Nancy Pelosi is an American politician representing California's 4th district in the House of Representatives and serving as the House Minority leader. From 2007 to 2011, Pelosi served as the first and only female speaker of the house, becoming the highest-ranking female politican in American history.

Nancy Pelosi's political career began in 1976 when she was elected as a member of the Democratic national Committee. She continued in the position until 1996. In 1987, she was elected to the U.S. House of Representative, where she served California's 5th district until 1993. From 1987 through 2013, she served in the U.S. House, including assuming the office of House Minority Leader from 2003 to 2007 and 2011 to 2019.

On January 4th, 2007, she assumed the officer of the Speaker of the House, a position she held through 2011.^[1]

Challenge for Speakership

Following the 2018 United States Midterm elections, the Democrats took the majority of the House of Representatives, meaning that their party leader would become the House Speaker. Since 2011, Pelosi has served as the House Minority Leader, making her the front-runner for the position. However, given the number of new members of congress, some have challeneged her leadership.

On November 7th, 2018, United States President Donald Trump, a frequent critic of Pelosi, tweeted, ^[3] "In all fairness, Nancy Pelosi deserves to be chosen Speaker of the House by the Democrats. If they give her a hard time, perhaps we will add some Republican votes. She has earned this great honor!" The tweet received more than 18,000 retweets and 89,000 likes in less than two weeks (shown below).

On November 19th, 16 Democrats have pledged to oppose Pelosi's assention to House Speaker in a letter sent to Democratic colleagues.^[2] They wrote, "We are thankful to Leader Pelosi for her years of service to our Country and to our Caucus. However, we also recognize that in this recent election, Democrats ran on and won on a message of change."