Senator Feinstein is facing renewed calls to resign, even as some in the Senate are hopeful that Ms. Feinstein could return to the upper chamber as soon as next week.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that Ms. Feinstein was “causing great harm” to the American judicial system and “should retire.”

“I think criticisms of that stance as ‘anti-feminist’ are a farce,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said in a Tuesday post on Bluesky.

A former speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, a senator of New York, Kirsten Gillibrand, and a handful of other Democrats have labeled the calls for Ms. Feinstein’s resignation as sexist, because men in similar situations have not faced the same scrutiny.

After Republicans moved to block any temporary replacement for Ms. Feinstein on the Judiciary Committee, some younger, more progressive Democrats, once again, called for her resignation, citing the need to continue appointing federal judges.

“Because Sen. Feinstein was absent, Republicans are passing legislation through the Senate, undermining the right of our residents to breathe clean air,” Representative Rashida Tlaib said in a tweet. “And with a far-right judiciary targeting our human rights, we are unable to confirm judges.”

Ms. Feinstein, aged 89 years, is the longest-serving senator from California and the oldest sitting member of Congress. She is also the longest-serving female senator.

As some Democrats double down on their calls for Ms. Feinstein to resign, the Senate majority leader, Charles Schumer, appears hopeful that the senator of California will return to the Senate next week.

According to reporting from Politico, Mr. Schumer was prepared to speak on the subject at a press conference Tuesday. His notes reportedly said he was “hopeful” that she would return next week, though the subject didn’t come up.

Ms. Feinstein’s absence has not only thrown a wrench in the works for the approval of President Biden’s judicial nominees, but it could lead to a missing vote for the Democrats in the fast approaching debt ceiling vote.

The questions over Ms. Feinstein’s health have led to some speculation in the press as to what measures would be appropriate for the removal from office of a senator in Ms. Feinstein’s position.

While the 25th Amendment sets out procedures “to remove a president deemed unfit to serve,” a journalist-in-residence at Johns Hopkins’ public health school, Joanne Kenen, writes in Politico, “no similar mechanism exists for dislodging members of Congress.” She observes that “at the same time, Washington has become a gerontocracy.”

Ms. Feinstein “is not the first, and certainly won’t be the last, U.S. senator to be caught up in speculation that a cognitive or physical decline has rendered her unable to do her job,” Ms. Kenen writes.

The 25th Amendment to the Constitution sets out a procedure for removing a president from office who is unable to serve but not members of Congress. A president can be temporarily removed from office by majority vote of the Cabinet and vice president.

Although a formal removal of the president has never been invoked, in the final days of President Trump’s term, some Cabinet members and at least one Congressman, Adam Kinzinger, discussed invoking the 25th Amendment, ABC News has reported.