House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) revealed Thursday that she is stepping away from party leadership after Republicans secured the House majority in the 2022 midterms.
The 82-year-old representative confirmed she will stay in her position serving her San Francisco district. She declared that she will continue to “defend our Constitution” in her changing congressional role.
The controversial and embattled Pelosi said on the House floor that the “hour’s come for a new generation.”
Before the announcement, Pelosi said the attack on her husband in October at the couple’s San Francisco residence would greatly influence her plans.
The assailant reportedly said he was looking for the House Speaker.
Her farewell speech to Congress on Thursday was noteworthy for what she said — and for one glaring omission. Pelosi recounted she enjoyed “working with three presidents,” though in fact she served with four.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that she does not have plans to step away from being a member of Congress. https://t.co/iejC8F7ik8 pic.twitter.com/foyIsv0zfh
— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) November 14, 2022
Former President Donald Trump was obvious in his absence from her speech.
Pelosi noted her work with President George Bush on clean energy, efforts for health care reform with President Barack Obama, and a wide variety of initiatives with President Joe Biden.
She and Trump had a notoriously confrontational relationship, and each regularly criticized the other.
Not so with the current occupant of the White House. Biden released a statement just after Pelosi’s speech calling her “the most consequential Speaker of the House of Representatives in our history.”
She became the first female Speaker of the House in 2007 and held the gavel for four years until handing it over to the GOP’s Rep. John Boehner in 2011. She was elected as Speaker again when Democrats regained House control following the 2018 midterms.
Pelosi’s intention to stay on in her role as a representative will add to her 35-year tenure in the House. There is a definite changing of the guard and possible generational shift in the works as Republicans take control of the chamber in January.
Pelosi far too often not only aligned with but led ill-fated progressive initiatives, though this made her both a media darling and an icon of leftist Democrats. With the GOP assuming the gavel, that track record is about to come to an end.
