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PORTRAITS OF INFLUENCE
The TemperaTure in WashingTon changed on Jan. 3 When
Nancy Pelosi picked up the gavel and became Speaker of the House
for a second time. President Donald Trump has yet to recover.
For two years, Trump had benefited from a subservient Repub-
lican Congress. Pelosi quickly made clear that divided government
would be a different story. Taking the reins in the midst of the longest
government shutdown in history, she refused to cave to Trump’s de-
mand for a border wall, waiting him out—and canceling the State of
the Union address—until he surrendered. Over the ensuing months,
she served as the unorthodox President’s foil, using her mastery of
the powers of the Legislative Branch to hold Trump in check.
For much of the year, Pelosi battled the left nearly as much as
the right, frustrating progressive activists and far-left members
by steering her party toward the center. Even as she’s overseen an
unprecedented slate of investigations into the Executive Branch,
she’s tried to find ways to work with Trump where possible. At the
White House’s request, Pelosi passed a $4.6 billion border bill with
funding for the immigration detention centers the left considers con-
centration camps, and later negotiated a two-year budget agreement
that increases military funding. She’s kept trying to make deals with
Trump on prescription-drug pricing and infrastructure, even as the
President has repeatedly walked away from the table. Of the more
than 300 bills the House has passed that sit on the Senate’s doorstep,
more than 275 are bipartisan.
On Dec. 10, Pelosi announced the House’s articles of impeach-
ment of Trump. An hour later, she unveiled an agreement on the
President’s plan to update the North American Free Trade Agree-
ment. The split screen epitomized her yearlong high-wire act. Pelosi
resisted Democrats’ calls for impeachment until the Ukraine scandal
forced her hand. As the year ends, the results-oriented leader finds
herself in just the situation she’d tried to avoid: a partisan impeach-
ment of a President unlikely to be chastened by it. The founders’ vi-
sion for checks and balances has forced her into a historic confronta-
tion, with unforeseeable consequences. “If we had not done this,” she
tells TIME, “just think of how low our democracy would have sunk.”
NANCY
PELOSI
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
BY MOLLY BALL
ILLUSTR ATION BY MERCEDES DEBELLARD FOR TIME
