OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has filed for re-election in 2026, setting the stage to once again become a key anti-Trump force.
After securing a 20th term last week, the 84-year-old submitted a statement of candidacy to the Federal Election Commission on Thursday. The documents are an early sign of Pelosi’s plans ahead of the next election, but a representative for the lawmaker refuses to confirm if she is seeking reelection.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, she might have been convinced to remain in office by Trump’s reelection. During a post-election call of the House Democratic Caucus, Pelosi recommended that Democrats follow the lead of an organization established under the previous Trump administration that defended the Affordable Care Act.
Pelosi stated that she plans to remain a fighting force in an interview with the New York Times following the election, but she did not specifically address whether this term would be her last.
“I’m not here to talk about that,” Pelosi told the New York Times. “I’m here to fight the fight so that we win in the next election. I must have thought I had the last term over and over again, but as fate would have it, the mission called.”
When she was speaker during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term, the two-time speaker was one of his main enemies. She will be absent from leadership under a Republican administration for the first time since George W. Bush’s first term when Trump returns to office.
“The San Francisco mother of five is seen as the main figure who helped end President Joe Biden’s reelection bid, although she has denied playing a significant role,” the Washington Examiner reported. “Pelosi, who stepped aside as the House Democratic leader in 2022 to allow a new generation of leaders in the caucus to rise, appears to be at the peak of her power and has been known to be a masterful playmaker behind the scenes.”
A former Biden White House aide attacked Pelosi earlier this week, claiming that she had forced the president to drop out of the 2024 race.
The senior Democrat was criticized by Symone Sanders Townsend, who is currently an MSNBC analyst, as the party continues to debate the causes of Kamala Harris’ heartbreaking defeat by Donald Trump.
“Nancy Pelosi, everybody talks about how the speaker emerita, you know, she’s so strategic, she can count, she did all of that when she was the speaker in Congress, but my question is: Where is your calculator now?” Sanders Townsend told panelists during an episode of “The Weekend.”
“She played in presidential politics this cycle, and she helped orchestrate the very public demise of the president,” she added in the comments on Saturday.
Pelosi’s recent comments regarding Biden’s decision to withdraw from the 2024 campaign and support Kamala Harris prompted the comments.
In an interview with the New York Times podcast on Saturday, Pelosi stated that there was a belief that Biden would resign sooner rather than later, allowing for a more competitive selection process for his successor that could have improved the Democrats’ reaction to Trump.
“The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” Pelosi said. “And as I say, Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward. But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened. And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time.
After a dismal debate performance and growing worries about his age, Biden announced his resignation from the campaign and endorsed Harris in July, joining an increasing number of Democrats who believed he was unfit to challenge Trump.
According to reports, Pelosi was advising contributors and other Democrats she dealt with behind the scenes to “speak their conscience” if they had reservations about Biden.
A House Democrat told NBC News at the time that a recent wave of party members speaking out against Biden’s campaign was “all Nancy’s doing.”
