U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces re-election bid

With the fragile majority of the Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives under threat, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 81, announced that she will seek re-election in this autumn for another two-year term. Ms. Pelosi, elected from San Francisco, is currently in her 18th term.

“While we have made progress much more needs to be done to improve people’s lives. This election is crucial: nothing less is at stake than our Democracy. But we don’t agonise — we organise,” Ms. Pelosi, said on Twitter, where she posted a video announcing her run. Democracy in the U.S. was under assault, she said, because of an “assault on truth,” an assault on the U.S. Capitol (a reference to a mob attack in January 2021) and “ a state by state assault on voting rights.”

Ms. Pelosi’s announcement comes as Democrats are struggling to get their infrastructure Bill passed by the Senate due to differences with the conservative members of their own party. The country also faces rising inflation as it battles an Omicron wave. President Joe Biden’s approval ratings have slipped from the high fifties around the middle of last year to most polls showing an approval rate in the low forties last week. Democrats currently have a wafer thin 222-212 majority in the House. Twenty nine of them are not seeking re-election, as per the Associated Press, compared to 13 Republicans. who will step down.

Ms. Pelosi did not indicate whether she would run for party leadership in the House again — a topic of contention when she reclaimed the leadership for the fourth time in 2021. Progressive Democrats such as Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (New York) had said in 2020 that the Democrats needed new leadership in Congress.