BREAKING: Nancy Pelosi is Stepping Down as House Speaker (Video)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she won’t run for re-election as leader of the House Democratic Conference. This comes after her party lost the majority in the chamber by only a small amount in the midterm elections.

Pelosi said, “With great confidence in our caucus, I will not seek re-election to Democratic leadership in the next Congress. For me the hour has come for a new generation to lead the Democratic caucus that I so deeply respect, and I’m grateful that so many are ready and willing to shoulder this awesome responsibility.”

“There is no greater special honor for me than to stand on this floor and to speak for the people of San Francisco. This I will continue to do as a member of the House speaking for the people of San Francisco, serving the great state of California and defending our Constitution,” she went on.

The 82-year-old Californian said this on the House floor on Thursday. Recently, there had been more talk about what would happen to Pelosi after her husband, Paul, was attacked violently at their home in San Francisco, and the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections.

Pelosi is likely to stay in the House for at least a little while longer, but the California lawmaker’s decision has a lot of effects on her conference because she didn’t say who should replace her as the top leader. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, who is currently in charge of the Democrats, can’t move up because Pelosi is holding on to the gavel.

BREAKING: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces she is stepping down from House Democratic leadership at the end of her term.

"I will not seek reelection to Democratic leadership in the next Congress. For me, the hour's come for a new generation to lead" https://t.co/06tF0lvdSz pic.twitter.com/55eetQro2L

— CBS News (@CBSNews) November 17, 2022

House Democratic Conference Chairman Hakeem Jeffries of New York seems to be the most likely person to take over for Pelosi. Jeffries was elected to Congress for the first time in 2012. He is a good fundraiser, and the Congressional Black Caucus already backs him.

Hoyer and Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who is the head of the House Intelligence Committee, are also possible candidates. Schiff has been preparing for a run for months. He is also thinking about running for the Senate in his home state of California if Democrat Dianne Feinstein retires in 2024 as planned.

In the 20 years that Pelosi has been in charge, a number of Democratic rising stars and potential successors have been defeated in elections or have left Congress to try other things.

Xavier Beccerra, who was Health Secretary under President Biden, was thought to be a possible replacement for Pelosi before he left Congress in 2017 to become California’s attorney general. Others, like Rep. Joe Crowley of New York, lost in the primary or general election.

During Pelosi’s two terms as speaker, from 2007 to 2011 and from 2019 to the present, Democrats have made a lot of progress, but they have also lost votes.

In 2007, Democrats were against President George W. Bush’s plans to send more troops to Iraq because the war didn’t seem to be ending. Even though the troop surge worked, Pelosi and the Democrats were able to get a bigger majority in the House in the 2008 elections by riding the wave of anti-war sentiment and President Barack Obama’s popularity.

During Obama’s first two years in office, Pelosi helped get the Affordable Care Act, and an economic stimulus bill passed.

Even though Pelosi’s actions were praised by Democrats, the 2010 elections were a huge loss for the party. Republicans will run the House until 2018 because Democrats lost 63 seats.

In that election cycle, Pelosi led the Democrats back to power by only a small amount. Pelosi fought against President Trump’s plans to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border when she was the speaker for the second time.

The Democrats’ opposition to Trump’s political agenda led to two attempts to remove him from office. The Senate found Trump not guilty in the first case, which was about whether he asked Ukraine to look into Hunter Biden’s business dealings there.

The same thing happened with the second attempt to impeach Trump, which was based on claims that he incited a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.