Women shatter records in most diverse class in US Congress
The Democratic women that comprise the U.S. House of Representatives posed for a class picture on Friday, celebrating the diversity of the new 116th Congress and its record number of 127 female members, 102 in the House.
Women from Michigan and Minnesota will be the first Muslim women in the House.
Candidates from Kansas and New Mexico will be the first Native American women in Congress. Texas elected two Latinas to the House for the first time. Some women who won are veterans; others used to work for the CIA.
Most of the women are in the House of Representatives and only 20 are Republicans.
Regaining the speaker’s gavel eight years after losing it, Nancy Pelosi remains the only woman ever to occupy the post.
She will preside over the most diverse House membership in history, including a record number of women and Latinos, with her party having wrested majority control from Trump’s Republicans in the November elections in a landslide victory.
On Friday, Pelosi introduced the first bill House Democrats will tackle, H.R. 1, For the People Act, a legislative package targeting campaign financing, voter access, and strengthening ethics laws.
