Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva is waiting to be sworn in

Adelita Grijalva won the District 7th race for Congress and is filling the seat of her father, Raul Grijalva, who passed away. Yet, a week after being elected, Grijalva is still waiting to be sworn in.

Congresswoman-elect Grijalva joined “Arizona Horizon” to discuss her current situation in more detail.

Two weeks after the election, Grijalva has still not heard anything regarding when she will be sworn into Congress.

“Some of the frustration has been that there has been no direct communication from Speaker Johnson’s office,” Grijalva said. “This idea that we need to be in session or we can’t have a shutdown in order to swear me in is completely inaccurate because this speaker has done both.”

Speaker Mike Johnson has said that Grijalva will be sworn in when the House is back in session, but he has also said that they will not go back in session until the shutdown is over. The speaker also says that this is standard procedure for new members to be sworn in only when the House is in session.

Grijalva says that this is an excuse and it is hypocritical for Johnson to not swear her in considering he has sworn in other members during pro forma sessions.

“We have a precedent with this speaker, this year, that three other members elected in specials were sworn in under 24 hours from the time of their election,” Grijalva said.

Even though there was not another shutdown this year, there was a shutdown from 2018 to 2019 where a whole freshman class of representatives were sworn in.

There has been a lot of speculation that, when sworn in, Grijalva will be the deciding vote in releasing the Epstein files; however, for Grijalva the Epstein files is just one of the possible excuses as to why Johnson has not sworn her in.

While Grijalva has not been sworn in, she has also yet to receive access to her office in Washington D.C., no staff and is yet access to her office in District 7.