Nancy Pelosi, the US House’s first and only female speaker and a dominant Democratic figure for decades, announced Thursday she will not seek re-election, ending her nearly 40-year

Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-California) announced her retirement Thursday morning via video message. In the message posted on her social media accounts she speaks directly to San Francisco.

For starters, without Speaker Pelosi, there would likely be no Affordable Care Act as we know it. She famously worked behind the scenes to privately push President Barack Obama toward health care reform, and has since voted consistently to increase Medicare and Medicaid benefits, in the face of deep (and continuing) opposition from the GOP.

Nancy Pelosi deserves credit for helping millions of people. She's also partly responsible for how we got here.

Nancy Pelosi retirement comes after nearly 40 years in office. California Democrats hadn't been holding back in making plans.

She’ll rightly be lionized as the first woman speaker, but in one sense, that was the most incidental of her myriad accomplishments.

The Washington Post’s essential guide to power and influence in D.C. The former speaker of the House is retiring, amid Democratic debate on generational change.

In 1985, Nancy Pelosi ran for chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and lost. The contours of that fight are long forgotten, save for one detail that became central to Pelosi’s mythology. Amid a heated contest,