Pelosi announces she won’t be running for re-election
A long overdue retirement is coming up.
However, apparently California State Senator Scott Weiner is attempting to replace her. He’s one of the worst of the leftist politicians around and has done plenty of harm on the state level; you can read about it here. I’ve been following his career for a while, including reading a recent NY Times Magazine article described here:
The New York Times Magazine’s recent exposé, “Can Anyone Rescue the Trafficked Girls of L.A.’s Figueroa Street?” offers a harrowing glimpse into a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in plain sight on the streets of Los Angeles. Reporter Emily Baumgaertner Nunn paints a vivid picture: Girls as young as eleven pace at 68th and Figueroa alongside “preteens hobbling in stilettos and G-strings.” LAPD officer Elizabeth Armendariz watches nearby, overwhelmed and under-resourced. Despite authorization for six investigators, Armendariz is the sole member of the 77th Street Division vice unit department. She is helpless to rescue the dozens of barely adolescent girls trapped in a nightmare of exploitation.
The Times deserves credit for shining a light on this crisis, and for pointing out how California laws like SB 357 have handicapped police efforts to rescue minors and transformed Figueroa Street into what one police chief called an “open sex market, 24 hours a day, 365 days out of the year.” Yet the reporter failed to mention SB 357’s author, Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who is now running to replace Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, nor the man who signed the law, Governor Gavin Newsom, who is now officially eyeing the presidency. Why?
The question is rhetorical. They are being protected because they are leftist Democrats.
The law in question was framed this way when it was passed:
Yet SB 357 represents the bitter fruit of a worldview that prioritizes abstract notions of “decriminalization” and “anti-profiling” over the concrete reality of children being bought and sold on our streets. The bill’s supporters cloaked their arguments in the language of compassion and criminal justice reform, claiming the loitering law disproportionately targeted marginalized black and brown women. What they failed to acknowledge (or deliberately ignored) is that the most marginalized among us are the children trapped in trafficking.
The bill’s opponents predicted the trafficked children would suffer, and that’s what has happened.
But that bill is hardly Weiner’s only destructive legislative effort related to sexual issues:
In 2017, Wiener … co-authored Senate Bill 239, which lowered the penalty of exposing someone to HIV without their knowledge and consent from a felony to a misdemeanor. Wiener said that the laws had unfairly singled out HIV-positive people. The bill passed and was signed by Governor Jerry Brown on October 6, 2017. …
Wiener authored Senate Bill 219 in 2017, which strengthened protections against “discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or HIV status” for LGBT seniors living in long-term care facilities. The bill was opposed by groups who argued that the bill criminalized bathroom gender designations and would force care providers to address those under their care with gender-appropriate language. Wiener called these arguments “transphobic” and “absurd”.[72] The naming provision of the law was overturned on July 16, 2021, after the Third District Court of Appeals ruled that the law violated employees’ free speech rights. …
In 2019 and 2020, Wiener attempted to pass Senate Bill 201, a bill that would have restricted physicians’ and parents’ ability to decide to perform reconstructive genital surgery on intersex infants, and would instead require the impacted child be old enough to decide to undergo surgery. The bill was opposed by the California Medical Association and other medical groups who said they would not be able to apply medical expertise, which would threaten patient safety. The bill died in committee. Wiener re-introduced the bill a second time in January 2021, this time as Senate Bill 225.
Wiener introduced Senate Bill 145 on January 18, 2019. The bill proposed to remove the requirement to place someone convicted of non-forcible oral or anal sex with a minor over the age of 14 (provided the convicted is less than 10 years older) on the sex offender registry, instead leaving this to the judge’s discretion, as was the case for vaginal sex. He argued that existing law was discriminatory towards LGBT couples where the partners were just above and below the age of legal consent. Wiener received online harassment and death threats from those who claimed the bill protected pedophiles. The bill was signed into law by Gavin Newsom in September 2020.
In 2021, Wiener authored SB 107, a “trans refuge bill” to protect transgender children seeking gender affirming care in California and their families from civil and criminal punishment under other states’ laws. The law would restrict the enforcement of out-of-state laws and policies that penalize gender affirming care in subpoenas and arrest warrants, and in parental custody cases. SB 107 became law in 2022.
So, he could be the representative to replace Pelosi. In that part of the world, winning the Democratic primary is ordinarily the key to winning the seat.
Then again, maybe Pelosi will keep it in the family – there’s speculation that her daughter might run, although her daughter hasn’t declared her intent.
I suspect Nancy will be pushing hard for her daughter to run. Without that position it will be a challenge to beat Warren Buffet 2:1 in her family’s stock dealings.
The only pleasant things you could say about Pelosi is that she’s been married to the same person for 60 – odd years and she has five children. Interesting that she was the protege of Sala Burton, who led a life nothing like that. Her children have produced seven children between them.
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Please note, you look at the legislation she personally has shepherded over the years, it’s meh constituent service shizz. Her interest in policy was instrumental. After the catastrophe of the 2010 midterms, it would have been a graceful time for her to bow out, but she insisted on remaining. No one was willing to challenge her.
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The point of it all was just what?
In her very own Marie Antoinette, let them eat cake moment, a few months ago Pelosi was shown on a video, in her kitchen, in front of two huge, very expensive commercial grade freezers, bragging about how and showing her viewers that they were chocked full of what looked like many dozens of containers of the very expensive, exclusive ice cream she really likes.
