She is dressed from head to toe in marigold yellow: Her fitted sheath dress, beaded necklace and bracelet, and four-inch stilettos-even her COVID mask-are all the same shade. The Speaker looks like she could be at least a decade younger than she is. So she pulls her mask down to talk, and I keep mine on. It’s a bit difficult to interview a politician from nine feet away in a mask she references one of her favorite books, The Ascent of Man, and I hear “The Scent of a Man,” which sounds like a very different kind of book. She laughs and says she’s more concerned about passing the virus to me. I tell her I’m terrified of being the Trojan horse that delivers a deadly contagion to the most powerful woman in America amid several national crises. When she arrives, we sit awkwardly far away from each other in the pale yellow-striped chairs in her office parlor, with sweeping views of the National Mall, negotiating whether one or both of us should keep our masks on for this interview. “We have an unstable president, we have a Senate leader who has abdicated his responsibility to the unstable president, and then we have a Speaker who’s actually leading.” “I don’t know if people realize that she’s the one leading the government right now,” Representative Karen Bass (D-CA), chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, tells me. And Pelosi is, basically, dealing with it all by herself. The president is melting down in his White House bunker, picking petty fights on Twitter and lying to the public daily about the health crisis. Black Lives Matter protesters are pouring into the streets across the country, demanding changes to the nature of policing. Unemployment is soaring the economy is plunging into a depression. A once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic has killed over 200,000 Americans and dramatically changed life as we knew it for the foreseeable future. So here she is, four years later, having regained control of the House just in time to preside over one of the strangest, darkest years in history. Twice,” Pelosi says, jabbing a fist into the air. “It felt like getting kicked in the back by a mule. ![]() Instead, Pelosi watched from what was intended to be a celebratory election party in DC as Donald Trump, the virulently sexist reality television host who had promised to “repeal and replace Obamacare,” raked in swing state after swing state. She was planning to retire on a high note in 2016 when Hillary Clinton won the presidency, knowing that Pelosi’s proudest accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act, would be in good hands-her legacy preserved. ![]() ![]() Pelosi was not still supposed to be here. ![]() The situation is unexpected for more reasons than one. The 80-year-old Speaker of the House, who would normally be out campaigning and fundraising during a congressional recess, is here alone, apart from a handful of staffers, essentially running the country via Zoom. But three stories up, in an elegant cream-and-gold office overlooking the Washington Monument, Nancy Pelosi is still toiling away at her desk. A few security guards in black COVID masks, practically whispering so their voices don’t echo, have the main floor to themselves. The coronavirus pandemic has virtually emptied out the grand building, shutting down Capitol tours and confining politicians and staffers to their homes. It’s a sweltering and stormy Thursday afternoon in June, but the marble halls of the U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi photographed in Washington D.C.
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