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'Long-Overdue': Pelosi to Retire After Four Decades in Congress
Pelosi's progressive challenger called it the start of a "generational shift" in the Democratic Party.
Nov 06, 2025
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling it quits after nearly four decades in Congress. On Thursday, the longtime Democratic leader announced that her 20th term in Congress will be her last and that she will not run for reelection in 2026.
"For decades, I've cherished the privilege of representing our magnificent city in the United States Congress," Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a video tribute to her constituents in San Francisco. "That is why I want you, my fellow San Franciscans, to be the first to know I will not be seeking reelection to Congress. With a grateful heart, I look forward to my final year of service as your proud representative."
The departure of the 85-year-old Pelosi, the first and only woman to ever hold the speaker's gavel, comes at a critical crossroads for the Democratic Party, when the brand of corporate-friendly centrism she came to embody faces a crisis of credibility after failing to withstand the return of President Donald Trump, and an increasingly muscular progressive flank seeks to reshape the party in its image.
"Starting out as a progressive, Pelosi has steadily drifted to the center over the decades, coinciding with her rise up the party ranks, the gradual rise of her net worth, and even San Francisco’s transformation into an unaffordable playground for the rich," wrote Branko Marcetic in Jacobin when she stepped down from the role as the Democratic leader in 2022.
Once a proponent of universal healthcare, Pelosi will likely be remembered as one of the foremost obstacles to achieving Medicare for All, which she fought tooth and nail to block, with the support of the health insurance industry, during her final four years as speaker.
As the climate crisis grows more urgent and increasingly destructive, Pelosi will be remembered as the person who derided the nascent "Green New Deal" effort to transition America's economy toward renewables as "the green dream or whatever they call it."
As the Democratic Party's base reckons with its near-total shift against Israel following more than two years of genocide in Gaza, Pelosi—who previously backed funding for the Iraq War against the grassroots of her party—will be remembered as the person who, suggested that Democrats protesting for a ceasefire were spreading “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s message” and should be investigated by the FBI.
As Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rampages through American cities—including her beloved San Francisco—tormenting immigrants and citizens alike, Pelosi will be remembered for her role bending to Republican demands during the last government shutdown in 2019, to hand the agency more funding as part of a power play against the progressive "Squad" members who wanted to see the agency abolished or defunded.
And at a time when Americans struggle with a surging cost of living, Pelosi will be remembered as one of the people who profited most from her position at the heights of power. In 2024, she and her husband raked in more than $38 million from stock trading, more than any other member of Congress in either party, and remained a persistent defender of the humble elected representative's right to use their immense wealth of insider knowledge for personal gain.
Pelosi's retirement announcement comes at a moment when the Democratic establishment, particularly its congressional leaders—Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Pelosi's successor, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)—face historic unpopularity with their own voters.
A survey published by Pew Research at the beginning of October found that 59% of self-identified Democrats disapprove of the job their leaders are doing. A previous poll from Reuters/Ipsos found that Democrats believe there was a large gulf between their governing priorities, like universal healthcare, affordable childcare, and higher taxes on the rich, and those of the party.
Pelosi's announcement comes just two days after the most significant triumph in decades for the progressive movement she tried to crush, with the democratic socialist state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani being comfortably elected as New York City's next mayor despite Pelosi's refusal to endorse.
"This is an appropriate response to Mamdani’s win," New Republic writer Indigo Oliver said of Pelosi's retirement on social media. "Chuck Schumer should follow Pelosi’s lead."
Even prior to her retirement becoming official, momentum was building behind a more progressive candidate to take Pelosi's seat as well: Saikat Chakrabarti, the former chief of staff for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who some have described as a "clone" of Mamdani, though he too has been met with criticism for his coziness with San Francisco's powerful tech sector.
"Pelosi’s retirement marks the end of an era in San Francisco politics and the beginning of a long-overdue generational shift," said an email from the Chakrabarti campaign.
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At Request of Billionaire ‘Friends,’ Trump Pulls Plug on Troop Deployment to San Francisco
"Maybe other cities should try to convince a wealthy tech CEO or two to keep the president from siccing his agents on them," quipped one writer.
