Nancy Pelosi Reflects on the Not-Quite-End of an Era

An interview with the House Speaker as she announces her departure

On Thursday, after 35 years in Congress and two decades leading the House Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she would step down from congressional leadership. I spoke with her right after her speech on the House floor, for a new piece in TIME that looks at her decision in light of her legacy:

Pelosi was contemplating the not-quite-end of the era and struggling to unwrap a package of chocolate-chip cookies. “What was important to me was how we did in the election, because we were on a bad path,” she told a small group of reporters. “Storming the Capitol, really? And the reaction of Republicans, not taking a stand? And I knew we could win.”

Her party had just lost the House, weeks after a crazed intruder broke into her California home and bludgeoned her husband with a hammer. But it hardly felt as if Pelosi was giving up in defeat. In an election that history and many forecasters predicted would deliver a Republican wave, Democrats surprisingly held their own. The resulting GOP majority will be a narrow one, with the Senate remaining in Democrats’ hands.

The Oct. 28 attack on Paul Pelosi, the Speaker’s husband of 59 years, influenced her decision to remain in Congress, but not in the way many people thought. “It was not, ‘Oh, well, since they did that, I can’t even think of something else,’” she says. “No, it had the opposite effect. I couldn’t give them that satisfaction.”

I’ve spent a lot of time writing about Pelosi: in 2018, I profiled her on the cover of TIME, and in 2020 I wrote a bestselling biography, which you should buy and read if you haven’t already. The new piece is here.