- Title: A look back at U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's long and defiant career
- Date: 3rd November 2022
- Summary: WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES (FILE - JUNE 18, 2020) (Unrestricted Pool) ***WARNING: CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY*** (SOUNDBITE) (English) U.S. HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI SAYING: "President Trump is clearly, ethically unfit and intellectually unprepared to be the President of the United States. That doesn't seem to matter to the Republicans in the United States Senate." WA
- Embargoed: 17th November 2022 16:19
- Keywords: Biden Bush Congress Obama Pelosi Speaker of the House Trump impeachment woman
- Location: VARIOUS
- City: VARIOUS
- Country: US
- Topics: Government/Politics,United States
- Reuters ID: LVA00Y473725102022RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: With just days left until midterm elections that could put Republicans in control of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, the only woman to serve as the powerful Speaker of the House, may be facing the end of a historic career marked by her ability to hold a fractious caucus together and challenge the world's most powerful men.
Pelosi, 82, played a major role in advancing the policy agendas of Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden and at times blocking those of Republicans George W. Bush and Donald Trump.
She stood as a prominent opponent to Trump during his presidency, famously ripping up a copy of his final State of the Union speech and launching two impeachment proceedings against him, a first in American
history.
She helped pass the 2010 "Obamacare" overhaul of the U.S. healthcare industry, enacted legislation such as massive spending bills to handle the crippling 2020 COVID crisis, and helped pass a wave of laws in the first two years of the Biden administration.
Her successes led to years of villainization by conservatives, including when Trump supporters trying to overturn his election defeat stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, roaring "We want Nancy" and looting her office. On Oct. 28, 2022, a politically motivated assailant echoed the "Where's Nancy?" chant as he entered her San Francisco home and brutally attacked her 82-year-old husband Paul, who is expected to fully recover.
POLITICAL DIVISIONS
Pelosi presided over both of Trump's impeachments by the Democratic-led House in 2019 and 2021, the first on charges that he improperly withheld military aid to Ukraine and the second for inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
The votes for both of Trump's impeachments came almost entirely from Democrats, underscoring the bitter partisan divide in Congress. He was acquitted both times with support from most of his fellow Republicans in the Senate and arguably emerged stronger, as the most influential voice in the Republican party.
The highest-ranking and most powerful elected woman in U.S. history until Kamala Harris became vice president in January 2021, Pelosi served two stints as leader of the House. She was speaker initially from 2007 to 2011, as Democrats rode opposition to the Iraq War to control of the chamber, and again starting in 2019.
Her speakership came to an end both times when Democrats lost their majority control of the House to Republicans, many of whom ran advertisements targeting Pelosi.
During her first stint as speaker, Pelosi called then-President Bush, "a total failure." She had intense disagreements with him over the Iraq War and his efforts to privatize the Social Security retirement program but worked with him to pass a fiscal stimulus bill and other legislation.
After Obama became president in 2009, Pelosi led the successful legislative battle for his signature Affordable Care Act healthcare reform plan, popularly known as "Obamacare." Congress also passed the Dodd-Frank banking reform bill and an $840 billion economic stimulus package.
The Democrats' House majority shrank in the 2020 elections, but Pelosi marshaled the party to pass much of Biden's legislative agenda, including a $430 billion climate change and drug pricing bill, a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, and a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill.
Pelosi also made a mark in foreign policy, leading congressional delegations around the world. In August, she
enraged China by becoming the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Taiwan in 25 years. That visit capped decades of her high-profile opposition to China's authoritarian rulers.
January 2021 marked the start of Pelosi's 18th term in the House. Before becoming speaker, Pelosi also was the first woman to lead a party in Congress, having become minority leader in 2003.
BALTIMORE FAMILY
Though mocked by Republicans as a West Coast liberal, Pelosi first learned politics 60 years ago on the East Coast, as the daughter of a big-city mayor and congressman, Baltimore's Thomas "Big Tommy" D'Alesandro. Her older brother Thomas D'Alesandro III also served as Baltimore's mayor.
She was born in Maryland city on March 26, 1940, the only daughter in a family of six children, and graduated in 1962 from Trinity College in Washington. There, she met Paul Pelosi, a San Francisco native and fellow Roman Catholic of Italian heritage studying at Georgetown University. They married and later moved to California, where he became a businessman.
Together they raised five children. When the youngest was in high school, Pelosi, then 47, ran successfully for Congress in a special election in June 1987.
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