Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., America’s first female speaker of the House and longtime top House Democrat, will retire from Congress at the end of her term, bringing her historic multi-decade career to a close.
In a video posted Thursday morning, Pelosi, 85, bid farewell to her San Francisco district.
“I will not be seeking reelection to Congress. With a grateful heart, I look forward to my final year of service as your proud representative,” Pelosi said. She did not give a detailed explanation for her decision in the video.
Pelosi, the daughter of Democrat Baltimore Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., first came to Congress in 1987. She became the first female congressional leader of a major party as House minority leader starting in 2003 and became the first female speaker in 2007. She would return to the speaker’s office a second time in 2019.
Pelosi helped pass the Affordable Care Act under President Barack Obama and was a leader of the opposition during the first Trump administration.
She handed the title of House minority leader to Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., in 2023.
Her retirement will reinforce a broader changing of the guard in the House of Representatives, as 78-year-old Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., will also not be seeking reelection in the midterms.
“It was the faith that you have placed in me, and the latitude that you have given me that enabled me to shatter the marble ceiling and be the first woman speaker of the House,” Pelosi says in the farewell video.
She adds that the speakership empowered her “to bring home billions of dollars for our city and our state,” and spoke glowingly of her own work on the Affordable Care Act and infrastructure projects.
“I say to my colleagues in the House all the time, no matter what title they have bestowed upon me—speaker, leader, whip—there has been no greater honor for me than to stand on the House floor and say: ‘I speak for the people of San Francisco.’”
