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Pelosi Expected to Step Down From Leadership but Stay in Congress to Help Guide Dems as New Generation Takes Over: Report

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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi will hand over the gavel in January, presumably to Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, but she’s not leaving Congress. Instead, she will help guide the new generation of leaders being elevated as she moves into an “emeritus” role.

That’s according to Puck’s Tara Palmeri, who reports that Speaker Pelosi, the “longtime Democratic leader, a fixture of the House for decades, will step back into a chairman-like role in the minority rather than retire immediately, giving her time to manage her succession and ensure the stability of her caucus through the forthcoming McCarthy era.”

Pelosi’s predecessors, like John Boehner and Paul Ryan most recently, left the House entirely when they had had enough. (Boehner resigned and left Congress in October 0f 2015, Run did not run for re-election for his House seat in 2018.) And while voters gave Republicans a slight majority, Pelosi believes she still has vital work to do for the American people and for her caucus.

RELATED – Watch Live: Speaker Pelosi to Make Announcement on Her Future After GOP Wins Slim House Majority

In what it turns out has been a well-crafted exit, Pelosi made the decision to relinquish her Speakership this weekend, Palmeri reports, enlisting the aid of noted historian and presidential biographer John Meacham to help her craft a speech.

“Sometime around noon, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will walk out onto the House floor to take her final bow after 19 years as head of the Democratic caucus with a speech about passing the torch from one generation to the next, I’m told,” Palmeri writes. “But instead of riding high into retirement, as has long been assumed, or becoming ambassador to Italy—a diplomatic posting the White House has been holding open for her—Pelosi will announce that she plans to stay in Congress as a backbencher, roaming the halls in a sort of emeritus role and helping to guide Democrats through their turn in the minority.”

But as races were called for Republicans this week, Pelosi clarified her decisions.

READ MORE – ‘Only Red Line … Is Power’: McConnell Beats Scott After ‘Marathon’ Meetings for Future of Senate GOP Leadership

The “decision to stay on as a backbencher was only reached days ago. On Wednesday, the move was floated in the New York Times under the headline ‘Will Pelosi Stay or Will She Go? Perhaps a Little Bit of Both.’ By that point, I’m told, Pelosi had torn up the Meacham draft, repurposing the best pieces of it for her own handcrafted speech that threads the needle to account for her post-speakership, chairman-like role.”

Palmeri reveals what the future holds for other top Democrats as well.

“Pelosi spent the last 24 hours helping to clear the runway for Hakeem Jeffries, I’m told, while working out ways to make sure that Adam Schiff, one of her pets, is taken care of and is therefore not inclined to challenge Jeffries. Politico reported that he intends to focus on a run for Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat. An orderly succession has always been Pelosi’s goal. ‘It may seem like she’s backbench but it’s really putting the throne in a different area,’ said a Pelosi insider. ‘She’ll never get off the throne.'”

But Speaker Pelosi’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Drew Hammill, pushed back vigorously against Palmer’s reporting late Thursday morning, tweeting, “I hate to break it to my favorite reporter but the Speaker took two versions of her speech home last night as has been reported. Anybody who tells you they know what she will do is a liar.”

An unusual back-and-forth ensued, with Palmeri saying, “You’re right Drew, her staff doesn’t know,” and Hammill shooting back, “And you don’t either.”

The Speaker’s speech is expected to begin at 12:10 PM ET, which you can watch live here.

Read Palmeri’s entire piece at Puck (subscription/registration required.)

This article has been updated to include Hammill’s and Palmeri’s conversation and with the time and link to Pelosi’s speech.

This article has been updated to properly spell “Palmeri” in the update note.

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Closer to Russia, Closer to Trump: US Official Says Alliances Are Shifting

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March 20, 2026

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A top Trump official says global power alliances are shifting, observing that nations closest to Russia are now increasingly aligned with President Donald Trump’s interests.

Fox News host Martha MacCallum told Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum that she had spoken with President Trump earlier Friday, “and he basically said that Japan is a better ally to the United States than NATO, which, when you look at the big picture in history, is a pretty stunning statement.”

She also asked the secretary, “do you think that our orientation, in terms of our alliances, is changing?”

“Well, clearly, it is,” Burgum replied.

“What we might consider our traditional allies from Europe have been less than reliable,” he said, “and from the time that we’ve spent working with those folks in Eastern Europe, the closer they are to Russia, the more aligned they are with President Trump, and the more … aligned they are on energy policy.”

READ MORE: Trump Official Says He Teleported 50 Miles to a Waffle House

Offering Japan as an example, Burgum said that nation “is 120 million people living in the size of an area of North Dakota, and they’ve got complete dependence on foreign energy. They want to buy energy from the United States.”

He explained that it takes eight days by ship from Anchorage to Tokyo, as opposed to 30 days from the Middle East.

