Once the House comes back into session this week after the Senate approves an amended continuing resolution, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., will swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz., as promised.
The news first came from Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman on Monday.
This will allow Grijalva to vote on the Senate-passed continuing resolution and allow the House Democrats to join with a smaller group of Republicans to reach 218 votes for the discharge petition to take up a vote on releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files.
“SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON plans to swear in Rep.-elect ADELITA GRIJALVA before the government funding vote,” Sherman posted to X.
“This will not change the vote count on the funding bill. But it will put the EPSTEIN discharge petition over the 218-signature threshold.”
It takes a simple majority of 218 votes to pass the discharge petition to bring the resolution to release the Epstein files to a House vote.
Republicans hold 219 seats in the House to Democrats’ 213 with three vacancies due to recent deaths.
Johnson had fired back at media and Democrats suggesting he is delaying efforts to seat Grijalva in Congress.
Johnson reminded reporters last month at a government shutdown news conference that the delays were the Democrats’ own doing.
“Yet another Democrat politician from Arizona is trying to get national publicity,” Johnson said. “Now it’s the state AG who is going to sue me because Rep.-elect Grijalva is not sworn in. Let me go over this again for you, and I have some updates.”
The delays are squarely on the shoulders of Democrats’ own inaction, Johnson said.
First, he noted, the former House Speaker Nancy “Pelosi precedent” has been that the House needs to be in session for special election winners to be sworn in.
“We are not in legislative session,” Johnson said. “I will administer [the] oath to her, I hope, on the first day we come back into legislative session. I am willing and anxious to do that.”
Johnson then criticized Grijalva for partisan political games before even being seated.
“In the meantime, instead of doing TikTok videos, she should be serving her constituents,” Johnson said pointedly. “She could be taking their calls, directing them, trying to help them through the crisis that Democrats have created by shutting down the government.”
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