By Richard Cowan and Idrees Ali
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi was injured on a trip to Luxembourg and was hospitalized for a check-up, her office said in a statement on Friday.
Pelosi, 84, was the first woman to serve as speaker of the House and chaired the House Democratic Caucus.
“While traveling with a bipartisan delegation of Congress to Luxembourg to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi was injured during the engagement and was hospitalized for evaluation,” Pelosi’s spokesman, Ian Krager said. statement.
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“Speaker Emerita Pelosi is now receiving the best treatment from doctors and medical staff. She continues to work,” he added, but did not say what caused Pelosi’s injuries.
He is the second member of Congress to be injured this week. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, 88, suffered minor injuries after falling in the Capitol.
Like Pelosi, McConnell did not seek another seat as president in party elections held following the November election. He will succeed when the new Congress is inaugurated on January 3 by 63-year-old South Dakota Senator Jon Thune.
For several years now, aging party leaders in the House and Senate have been under pressure to make way for a new generation of younger officeholders.
The San Francisco representative stepped down from his role as speaker – the second most powerful position in the presidential line after the vice president – in 2023, when Republicans took control of the House and the speaker’s job.
He was re-elected on Nov. 5 to 20th consecutive two-year term with 81% of the vote.
Pelosi played an important role in passing the Democratic Party president, Mr. Joe Biden, a bill to sweep one billion dollars in 2022 and clashed with the Republican, Mr. Donald Trump during his first four years in office, culminating in tearing up his State of the Union speech on national television. in 2020.
Pelosi has been a popular figure in the US capital during her seven presidential terms. He first served as Speaker of the House from 2007 to 2011, then regained the job in 2019 after his party took control in the 2018 midterm elections.
Democrats lost their majority in the House in 2022, and Republicans will regain a narrow majority next year, when President-elect Trump returns to the White House.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Richard Cowan; Editing by Scott Malone and Bill Berkrot)