Nancy Pelosi announced yesterday that she is retiring from the U.S. House after “serving” there since 1987, including leading Democrats for 20 years and two separate stints as the chamber’s first female speaker. Our Emmy Griffiin summed up the key point: “She will be leaving Congress a worse place than she found it.”
Conservative podcaster Stephen Miller said what many Americans are thinking: “Pelosi isn’t retiring. She’s just cashing out.”
When Pelosi entered Congress at the spry young age of 47, she was worth a mere $3 million. Not exactly middle class. Now age 85, she and her husband, Paul, have accumulated a fortune estimated to be between $250 and $335 million. She has consistently denied any wrongdoing related to insider trading, but the timing and results of her trades — consistently outperforming the market and the best investors — leave open two possibilities: She had either inside information or the insane “luck” that’ll get you kicked out of the casino.
She has always opposed banning stock trading for members of Congress, though Republican Senator Josh Hawley sponsored a bill dubbed the PELOSI Act to do just that. He changed the trolling name to get a few Democrats on board, but it’s still just sitting on a desk somewhere.
Naturally, Pelosi offered a grand assessment of her career: “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.’ I have truly loved serving as your voice in Congress, and I’ve always honored the soul of Saint Francisco — ‘Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.’ The anthem of our city.”
She has been anything but an instrument of peace.
Barack Obama also hailed her heroism. “For almost four decades, Nancy Pelosi has served the American people and worked to make our country better,” he posted. “No one was more skilled at bringing people together and getting legislation passed — and I will always be grateful for her support of the Affordable Care Act. She made us proud to be Democrats, and will go down in history as one of the best speakers the House of Representatives has ever had.”
Pelosi absolutely was skilled. Her whip-cracking was infamous for getting Democrats goose-stepping toward whatever legislation they deemed was necessary to “save” America at the time. She kept Democrats unified while Republicans are more akin to a herd of cats.
As Obama alluded, the obvious example of her iron fist is the grossly misnamed Affordable Care Act, better known as ObamaCare. She infamously insisted, “We have to pass the bill so that you can, uh, find out what is in it.” Fifteen years later, we know it has been a disaster that greatly inflated the cost of healthcare.
When that unconstitutional monstrosity passed in 2010, Democrats had a huge majority in the House and 60 votes in the Senate. Obama said Pelosi brought people together, but he meant Democrats. No Republicans voted for ObamaCare. No Republicans voted to expand generous premium subsidies in 2021 or 2022, and Democrats’ demand for making those lavish subsidies permanent is why the government has been shut down for a record 37 days now.
Passing ObamaCare cost Democrats one of the worst election defeats in history, as Republicans gained 63 seats in the 2010 midterms. But the nation will likely forever be saddled with a vast new entitlement.
The same party division was on display when Democrats forced through the inflation-igniting American Rescue Plan in 2021 and the deceptively branded Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. In fact, Pelosi bears a lot of the blame for the near-total lack of bipartisan legislation in today’s Congress.
Back up a bit, Pelosi’s infamy grew during Donald Trump’s first presidential term. She led the Democrats’ two successful House impeachment efforts against him, only to see both crash and burn in the Senate. She falsely claimed there was “cold, hard evidence” that Trump’s campaign and family had “eagerly intending to collude possibly with Russia.” She angrily ripped up his State of the Union Address in 2020 as he was saying, “God bless America.”
pic.twitter.com/Gb2JpeCxJW A shameful moment.
— Byron York (@ByronYork) November 6, 2025
She repeatedly lied about her role in failing to secure the Capitol with the requested National Guard presence before January 6. “Donald Trump delayed deploying the National Guard on January 6th when our Capitol was under violent attack and lives were at stake,” she posted in August while objecting to his use of the Guard to fight crime in Democrat-run DC. The truth is that Pelosi caused the delay, as former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund asserted.
Asked by a reporter about that pesky fact recently, Pelosi snapped, “Shut up. I did not refuse the National Guard; the president didn’t send it.” The linked video shows her admitting her failure on January 6 itself.
After the Capitol riot, Pelosi assembled the Histrionic J6 Insurrection™ Inquisition to write the first pass at official “history” of the event.
Just days ago, she dubbed Trump “a vile creature” and “the worst thing on the face of the earth.”
There’s certainly no love lost between the two. Trump responded, “The retirement of Nancy Pelosi is a great thing for America. She was evil, corrupt, and only focused on bad things for our country.”
I could say so much more, including noting that Pelosi’s dogged devotion to abortion without restrictions of any kind put her at odds with the Catholic Church and the faith she claimed informed her decisions. But I’ll simply conclude with a warning: As bad as Pelosi was, and as much horrible, nation-altering left-wing legislation as she rammed through Congress, the Democrat Party is going in an even more radical direction now than it was under her leadership. I doubt Republicans will ever long for the days of her speakership, but that doesn’t mean things are getting better among Democrats.
