The news for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appears to have gone from bad to worse in recent weeks following a fall in Europe that led to emergency hip replacement surgery.
As Pelosi continues recovering from her accident — she was seen using a walker on the House floor just last week — she now faces a primary challenge from a far-left former aide to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), according to a Thursday report.
Saikat Chakrabarti, former chief of staff for AOC, announced that he would challenge Pelosi in the primary. He cited the former speaker’s efforts to block the progressive New York congressmember from becoming the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee as his reason for running, Politico reported.
“I respect what Nancy Pelosi has accomplished in her career, but we are living in a totally different America than the one she knew when she entered politics 45 years ago,” Chakrabarti, a 39-year-old former tech worker, posted on the X platform. “America is stuck, and Americans want real solutions that are as big as the problems we face.”
Pelosi, who stepped down as speaker in 2022 after nearly 20 years in the role, easily won reelection to her solidly Democratic San Francisco seat last year. Her office declined to comment on Chakrabarti’s announcement.
She has filed paperwork to run for re-election in 2026 but has not publicly confirmed whether she intends to seek another term. State Sen. Scott Wiener has long been expected to run for the seat if Pelosi were to step down. Local political observers have also speculated that Pelosi’s daughter, Christine, might run for the seat if her mother were to retire.
Whoever wins the primary is likely to secure the general election and hold the seat for a long time in a city that remains a Democratic stronghold, Politico added.
Meanwhile, Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, made $38 million worth of stock trades in the weeks leading up to President Donald Trump’s inauguration, which will no doubt lead to further calls for stock trading bans for members of Congress and their immediate families.
The New York Post reported that the tens of millions in trades included “an investment in a once-obscure artificial intelligence firm whose shares have soared nearly 50% in the past week.”
Paul Pelosi sold $24 million worth of Apple stock and $5 million worth of shares in AI chip maker Nvidia.
Both of these significant transactions were completed on New Year’s Eve, according to government filings. Nancy Pelosi is legally obligated to disclose her husband’s stock trades, The Post added.
Paul Pelosi, who survived a brutal hammer attack inside the couple’s San Francisco home roughly two years ago, has also taken a new role with Tempus AI, a Chicago-based health technology company that deploys artificial intelligence to analyze clinical and molecular data.
According to filings, Paul Pelosi purchased $100,000 worth of call options in Tempus AI on January 14. Since the disclosure of his involvement, the company’s stock has surged.
When the market opened on January 14, Tempus AI stock was trading at approximately $32 per share. However, as of Thursday, The Post noted that shares of Tempus AI— which went public last June with an IPO price of $37 per share— were trading at around $50.50 per share, marking a 60% increase.
All the while, Nancy Pelosi continues to recover from her hip surgery.
“Earlier this morning, Speaker Emerita Pelosi underwent a successful hip replacement and is well on the mend,” spokesperson Ian Krager said in a statement sent to HuffPost in mid-December.
The statement added that the former House Speaker was “grateful to U.S. military staff at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center at Landstuhl Army Base and medical staff at Hospital Kirchberg in Luxembourg for their excellent care and kindness.”