“People are desperate to have the stronger relationship with the United States right now on energy,” he claimed.

President Trump’s policies are “absolutely working to build alliances around the world,” Burgum said.

MacCallum noted that “the alliance seems to be the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Japan have a good relationship with us as well right now, and a lot of repair needed in Europe.”

READ MORE: Conway’s Dire Warning: Trump Poised to Interfere With Election — and Nation’s Not Ready

 

Image via Reuters 

 

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‘Down There With the Titanic’: Fetterman Has Historic Polling Swing Says Analyst

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March 20, 2026

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Democratic U.S. Senator John Fetterman has suffered a historic collapse in support, plunging 108 points among Pennsylvania Democrats from his strong standing just three years ago.

The Pennsylvania lawmaker, who often appears on Fox News and has accused Democrats of having “Trump derangement syndrome,” enjoyed a positive 68 percent approval rating in 2023, his first year in office.

Now, he stands at a negative 40 percent, according to CNN analyst Harry Enten.

“John Fetterman is doing as well with Pennsylvania Democrats as the New York Giants are liked in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” Enten said on Friday, while noting that in 2023, Fetterman was a “Democrat liberal darling.”

READ MORE: Trump Official Says He Teleported 50 Miles to a Waffle House

Now, Enten says, Fetterman is “down there with the Titanic.”

Enten compared Fetterman to Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who he says is “not well liked by the Democratic base nationwide.”

Schumer’s popularity rating is about minus two points.

Leader Schumer “is 38 points more popular than John Fetterman is with Pennsylvania Democrats.

Enten also compared Fetterman to several senators who were unpopular and lost their primaries.

“His net popularity with his own party is worse than all senators who lost a primary this century,” Enten noted online.

READ MORE: Conway’s Dire Warning: Trump Poised to Interfere With Election — and Nation’s Not Ready

“He is below the lowest,” Enten said. “The ones who actually got beat in a primary. There is no historical analog to this. That is how unpopular John Fetterman is with Pennsylvania Democrats.”

If Fetterman runs for re-election in 2028, what happens?

“There is basically no doubt in my mind that if Fetterman decides to run for re-election as a Democrat, he will face a primary challenge and it will be a very competitive one,” said Enten.

“The bottom line is this: John Fetterman, when you look, when you look at his net popularity rating, minus 40 points, he’s on a completely other planet from Chuck Schumer, who is also unpopular, and he is on a different galaxy entirely from other incumbents who actually lost re-election — far less popular than them.”

READ MORE: ‘I Don’t Think She Survives This’: Gabbard Faces Blowback After ‘Devastating’ Testimony

 

Image: Public Domain

 

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Conway’s Dire Warning: Trump Poised to Interfere With Election — and Nation’s Not Ready

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March 20, 2026

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George Conway, once a leading Never-Trump Republican and now a Democratic congressional candidate, has issued a stark warning, saying that Americans remain perilously unprepared for President Donald Trump’s potential interference in November’s election.

Conway, who founded the Anti-Psychopath PAC, said in a video posted on Friday that Trump’s “brain is mush, and he says, with conviction, things that he said the opposite of five minutes before or five days before.”

He says that Trump “has the capacity to declare that the polls are fake — and that if an election goes the same way that the polls do, well, that’s fake, too, and that’s why we need to ignore an election, and that’s why we need the voter rolls.”

READ MORE: Trump Official Says He Teleported 50 Miles to a Waffle House

But Conway warns that despite what happened on January 6, 2021, the American public is not ready for what Trump could do to the 2026 election.

“I don’t think people are sufficiently prepared, notwithstanding what happened in 2021, for the possibility that he will try to f — — with this election. And he will.”

“I mean, he’s already basically telling us that’s what he’s gonna do, just the same way he told us he would do that in 2020.”

READ MORE: Trump Re-Endorses Congressman He Dumped — Then Dangles Job to His Rival

Conway warns, “I don’t think truth means anything to him.”

Trump, he adds, “doesn’t care about the distinction between truth and lies. And so, does he know he’s lying? It doesn’t matter to him. Truth has no meaning to him. All that has any meaning to him in any given moment is whether or not he’s receiving praise or adulation, or some kind of a reward — like money, or a peace prize.”

“And what comes out of his mouth is whatever is in his head at the moment that he wants to believe or he wants other people to believe,” Conway says. “He’s divorcing himself from reality because he thinks he can create his own reality and the great megalomaniacs of history have always done that.”

Trump is in a “very dangerous place psychologically,” says Conway,”and he is a man, don’t forget — he talked about nuclear weapons the other day — he’s got 5,500 nuclear weapons.”

“He’s gonna trash everything once and for all,” Conway warns.

READ MORE: ‘I Don’t Think She Survives This’: Gabbard Faces Blowback After ‘Devastating’ Testimony

 

Image by Presia Debauch via Flickr and a CC license

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