Oct 23, 2025
After threatening for days to deploy troops to San Francisco, President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he would pull back for the moment, apparently after some of his billionaire "friends" in the city called him and asked him not to.
"The Federal Government was preparing to 'surge' San Francisco, California, on Saturday," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "But friends of mine who live in the area called last night to ask me not to go forward with the surge in that the Mayor, Daniel Lurie, was making substantial progress."
Trump said he "spoke to Mayor Lurie last night and he asked, very nicely, that I give him a chance to see if he can turn it around. I told [Lurie], I think he is making a mistake, because we can do it much faster, and remove the criminals that the Law does not permit him to remove. I told him, 'It's an easier process if we do it, faster, stronger, and safer but, let's see how you do?'"
In a separate post, Lurie affirmed that he had spoken with Trump. He said he told the president that "San Francisco is on the rise," and that a military occupation would "hinder our recovery."
Although Trump is walking back his troop threat, for now, US Customs and Border Protection agents still arrived in the Bay Area on Thursday as part of the Trump administration's crackdown on immigrants.
The Associated Press reported that "police used at least one flash-bang grenade to clear a handful of demonstrators from the entrance" of Coast Guard Island in Alameda, where the CBP agents will be based.
In addition to threatening San Francisco in recent days, Trump has sent National Guard troops to Los Angeles, California; Washington, DC; Portland, Oregon; and Chicago, Illinois—where a judge has halted the deployment.
Like virtually all of the cities where Trump has either surged or threatened to surge federalized troops, San Francisco has no crime wave to "turn around." In fact, crime has been falling precipitously in the city. Homicides dropped by 35% during 2024 and hit a 60-year low this year, contradicting Trump's assertions that the city is a "mess" and that people there lived in constant fear of being "mugged, murdered, robbed, raped, assaulted, or shot."
Lurie said he agreed to help Trump go to war on this imaginary crime wave, and said he would welcome "would welcome continued partnerships with the FBI, DEA, ATF, and US attorney."
Trump said he was persuaded to hold off on the surge of troops after he was called by two Silicon Valley billionaires, Marc Benioff and Jensen Huang, whom he called "great people."
Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, was a longtime Democrat who quickly morphed into an outspoken Trump supporter after his victory in 2024. He was also an initial champion of Trump's proposal to send troops to San Francisco, but later backed off and even apologized after facing criticism from local officials and former political allies.
Huang, the CEO of the computer tech company Nvidia, meanwhile, cut an unprecedented deal with Trump in August that allowed the company to sell computer chips in China if it handed 15% of the revenue from those sales to the federal government, which was described as a "shakedown" by one financial columnist.
Trump said that these two and some unspecified "others" called him, "saying that the future of San Francisco is great" and that "they want to give [Lurie's efforts] a 'shot.'"
"Therefore," Trump said, "we will not surge San Francisco on Saturday."
Hafiz Rashid, a writer for the New Republic, quipped that "maybe other cities should try to convince a wealthy tech CEO or two to keep the president from siccing his agents on them."
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How Billionaires Like Marc Benioff Use Philanthropy To Skirt Around Public Scrutiny
Benioff has given over $1 billion to San Francisco, but this money has an agenda: to keep critics off his back.
Oct 23, 2025
Marc Benioff is a classic case of a bad-faith billionaire philanthropist. He donates hundreds of millions of dollars to the communities he lives in—San Francisco and the Big Island of Hawaii—to skirt around public scrutiny.
Benioff, a Bay-Area native whose net worth hovers under $9 billion, and his company Salesforce have donated over $1 billion to San Francisco—as of October this year. As for Hawaii, where Benioff bought land in 2000, he and his wife Lynne have graciously given $250 million in philanthropy. Most of this money has gone to building or expanding hospitals.
But his philanthropy has an agenda: to keep critics off his back.
