifth Senate term and was first elected to the House in 1982. His decision not to run will set off a scramble for his Senate seat in solidly Democratic Illinois and for his leadership position in Washington as many in the party agitate for a new and more aggressive approach to confronting Republican President Donald Trump in his second term.
“The decision of whether to run has not been easy," Durbin said in a video posted to X. “I truly love the job of being a United States senator. But in my heart I know it’s time to pass the torch.”
Durbin served seven terms in the House before succeeding his mentor, Paul Simon, in the Senate in 1996. Durbin has been the No. 2 Senate Democrat since 2005. From that post, he helped shape the career of an up-and-comer from Illinois, Barack Obama, who was only four years into his first term in the Senate when he was elected president. Obama said in a post on X after Durbin's announcement that “I would not have been a United States Senator – and certainly would not have been President – had it not been for Dick’s support.”
As the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during Democratic President Joe Biden's term, Durbin led the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in 2022. He also organized the Democrats' pushback when Trump and Senate Republicans pushed through the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett in late 2020.
Durbin is part of a Senate leadership team that has been in place for almost two decades, alongside the current Senate Democratic leader, New York's Chuck Schumer, 74, and the late Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who retired in 2017 and died in 2021. The race for Durbin's No. 2 spot is likely to be seen as an early test for who could eventually replace Schumer as younger members of the caucus have eyed a new generation of leaders.
Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, one of the Democrats who is considered a possible contender for the second-ranking job, put out a statement within minutes of Durbin's announcement saying that Durbin has been “a pillar of leadership, integrity, and unwavering dedication to the people of his home state of Illinois and the nation.”
Among Durbin’s more significant legislative achievements, he is largely credited with putting in motion the movement to ban indoor smoking. Having watched his 53-year-old father die of lung cancer when he was 14, Durbin won approval of legislation he sponsored in 1987 prohibiting smoking on short commercial flights and expanded it to nearly all domestic flights two years later.
“People started asking, ‘If secondhand smoke wasn’t safe on airplanes — why is it safe in public buildings, schools, hospitals or restaurants?’ The answer is simple: It’s not,” Durbin said on the 25th anniversary of the law.
In the early 2000s, he introduced the DREAM Act, which would give immigrants in the U.S. illegally who grew up in the country a pathway toward U.S. citizenship.
It has never become law, but in 2010, Durbin and Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., wrote Obama asking him to stop deporting so-called Dreamers. Obama responded with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which has covered about 830,000 immigrants, according to Durbin’s office.
Durbin was also instrumental in reversing a war on drugs-era law that penalized crack cocaine in a 100-to-1 ratio to powder cocaine, a law that disproportionately hit Black defendants with long prison terms. The new law was made retroactive, reducing the sentences for those serving time for crack.
With Republican and Democratic co-sponsors, Durbin pushed the First Step Act, which Trump signed into law in 2018. The criminal justice system revamp aimed to make sentencing laws fairer and provide programs to help people who are incarcerated transition in returning to society.
Richard Durbin was born in 1944 in East St. Louis. In 1966, after graduating from Georgetown University, he interned for Sen. Paul Douglas, whose seat he now holds. It was Douglas, who lost election to a fourth term in 1966, who once mistakenly called him “Dick,” a nickname Durbin adopted.
Durbin earned a law degree from Georgetown and worked as legal counsel for Simon, who was lieutenant governor in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and then for the Legislature through the 1970s. In 1978, Durbin made an unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor, after which he maintained a private legal practice and co-owned a Springfield tavern.
A redrawn district, an economic recession and funding from pro-Israel forces were factors when in 1982 Durbin ousted Paul Findley, an 11-term Republican congressman who was best known for his criticism of American policy toward Israel and support of Palestinians.
In 2000, Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore considered Durbin for the vice presidency, before chose Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. But a few years later, Durbin influenced another presidential candidate when he served as a sounding board for and adviser to Obama.
O'Connor reported from Springfield, Illinois.
Follow the AP’s coverage of Sen. Dick Durbin at https://apnews.com/hub/richard-durbin
FILE - Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, speaks during a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Capitol Hill, Nov. 20, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
FILE - Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., with ranking member Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, left, and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., right, swears in Assistant Attorney General for National Security Division Matthew Olsen and Executive Assistant Director, National Security Branch of the FBI Jill Sanborn during the committee hearing to examine the domestic terrorism threat one year after January 6, on Capitol Hill, Feb. 10, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Tzeela Gez was on her way to the hospital to bring new life into this world when hers was suddenly cut short.
As her husband drove their car through the winding roads of the occupied West Bank late Wednesday, a Palestinian attacker shot at them. Within hours, Gez, nine months pregnant, was dead. Doctors barely saved the life of the baby, who is in serious but stable condition.
