Good Thursday evening. In this edition: Pelosi, first female speaker, announces retirement from Congress; and Trump strikes deals to lower cost of popular obesity drugs.
Plus, SNAP, shutdown, Stefanik, war powers and passports.
Nancy Pelosi
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who made history as the first woman to serve as speaker of the House, announced she will not seek a 21st term in Congress next year.
"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 85-year-old said in a video message.
She was first elected to the House in 1987 in a special election that marked her first time running for public office. When she leaves office in January 2027, she will have represented San Francisco in Congress for 39 years.
"My message to the city I love is this: San Francisco, know your power," she said. "We have always led the way, and now we must continue to do so by remaining full participants in our democracy and fighting for the American ideals we hold dear."
Beginning in 2003, she led House Democrats for two decades, including two nonconsecutive four-year stints as speaker. During that time, she wielded significant power and played a central role in nearly every major Democratic initiative of the 21st century.
Her legislative legacy includes the Affordable Care Act, post-2008 financial reforms, the bipartisan infrastructure law and landmark climate legislation. She also presided over the two impeachment proceedings against President Trump.
In 2022, Rep. Pelosi announced she would step down from Democratic leadership at the start of the 118th Congress, handing the reins to Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).
Even after leaving leadership, she has remained an influential figure — playing a key role in encouraging President Biden to withdraw from the 2024 race and helping secure passage of California's Proposition 50 redistricting plan.
Rep. Jeffries lauded her as a mentor and friend and said she would go down in history as "the greatest speaker of all time."
"Her tenure has been iconic, legendary, historic and transformational," he told reporters. "As a result of Nancy Pelosi's historic tenure, the nation is better off today than the one she found upon her arrival in 1987."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said few speakers in American history "have left a mark as deep, as lasting, and as inspiring as Nancy Pelosi."
"As the first woman to wield the Speaker's gavel, Nancy has been a trailblazer in every sense of the word. She didn't just break glass ceilings — she shattered them and then built a ladder for countless others to climb," he said in a statement.
President Trump, with whom she frequently clashed, ripped the former speaker as an "evil woman."
"I think she's an evil woman. I'm glad she's retiring. I think she did the country a great service by retiring. I think she was a tremendous liability for the country," he told reporters.
"I thought she was an evil woman who did a poor job, who cost the country a lot in damages and in reputation. I thought she was terrible."
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said her retirement was a sign of the Democratic Party drifting more to the left.
"The old guard has been repudiated, and the radicals are taking over the Democratic Party," he said, pointing to his predecessor's retirement as well as that of moderate Democratic Rep. Jared Golden (ME).
"Even the famous San Francisco liberal is not far left enough for the neo-Marxists," he said. "We commend her for her service."
President Trump announced new agreements with pharmaceutical companies Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to lower the prices of several of their popular weight-loss drugs, including Wegovy and Zepbound.
"The two world's largest pharmaceutical manufacturers, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, have agreed to offer their most popular GLP-1 weight-loss drug — I call it the fat drug, remember — at drastic discounts," the president said in the Oval Office, flanked by pharmaceutical executives.
Under the agreements, the drugmakers will cut prices for their GLP-1 drugs for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries in 2026. They will also offer the treatments directly to consumers at discounted prices on TrumpRx.gov, a website the Trump administration plans to launch in January.
"For years, politicians have talked about making health care affordable," the president said. "But my administration is actually doing it."
The treatments have surged in popularity in recent years, but access has been limited due to their prohibitive cost and spotty insurance coverage.
Wegovy and Zepbound currently carry list prices exceeding $1,000 per month, though both companies have introduced lower-cost options for patients paying in cash or purchasing directly through their websites.
Under the new deals, the companies said they will sell injectable versions of the drugs for an average price of $350 per month and pledged to reduce the cost to $250 within the next two years.
Certain Medicare patients will pay a $50 monthly copay for all approved uses of injectable and oral GLP-1 drugs, including treatments for diabetes and obesity.
Doses of the companies' upcoming obesity pills, pending FDA approval, will cost $145 per month for those getting them through Medicare, Medicaid or TrumpRx.
The press conference was briefly paused after Gordon Findlay, an executive with Novo Nordisk, fainted in Oval Office.
A federal judge in Rhode Islandordered the Trump administration to release by Friday full funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for the month of November — and admonished the government for delaying the aid for the 42 million Americans who rely on the program. "Last weekend, SNAP benefits lapsed for the first time in our nation's history. This is a problem that could have and should have been avoided," District Judge John McConnell said. He also noted President Trump's recent social media post in which he said he would withhold SNAP payments until the shutdown is over, saying it "stated his intent to defy the court order."
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) plans to hold another vote on the House-passed stopgap measure on Friday with the aim of attaching a three-bill spending package and amending the expiration date of the CR into next year. However, Democrats are expected to block it again, hoping to extract more concessions. Republican leaders are considering keeping the Senate in session over the weekend to continue working toward a possible deal to end the record-breaking shutdown.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the former Republican Conference chair, is planning to announce her campaign for governor of New York, according to media reports. There had been speculation for months that she would try to challenge incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), who took over the position in 2021 following the resignation of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. She was elected to a full term the following year. Rep. Stefanik was originally tapped by President Trump to be U.N. ambassador but withdrew her nomination earlier this year due to Republicans' thin majority in the House.
The Senatevoted49–51 to defeat a war powers resolution that would have prevented the U.S. military from engaging "in hostilities within or against Venezuela" without congressional approval. The resolution, which needed a simple majority to pass, was introduced by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA), Rand Paul (R-KY) and Adam Schiff (D-CA). It was offered amid the Trump administration's strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific and as President Trump said he was considering land strikes in the country. Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Paul joined all Democrats in support.
The Supreme Courtsaid the State Department can prohibit transgender Americans from listing their gender identity on their passports, reversing a lower court ruling that said the policy was rooted in "irrational prejudice." As part of the administration's efforts to end "woke" ideology, it restricted sex designations to "male" and "female," undoing a Biden-era policy that allowed people to use an "X" or self-select their gender. "Displaying passport holders' sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth — in both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment," the high court wrote.
For your radar…
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announces changes Friday to the U.S. defense acquisition and arms transfer process at the National War College in Washington, DC. Watch LIVE on C-SPAN at 2pm ET.
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