1940-present
Latest News: Nancy Pelosi Won’t Seek Reelection to Congress
Nancy Pelosi is bringing her history-making congressional career to a close after almost four decades.
Pelosi, 85, revealed Thursday she won’t seek reelection to the House of Representatives at the end of her current term. The Democratic former House party leader has served 20 terms since assuming office in 1987.
“With a grateful heart, I look forward to my final year of service as your proud representative,” Pelosi said in a video message. “As we go forward, my message to the city I love is this: San Francisco, know your power. We have made history. We have made progress. We have always led the way, and now we must continue to do so by remaining full participants in our Democracy and fighting for the American ideals we hold dear.”
Pelosi has achieved notable milestones throughout her career, including becoming the first—and still only—woman to serve as speaker of the House of Representatives after succeeding Dennis Hastert in 2007 and Paul Ryan in 2019. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from former President Joe Biden in 2024 for her decades of public service.
Who Is Nancy Pelosi?
Nancy Pelosi began her political career as a volunteer and gradually moved up the ranks, making the leap to public office in a special election for California's Eighth District in 1987. She became the first female Democratic leader of the House of Representatives and the first female speaker of the House.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Nancy Pelosi
BORN: March 25, 1940
BIRTHPLACE: Baltimore, Maryland
SPOUSE: Paul Pelosi (1963-present)
CHILDREN: Nancy, Christine, Jacqueline, Paul Jr., and Alexandra
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aries
Early Life
Pelosi was born Nancy D’Alesandro on March 26, 1940, in Baltimore, Maryland. Pelosi carries on a family tradition of being involved in politics. Her father served in Congress and was the mayor of Baltimore for 12 years, and her brother Thomas later served as mayor of Baltimore as well.
Pelosi graduated from Trinity College in Washington, D.C., in 1962. While a student there, she met Paul Pelosi. The pair married a year later.
Focused on raising her family, Pelosi got into politics slowly, starting out as a volunteer for the Democratic Party. She hosted parties and helped with campaigns. Pelosi rose up in the party ranks, serving as a California representative to the Democratic National Committee from 1976 to 1996. She also served as the state and northern chair of the California Democratic Party.
Career in U.S. Congress
In 1987, Pelosi made the leap to public office, winning a special election for California's Eighth District, which includes San Francisco. As a member of the House of Representatives, she has served on the Appropriations Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Pelosi has been a strong supporter of increased funding for health research and for other health care and housing programs and initiatives. She is also an advocate for human rights and the environment.
In 2002, Pelosi was selected to be the Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, making her the first woman in history earn the honor.
First Woman Speaker of the House
Four years later, she again broke new ground for women in U.S. politics. After the Democrats won majorities in both the House and the Senate in the 2006 midterm elections, Pelosi was chosen to become the first woman to take the post of speaker of the House.
As the leader of the Democratic Party in the House under a Republican president, Pelosi was sometimes a divisive figure. A vocal critic of President George W. Bush’s stance on the war in Iraq, she advocated for the withdrawal of troops from the region. Pelosi found herself at the center of a controversy in 2009 when the CIA asserted that she had been made aware of its use of waterboarding of terrorism suspects—a technique that Pelosi had vocally opposed. Pelosi denied the CIA’s claims.
Pelosi lobbied for the development of better-paying jobs, access to college education and affordable health care for all, and revised energy policy that focused on cleaner, more efficient domestic alternatives.
After the election of Barack Obama in 2008, Pelosi was in a position to work with a president of the same party. She was instrumental in pushing for the health care reform legislation that became the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) in 2010, a position that earned her more criticism from the GOP.
House Minority Leader
Pelosi remained House speaker until November 2010, when Republicans gained control of the House and elected John Boehner to the role, relegating Pelosi to minority leader.
As the House’s top Democrat, Pelosi endured criticism for her party’s losses and challenges to her leadership. Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan sought to replace her as minority leader in 2016 but was unsuccessful.
On February 7, 2018, Pelosi delivered a marathon speech on the House floor to protest legislation that lacked protection for “Dreamers,” the children of undocumented immigrants. Taking advantage of the “magic-minute rule,” which allows House leaders to talk for as long as they want, Pelosi read testimonies from Dreamers and recited Bible passages, in all standing for some 8 hours and 7 minutes, a House record dating back to at least 1909.
Return to Speaker Role
After Democrats reclaimed control of the House in the 2018 midterms, Pelosi was once again elected House speaker at the beginning of 2019, placing her on the front line in the battle with President Donald Trump over his demand for $5.7 billion for a wall spanning the U.S.-Mexico border.
