🗳️ Elected 13 Days Ago. Republicans in Congress REFUSE to Seat Her Because She's the Deciding Vote on the Epstein Files

It's absolutely outrageous. And now both Republicans and Democrats are calling it what it is - a preposterous process to keep her from breaking the tie on the Epstein files

Oct 06, 2025

Fact punch: On September 23, 2025, Arizona’s Adelita Grijalva won her special election decisively.

Why it matters now: It’s October 6—and she still hasn’t been sworn in to represent her district.

Moral clarity: Blocking a duly elected woman from taking the oath because she would tip the balance on the Epstein files is an attack on democracy itself.

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The facts are brutal in their simplicity. Adelita Grijalva is a representative-elect with a nameplate already mounted on a door she cannot open. The New York Times describes her first days at the Capitol not with ceremony, but with a “small conference room,” stale air, and a hand-held fan to push away the heat—the trappings not of power, but of purgatory. Four floors below, the office that should already be hers sits locked, her name on the wall, no keys in her hand. And why? Because seating her would bring the House to 218 signatures on the bipartisan discharge petition to force a vote to release the Epstein files. That is the difference. That is why this duly elected congresswoman is literally just roaming the halls because Republicans REFUSE to seat her.

The Speaker’s office told the Times this delay is “standard practice”—that new members are sworn in when the House is fully meeting. But the Times also notes that the same Speaker swore in two Republicans during pro forma sessions earlier this year. When procedure bends for one party and hardens for another, what you are watching is not neutrality; it is will.

Grijalva herself, in a new interview on The Show with Mark Brodie, makes the reality plain.

Asked what she has heard from House leadership about her swearing-in, she answered, “Absolutely nothing.”

She detailed that “a pro forma can be held at any time, so I can be sworn in at any time,” adding that Speaker Johnson has used that option before. She recited the precedent clearly: on April 1, two Republican winners—Jimmy Patronis and Randy Fine—won their specials; less than twenty-four hours later, on April 2, they were sworn in. She noted a Democrat, Rep. [James] Walkinshaw, was also sworn in less than a day after his election. Then she delivered the line that should shame anyone playing games with her seat:

“And I am still waiting. And we are 13 days now since the election.”

If you’ve never watched a district be disappeared by process, hear what it feels like from the inside. Grijalva explains that the old office was shut down before the special election —leases canceled, staff dismissed, computers wiped, phone lines dead. “There is no office,” she says. “There is no staff.” There is no one to answer a constituent in crisis during a shutdown, no one to help a veteran navigate benefits, no one to escalate a life-or-death federal delay. The people of Arizona’s 7th did what a democracy asks of them; they voted. The chamber that claims to serve them is now holding their voice outside the door.

The geometry of power here is not complicated. A discharge petition requires 218 signatures to force a vote. Grijalva has pledged to sign. The Times reports that the White House and Republican leaders staunchly oppose releasing the files and have been pressuring Republican signers to withdraw. Every day that she is not sworn in is another day of pressure, another day for signatures to be yanked quietly in the dark. You do not need a conspiracy theory when the incentives are this obvious. Seat the winner, or admit that the people do not rule.

Let’s pause on the human texture of this limbo. Grijalva describes traveling to Washington ready to work, being welcomed by colleagues, and then standing at magnetometers like any tourist because she has no credentials. She says she is included on caucus chats, invited to meetings, even offered spare conference rooms to perch in—but she cannot get through the locked doors of the building that houses her own office. She is a representative in name only, expected to wait patiently while the Speaker cancels votes, cancels another week, and promises nothing except that “when Congress returns,” perhaps then, perhaps someday, she will be allowed to take the oath that two Republicans received within a single sunrise.

I want you to hear the cost in her own words: “Our community does not have constituent services… District 7 in Arizona does not have a voice that can advocate for them or stand up for them… none of that can occur until I am sworn in.” That is not politics as usual. That is a community deliberately left voiceless because its voice would ask for something powerful people do not want released.

Objection: It’s just procedure; the House isn’t in session.
Answer: The same Speaker used a pro forma to swear in winners within twenty-four hours. If it can be done for others, it can be done for Adelita Grijalva. When a rule is invoked selectively, it’s no longer a rule; it’s a pretext.

Objection: Her seat doesn’t change the majority anyway; what’s the rush?
Answer: The rush is the people. The rush is the shutdown. The rush is a district that has no staff, no phones, no office, and a representative-elect who cannot legally help them. And yes, the rush is that her signature would make 218 on a petition the powerful are trying to smother.

Objection: The Epstein files are messy; maybe more time is prudent.
Answer: Truth is always messy to the guilty. The discharge petition is a lawful mechanism, bipartisan, and on the brink. The public has a right to see what the government has been hiding about a serial predator and his network of enablers.

Here is the through-line that matters. Elections are not suggestions. Arizona’s 7th spoke. A winner was declared on September 23. Two weeks later, a locked door, a dark office, a district silenced. Meanwhile, the petition that would force daylight onto the most notorious sex-trafficking case in modern American memory waits precisely one vote short—the very vote that delaying her oath withholds. You can call that happenstance. Or you can call it what it looks like: protection.

Seat her now. Let the petition reach the threshold. Hold the vote. Release the records. Anything less is not governance; it is obstruction wrapped in ceremony.

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