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.

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.

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,[9] that opposed Findley's advocacy on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization[10] in the year before the election.

[20] In 2000, Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore reportedly considered asking Durbin to be his running mate for Vice President of the United States.

[27] During his first term in Congress, Durbin supported upholding existing restrictions on abortion and imposing new limitations, including a Constitutional amendment that would have nullified Roe v.

[28] 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.

[29] 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.

"[31] 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.

[39][40] 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 that 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.

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.

[50][51] 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.

[60] In July 2014, Americas PAC, a Political Action Committee designed to elect conservative Republicans, released a radio advertisement attacking Durbin's staff salaries.

[66] 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.

[citation needed] 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.

[79] 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."

"[81] 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: When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here – I almost hesitate to put them in the record, and yet they have to be added to this debate.

And I quote from his report: On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water.

On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime – Pol Pot or others – that had no concern for human beings.

[84] 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.

[101] 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.

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.

"[103] In his 1982 campaign, Durbin benefited from donations by pro-Israel groups, especially AIPAC,[9][104] that opposed Paul Findley's advocacy on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization in the year before the election.

[104][106] In January 2024, Durbin voted against a resolution, proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders, to apply the human rights provisions of the Foreign Assistance Act to U.S. aid to Israel's military.

[115] 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.

[116] 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.

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."

Barrett had written in an article that "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".

[142][144] 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.