The ice cream display was during the shutdown, not a few months ago.
A Pelosi daughter would be better than Wiener. Anyone would be better.
“…they were chocked full of what looked like many dozens of containers of the very expensive, exclusive ice cream she really likes.”
But no video of the part of her house where the stash of expensive liquor she is supposedly very fond of?
Perhaps the usual. Power, graft, personal enrichment? I don’t know how exactly much money she and her husband accurued during the intervening years via effectively legal insider trading, but it wasn’t nothing judging by their current net worth.
It’s Wiener, not Weiner. The former means “Viennese” while the latter I suppose means wine maker or wine merchant.
Per Kate: “A Pelosi daughter would be better than Wiener. Anyone would be better.”
Yes. The daughter made that documentary(?) video in which Nancy let out that she was responsible for not allowing the National Guard to be called on Jan. 6. So she seems to have some degree of integrity – maybe from her father’s side – ?
https://notthebee.com/article/we-could-all-be-retired-in-6-months-scott-jennings-says-trump-should-let-pelosi-invest-our-social-security-money
The perfect poster child for term limits. What a despicable human being.
Kate–Being very long retired, with no routine and schedule to meet, or calendar to watch–and getting long in the tooth–I’ve noted that my sense of time, and what happened when, is getting less and less precise.
“California laws like SB 357 have handicapped police efforts to rescue minors and transformed Figueroa Street into what one police chief called an “open sex market, 24 hours a day, 365 days out of the year.” Yet the reporter failed to mention SB 357’s author, Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who is now running to replace Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, nor the man who signed the law, Governor Gavin Newsom, who is now officially eyeing the presidency. Why?”
Covertly film it, conduct covert interviews with these girls. Then put together a short hard hitting documentary video and upload it to the net. Post it on Rumble and mention that YouTube banned it. Get some notable conservative ‘influencers’ to advertise it on X. Point the figure right at Weiner and Newsom.
Don’t care about her ice cream, bar that we have reason to believe the family’s prosperity was a function of leveraging connections and inside information. Ditto the Richard Blum / Dianne Feinstein combo.
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Again, we’d benefit from rotation-in-office rules. Leaving aside the judiciary, positions chosen by competitive election should be so for four year terms. Anyone who has held a position for 14 of the last 16 years or would hit that wall in a prospective term would be compelled to stand down. Choose your judges for 12 year terms without such a rule, but debar them from running past the calendar year they reach their 72d birth day and require that they retire thoroughly and unconditionally on a standard date the calendar year they reach the age of 76.
The youngins are having a moment and leveraging it to dump all the oldsters. I’m no Democrat but fully support jettisoning the over-60 crowd of elected officials.
Disagree. Most of our supralocal politicians should be people who’ve made their career in some other field and entered f/t politics in late middle age or early old age. A long career in Congress should be 20 years in multiple stints, not 40 years. Your final departure should be at 76, not 86. Her sidekick Steny Hoyer is a year older than she is. The third member of the troika was James Clyburn, who is just her age. Hoyer practiced law p/t for a number of years. Otherwise, none of these people have had a private sector job since age 21.
20 years is at least two times too long. Public service, not a career, is two terms or less.
steve walsh on November 7, 2025 at 8:40 pm:
“20 years is at least two times too long. Public service, not a career, is two terms or less.”
In the trade off for term limits between
1) excessive time in the saddle leading to bad behavior vs.
2) losing good and knowledgeable congress persons,
I have proposed supermajority criteria for reps seeking a 5th term and senators seeking a 3rd. Or we could go with interventions of 4 or 6 years on, 4 or 6 years off.
I also don’t have a problem with Art Deco’s suggestions of age limits in the 72 and 76 year range, but that does take me out of the running for congress any time soon. Medical advances may extend that a little in the future?
On insider trading, I don’t see the logic of denying them the opportunity to invest in America, just that as public servants they should be investors and not speculators. We could demand that they provide public announcements 1 to 2 weeks ahead of any buy/sell orders they plan to make — thus no longer being insider trades.
I agree with the notion that elected members of Congress should be in seat for fewer terms than we see now. And upper and lower age limits make sense. But to my mind your suggestions run the risk of overengineering a solution. I like the system we have: people run, people vote, winners take office. We have the power to impose the limits you recommend today – the voters just choose not to implement them. The notion that limits cause the loss of “good and knowledgeable congress persons” is nonsensical. Experience in Congress provides an avenue to improve and perfect political skills, it does nothing to educate one in current or emerging social and policy issues.
Other than getting voters to reject long-running office holders at the polls, the best way to limit Congressional terms is to make sure politicians cannot enrich themselves while in office.
Regarding Congressional term limits, there is a mammoth in the room that almost nobody talks about, that makes them a very bad idea.
Specifically, the Deep State.
Already, too much power has de facto moved from the elected branches to the appointed. Congressional term limits would amplify that effect sharply, because long-term Federal employees in the high levels (not the local people but the people at the high end of the bureaucracies) would know that no matter how angry or frustrated Senator/Representative X is, they just have to outwait him and deal with his newbie replacement later. You’d end up with a Congress where nobody had any long-term leverage and nobody ‘knew the ropes’ to tell when they were being scammed by the Deep Staters.
The practical net result would be to make Congress even less practically relevant.