Nancy Pelosi, first female speaker of the House, won't seek re-election to Congress
07, Jun 2026During her time in Congress, Pelosi was a fierce advocate for finding a cure to HIV/AIDS, which ran rampant in San Francisco during the 1980s and '90s; for battling climate change and for funding programs for children.
One of her favorite phrases was, "For the children," which she uttered at nearly every news conference.
But her biggest legislative achievement came after the 2008 election, when Obama and the Democrats took full control of Washington. In 2009 and 2010, she helped shepherd the landmark Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare, through the House, and ultimately to the president's desk, expanding health care coverage for millions of Americans.
When a tea party wave swept Pelosi and House Democrats out of power in the 2010 midterm elections, the California Democrat defied norms and opted to stay in power as minority leader, rather than bow out as others had done before her.
It would prove a fortuitous move for Democrats after Trump shocked the nation by upsetting Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. With Democrats cast into the political wilderness, Pelosi filled the void and became the face of the Trump opposition.
Two years later, after Democrats were propelled back into the House majority, Pelosi beat back an internal rebellion from a bloc of disgruntled Democrats calling for a new, younger leader to guide the party and take on Trump. She was elected speaker for a second time, the first lawmaker to return to the top job since Sam Rayburn reclaimed the prized gavel for a third time in 1955.
"I eat nails for breakfast," Pelosi was fond of saying.
She resisted and then led a House impeachment effort against Trump in 2019 over allegations he had withheld U.S. aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate the family of his 2020 rival, Biden.
After the Jan. 6 attack in 2021, Pelosi pushed House Democrats to quickly impeach Trump for his overt efforts to overturn Biden's election victory and unleash a violent mob of his supporters on lawmakers — and his own vice president — in the Capitol as they prepared to certify the results.
Twice, the Senate voted to acquit Trump.
Later, she partnered with Biden, first on a $1.9 trillion Covid relief package, then on a messy, monthslong legislative process that resulted in the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, a massive climate and health care law.
The Bidens would later have a falling out with Pelosi after she pressured the 81-year-old president to drop out of his race for re-election against Trump last year.
It was far from her first intraparty brawl. After Democrats swept in the 2008 election and prepared to tackle climate change and health care legislation, key Pelosi ally and fellow Californian, liberal Rep. Henry Waxman, jumped in the race to challenge powerful Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., who was close to her frequent political rival, Hoyer. While Pelosi and Hoyer didn't take sides publicly, it was clear where they stood; Waxman toppled Dingell in a razor-thin 137-122 closed-door vote.
"She defeated him as chair; it was one of the worst times in my life," Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., who succeeded her husband in Congress in 2015, said in an interview this week. "But when I got elected, I was gonna respect her. We're both Catholic girls, and she was my leader."
"She was a very strong leader and did a damn good job leading Democrats," Debbie Dingell added.
There were personal risks that came with the job. In addition to the attack on the Capitol, Pelosi received death threats over the years. In October 2022, a man searching for the speaker broke into her home in San Francisco. She and her security detail were not there, but her husband, Paul Pelosi, was attacked by the man with a hammer and critically injured. The assault rattled the entire Pelosi family.
After they lost the majority in the 2022 midterms, Pelosi and her two longtime top lieutenants — Hoyer and Jim Clyburn, D-S.C. — had voluntarily stepped aside as the top three Democratic leaders. It marked a changing of the guard, with a trio of younger leaders, Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar, taking over.
In an unusual move, all three leaders opted to stay on as rank-and-file members for another two terms, with Pelosi continuing to fundraise for the party and offering counsel to the new generation of leaders and young members as they battled a second Trump administration.
"Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi will go down in history as the greatest speaker of all time," Jeffries, who had served on her leadership team, told reporters on Thursday.
"Her tenure has been iconic, legendary, historic and transformational," he said. "The incredible pieces of legislation that she has moved into law through her brilliance, her wisdom and her incredible grasp of how to get things done for the American people is too numerous to list."
Pelosi made no mention of Trump or the politics of the moment in her video statement, but she published an op-ed later Thursday in the Atlantic, calling on Americans to stand up for democracy and for one another.
While she did not mention Trump by name, she said the country is in a “moment of extraordinary difficulty. It amazes me that so many people can endure so much suffering of others while doing nothing to address their needs.”
“What we choose to do in this hour of our history will determine the shape of America and the world for decades,” she continued, later adding: “Our democracy depends as much on casting a ballot as lending a hand to a neighbor in need.”
