US House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi To Step Down

The U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she won’t seek reelection as leader of the House.

She announced this on Thursday during an emotional speech at the Congress.

Pelosi’s decision is coming after after Republicans were expected to win control of the House in last week’s midterm elections.

Pelosi, an 82-year-old liberal from California, is the first woman to hold the powerful job of speaker.

Pelosi has served two stints as speaker.

Republican Kevin McCarthy has won the party’s nomination to be speaker in the new Congress and is likely to succeed Mrs Pelosi as speaker.

“I never would have thought that someday I would go from homemaker to House speaker,” Mrs Pelosi said in a statement in the chamber on Thursday.

“I will not seek re-election to Democratic leadership in the next Congress. The hour has come for a new generation to lead the Democratic caucus,” she said.

Mrs Pelosi will serve as speaker until January when a new Congress takes over, and will remain in the congressional seat she first took up in 1987 until January 2025.

New York Congressman Hakeem Jeffries is widely expected to take up the top Democratic leadership post in the House, which would make him the first black minority leader in US history.

Speaker of the House is the one congressional job detailed in the US Constitution. After the vice-president, it is next in line to the presidency.

The speaker and their deputies and committee chairs determine what bills are considered and voted on. They set the agenda and decide the rules governing debate.