Another big-money billionaire, Mark Cuban, whose net worth sits around $6 billion, shared his thoughts on philanthropic efforts like Benioff’s over the weekend during an episode of Real Time with Bill Mahr. Sitting beside Andrew Ross Sorkin, Cuban said he prefers to donate anonymously and questions the intentions of those who do differently.
Instead of focusing his time crafting an apology, Benioff used his shot to yell about how much money he has given to the community.
“Why would you put your name on a building or a hospital if not for leverage, for power, for influence?” he said.
Well said, Mr. Cuban. Power, influence, leverage–and an opportunity to excuse bad behavior–are exactly what Mr. Benioff seeks in spending so much, tax-deductable, money on children’s hospitals with his name plastered on the side.
This became clear in the aftermath of Benioff’s poorly received–yet hardly surprising–comments to the New York Times earlier this month, in which he suggested his former-foe-now-friend, President Donald Trump, send the National Guard to San Francisco.
“We don’t have enough cops, so if they can be cops, I’m all for it,” Benioff said.
The fallout was immediate. Local leaders condemned his comments, and Ron Conway, a Democratic donor and Silicon Valley venture capitalist, publicly resigned from Salesforce Inc.’s Philanthropic Foundation.
“It saddens me immensely to say that with your recent comments, and failure to understand their impact, I now barely recognize the person I have so long admired,” Conway said in an email to Benioff last week.
Benioff, for his part, has been trying to walk back his comments—by bragging about how much money he has donated to San Francisco: “No one is doing more philanthropy in San Francisco this year than I am,” he told the San Francisco Standard after his controversial comments hit airwaves across the country. “Nobody has given more than my family. Nobody has given more than my company.”
Instead of focusing his time crafting an apology, Benioff used his shot to yell about how much money he has given to the community.
And this isn’t the first time he’s tried using his philanthropy to get out of hot water. When NPR reporter Dana Kerr went to report on Benioff in Hawaii—and his suspicious spending spree on real estate—the billionaire tried to persuade her into writing a positive story.
“He started texting me all the time. His texts were all about the philanthropy that he’s doing in Hawaii… He also connected me with people who know about his donations so I could talk to them,” Kerr said on an NPR podcast in March 2024. “The whole thing really felt like a pressure campaign.”
Sounds similar to his strategy with the SF Standard last week: reminding reporters of his philanthropic history to deter criticism. What happened to honesty–or apologies?
Benioff waited an entire week before apologizing for his National Guard comments–on where else but X.
But the damage is done. Reverberations from his mini scandal remain around the country. Questions of whether Trump is going too far, even for Republicans, by sending the National Guard to blue cities abound.
During a televised mayoral debate in New York City last week, all three contenders—Democrat Zohran Mamdani, Independent Andrew Cuomo, and GOP candidate Curtis Silwa—said they would not support Trump sending the National Guard to the city’s streets as mayor.
Trump has, so far, sent the National Guard to “fight crime” in five US cities—all led by Democratic mayors: Washington, DC; Los Angeles, California; Portland, Oregon; Memphis, Tennessee; and Chicago, Illinois. Lawmakers from those states have said military presence is not necessary, except for Tennessee’s Republican Gov. Bill Lee.
The president continues to threaten other cities with military presence, and in some cases, has taken it a step further: In Boston, led by Mayor Michelle Wu, he’s raised the idea of moving the FIFA World Cup. (Trump is good pals with FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who was curiously present at the Gaza Peace Summit.)
Meanwhile, Benioff’s magazine Time, which he purchased in 2018 “to help address a crisis of Trust,” just put Trump on its cover for the second time this year.
Trump, however, hates the picture.
“Time Magazine wrote a relatively good story about me, but the picture may be the Worst of All Time,” the president wrote on Truth Social in the early hours of Wednesday.
While our commander in chief addressed his cover photo, he has yet to comment directly on Benioff’s request. Instead, he’s built up a lie around the billionaire’s contentious comments, citing, falsely, that “government officials” in California have called for the National Guard’s deployment.
“We have great support in San Francisco,” Trump told FBI Director Kash Patel at a White House conference this week. “So, I’d like to recommend that for inclusion, maybe in your next group.”
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