The announcement by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that she would not seek a leadership position signals the end of an era and lays the stage for a significant upheaval among House Democrats.
Pelosi said she won’t run for re-election to a leadership position but will keep “speaking for the people of San Francisco” as their congresswoman.
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Her declaration follows the 2022 midterm elections, in which Democrats lost the majority in the lower chamber but kept control of the Senate, fending off a possibly greater “red wave.”
Pelosi claimed she never dreamed she would transition from “a housewife to house speaker” when she first visited the nation’s capitol as a young child.
Pelosi claimed that when she was a young child, she visited the Capitol to witness her father’s inauguration for his sixth term in Congress.
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Pelosi told members on the floor, “Finally, I saw it: a stunning white building with a magnificent dome I believed then as I believe today — this is the most beautiful building in the world because of what it represents.”
“A temple of our democracy, our Constitution, our highest ideals,” she referred to the structure as.
She went on to say, “All of us who have served in this House have taken the hallowed oath of office and it is the oath that stitches us together in a long and storied heritage (of) colleagues who have served before us,” pointing out that previous members of the House had abolished slavery, given women the right to vote, and established important social programmes.
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“My colleagues, I stand before you as Speaker of the House, as a wife, as a mother, a grandmother, a devout Catholic, a proud Democrat, and a patriotic American, a citizen of the greatest republic in the history of the world,” Pelosi added.
American democracy, according to the House Speaker, is both “majestic” and “fragile.”
