Nancy Pelosi

Early Life and Entry into Politics

Nancy Patricia Pelosi (née D'Alesandro) was born on 26 March 1940 in Baltimore, Maryland; her father, Thomas D'Alesandro Jr., was a member of Congress and mayor of Baltimore. She graduated from Trinity College in Washington in 1962, married businessman Paul Pelosi the following year, and lived in New York before settling in San Francisco, where they raised five children. She became involved in Democratic Party work as a volunteer from the 1960s and later chaired the California Democratic Party. In 1987 she won a special election to represent San Francisco in the House of Representatives, and she has been re-elected ever since.

Human Rights and China

In Congress Pelosi became known as a critic of China's human rights record. In 1991 she sponsored a bill tying the annual renewal of China's most-favoured-nation trade status to human rights; the House passed it 313 to 112, more than the two-thirds needed to override a presidential veto. On 4 September that year, during a visit to Beijing with Representatives Ben Jones and John Miller, she slipped away from their hosts to Tiananmen Square, laid flowers and unfurled a banner reading "To those who died for democracy in China"; police briefly stopped the group, and American television crews filming the scene were detained for about 90 minutes. After the Clinton administration delinked trade and human rights in 1993, she continued to oppose renewing China's most-favoured-nation status, and at the end of the 1990s led bipartisan opposition to granting China permanent normal trade relations.

First Woman Speaker

In 2001 Pelosi was elected House minority whip, the first woman in US history to hold the post, and from 2002 she was House minority leader, going on to lead the House Democrats for 20 years. After the Democrats won a House majority in the 2006 midterm elections for the first time in 12 years, she was elected Speaker on 4 January 2007, becoming the first woman to hold the office. As Speaker she helped pass major Obama administration legislation including the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. She lost the speakership when the Republicans retook the House in the 2010 midterms.

Speaker Again

After the Democrats regained the House in the 2018 midterms, Pelosi was again elected Speaker in 2019, the first former Speaker to reclaim the gavel since 1955. During her second speakership the House impeached Donald Trump twice, in December 2019 and January 2021, and the Senate both times fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict. During the attack on the Capitol on 6 January 2021 a laptop and gavel were stolen from her office. She also helped pass the Biden administration's American Rescue Plan Act, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, CHIPS and Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act.

Taiwan Visit and Stepping Down

On the night of 2 August 2022 Pelosi led a delegation of Democratic House members to Taipei, the first sitting House Speaker to visit Taiwan in 25 years. The next day she met Tsai Ing-wen and received the Order of Propitious Clouds with Special Grand Cordon, saying the visit was meant to show that the United States would not abandon the commitment it made to Taiwan when it passed the Taiwan Relations Act 43 years earlier. China's Foreign Ministry called the visit "a major political provocation to upgrade US official exchanges with Taiwan"; the PLA then held large-scale live-fire exercises around Taiwan, and on 5 August the Foreign Ministry announced sanctions on her and her immediate family.

After the Republicans retook the House in the 2022 midterms, she stepped down as Speaker and Democratic leader in January 2023, succeeded as Democratic leader by Hakeem Jeffries; the Democratic caucus named her "Speaker Emerita". In November 2025 she announced that she would not seek re-election in 2026 and would retire in January 2027.