Israel says it is trying to prevent such attacks by waging a monthslong crackdown on West Bank militants that intensified earlier this year. But the escalating offensive, which has killed hundreds of Palestinians over 19 months, displaced tens of thousands and caused widespread destruction, has ultimately not snuffed out attacks.
And the latest bloodshed is only likely to fuel a cycle of violence that has persisted for decades between Israelis and Palestinians. Israel has pledged to find the attacker, who fled the scene, and the military chief of staff, who visited the area Thursday, told troops that the broader operation would continue alongside the manhunt.
"We will use all the tools at our disposal and reach the murderers in order to hold them accountable,” Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said, according to a statement from the military, which said it had sealed Palestinian villages in the area of the attack and set up checkpoints.
The shooting, especially because the victim was a pregnant mother with three other children, has the potential to ignite vigilante violence against Palestinians by radical Jewish settlers. They regularly storm Palestinian towns and villages, burning and damaging property, in response to such attacks. Marauding settlers are rarely held to account for their actions and Palestinians are left to pick up the pieces of the destruction with little recourse to compensation or assistance from Israeli authorities.
Gez, 37, and her husband Hananel, were residents of Bruchin, a settlement of some 2,900 in the northern West Bank. She worked as a therapist and on her Facebook page, shared developments in her professional life as well as her thoughts on the war in Gaza, the fallen Israeli soldiers and the hostages still held by Hamas. Meital Ben Yosef, head of the settlement's local council, told Israeli Army radio that Gez was “all mother. A mother in her essence.”
“A couple of parents were driving to the happiest moment that a parent can experience and the wife is killed on the way. It’s a horrific incident,” she said.
Photos of the car released by the military showed a bullet hole on the passenger side of the windshield and a streak of blood on a back door. Soldiers searched the rugged brush on the sides of the road following the attack, according to video released by the Israeli military.
Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas’ armed wing, praised the attack as “heroic” in a video statement Wednesday but stopped short of saying the militant group was behind it.
On Thursday, military checkpoints slowed down traffic on roads in the vicinity of the attack, and many Palestinian motorists were at a standstill as they tried to make their journeys, according to video shared on social media.
The attack sparked outrage and calls for revenge.
“Just as we are flattening Rafah, Khan Younis and Gaza, we must flatten the nests of terror in Judea and Samaria,” wrote the Israeli finance minister and a settler firebrand, Bezalel Smotrich, in a post on X, referring to the West Bank by its biblical name.
The violence in the West Bank escalated when the war in Gaza erupted with Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel. Israel has staged frequent raids in the territory, especially but not limited to its north, using ground and air power in violence that has killed many militants but also other Palestinians, some of them throwing rocks to protest the incursions as well as others not involved in confrontations.
On Thursday, the Israeli military said its forces killed five militants in a raid that appeared unrelated to Gez's killing. Hamas mourned the men as “resistance heroes” but stopped short of claiming them as its fighters.
Israel occupied the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with Gaza and east Jerusalem, all territories the Palestinians seek for a future independent state. Around 500,000 Jewish settlers now live in about 130 settlements scattered across the West Bank.
Much of the international community views settlements as illegal and an obstacle to Palestinian statehood. Israel views the West Bank as its biblical heartland and believes the fate of the settlements should be determined in peace negotiations, which have been moribund for some 15 years.
Israel says much of the Palestinian militancy in the West Bank is fueled by Iran and views the fighting there as part of its ongoing multifront wars to secure its borders and prevent a second Oct. 7-style attack.
Associated Press writers Jalal Bwaitel in Ramallah, West Bank, and Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut contributed.
Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Mourners react next to the body of Tzeela Gez, 37, an Israeli who was on her way to have her baby delivered when she was shot and killed by a Palestinian gunman in the occupied West Bank, during her funeral at Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem on Thursday, May 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Mourners react during the funeral of Tzeela Gez, 37, an Israeli who was on her way to have her baby delivered when she was shot and killed by a Palestinian gunman in the occupied West Bank, at Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem on Thursday, May 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Mourners carry the body of Tzeela Gez, 37, an Israeli who was on her way to have her baby delivered when she was shot and killed by a Palestinian gunman in the occupied West Bank, during her funeral at Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem on Thursday, May 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Israeli settlers look towards their neighboring village the morning after a Palestinian gunman killed Tzeela Gez, who was on her way to the hospital to give birth, outside of the West Bank settlement of Bruchin, Thursday, May 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
Young Israeli settlers sit outside of the West Bank settlement of Bruchin, the morning after a Palestinian gunman killed Tzeela Gez, who was on her way to the hospital to give birth, outside of the settlement, Thursday, May 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
Israeli soldiers search a Palestinian village next to the West Bank settlement of Bruchin, the morning after a Palestinian gunman killed Tzeela Gez, who was on her way to the hospital to give birth, Thursday, May 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