The stalemate turned into a contentious 35-day government shutdown, with the speaker drawing most of the president’s ire for her control over congressional funding. However, shortly after Pelosi effectively canceled the traditional State of the Union address, scheduled for January 29, President Trump agreed to temporarily reopen the government.
After Congress passed a funding bill that allocated only $1.375 billion for the border wall, Trump declared a national emergency on February 15, allowing him to divert money for other projects to his wall. Pelosi countered by scheduling a House vote on legislation to end the national emergency, ratcheting up the pressure on Senate Republicans to take a stand on the issue. The gambit paid off, as the Republican-controlled Senate also voted to overturn the national emergency, forcing Trump to issue the first veto of his presidency.
The speaker found herself increasingly at odds with the progressive wing of her party, in particular, a group of four freshmen congresswomen—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan—known as “the Squad.” After the outspoken quartet voted against an emergency border funding bill in June, Pelosi fired back at their criticism of her negotiations. “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” she told The New York Times. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”
Pelosi and the Squad soon reunited in their opposition to Trump, after the president unleashed a Twitter diatribe in which he said the four congresswomen of color should “go back” to their countries. In mid-July, the speaker led a vote to formally condemn Trump’s words as racist, the first House rebuke of a president in more than 100 years.
Pelosi was elected to a fourth term as speaker in January 2021, with a 216-208 vote.
Impeachment of Donald Trump
After months of resisting calls from progressives to initiate impeachment proceedings against President Trump, in September 2019, Pelosi announced that the House would launch a formal impeachment inquiry. The tipping point came with reports that Trump had withheld military aid to Ukraine to pressure its government into investigating the actions of 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.
On October 31, the Pelosi-led House took the next step by approving a resolution that established rules for the impeachment process, paving the way for public hearings to commence on November 11. On December 10, House Democratic leaders unveiled two articles of impeachment, charging the president with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
On December 18, 2019, one day after Pelosi received a scathing letter from the president in which he slammed the “invalid” process, the House voted almost entirely along party lines for the two articles of impeachment. The speaker then delayed the process of relaying the articles to the Senate, in hopes of securing terms for a fair trial in the Republican-controlled upper chamber, before finally following through on January 15, 2020.
Other than sending a team of House impeachment managers to argue the Democrats’ case, Pelosi could do little as Senate Republicans voted against allowing additional witnesses and expressed the belief that the president’s conduct did not warrant removal from office.
Her frayed relationship with Trump was on display during his televised State of the Union address on February 4, with the president seemingly snubbing her attempted handshake and the speaker ripping up a copy of his speech afterward. The following day, the impeachment saga came to an end when the Senate voted along party lines to acquit Trump on both charges.
January 6 Insurrection and Capitol Evacuation
Pelosi was a key figure during one of the darkest days in the history of the U.S. capital city on January 6, 2021.
After Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the November 2020 presidential election, the outgoing president began repeating false claims the results were fraudulent. This culminated in a violent pro-Trump mob storming the U.S. Capitol building to prevent the certification of voting results, which would formalize Biden as the winner.
Pelosi, then the speaker, was evacuated from the House chamber and taken to a secure location, along with other lawmakers. Members of her staff hid in a barricaded conference room for more than 2 hours. Some rioters later documented themselves breaking into and vandalizing Pelosi’s office.
Congress returned later in the night to certify the results, ultimately confirming Biden as the winner. Just a week after the insurrection, the House voted to impeach Trump a second time days before he was scheduled to leave office. “Today in a bipartisan way, the House demonstrated that no one is above the law, not even the president of the United States,” she said in a statement.
With Republicans winning control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections, Pelosi was succeeded as Speaker of the House by Kevin McCarthy in January 2023.
In November 2025, Pelosi announced she wouldn’t seek reelection after the completion of her 20th term—ending her tenure in congress after nearly 40 years.
Husband Paul Pelosi and Children
Pelosi married husband Paul Pelosi in 1963. The couple has five children: Nancy, Christine, Jacqueline, Paul Jr., and Alexandra.
Although Paul Sr. has largely preferred to stay out of the spotlight, he was unwillingly thrust into the news cycle as the victim of a violent home invasion on October 28, 2022. David DePape, a Canadian citizen who had been living in the U.S., broke into the family’s San Francisco residence and confronted Paul in his bedroom with a hammer and zip ties. He reportedly shouted “Where’s Nancy?” and later admitted at trial he planned to take the congresswoman hostage and “break her kneecaps” if she failed to answer questions about the investigation into possible Russian collusion in the 2016 election.
Paul suffered a skull fracture and other injuries. DePape was found guilty of charges including aggravated kidnapping, first-degree burglary, and false imprisonment of an elder and sentenced to life in prison without chance of parole in 2024.
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