Grijalva ends 50-day swearing-in standoff, restoring representation and district services to southern AZ

On Nov. 12, Democratic US Rep. Adelita Grijalva took the oath of office to officially represent southern Arizona in Congress, 50 days after she was elected.

The seven weeks that Grijalva was delayed from assuming office were record-breaking. Not only did House Speaker Mike Johnson refuse to swear her in, the wait also coincided with the nation’s longest federal shutdown.

There are 812,000 Arizonans who live in her district who were left without representation in Congress since March, when former Rep. Raúl Grijalva, her father, passed away from cancer.  

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While the late congressman, who served 22 years, no longer led the office, its staff continued  providing constituent services until Sept. 23, when Adelita Grijalva won the special election in a landslide.

“People in our community know what it’s like to depend on a Grijalva, and for us to not have that representation was painful,” Grijalva said in a Nov. 12 news conference with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Constituent services are provided by elected officials to the people they represent — typically in the form of aid with navigating bureaucratic processes across government agencies like Social Security claims, accessing veterans’ benefits, providing housing and food assistance resources, immigration processes, among others.

During a government shutdown, those services can be more vital as federal agencies face reduced staffing and service disruptions, causing people to receive significantly delayed assistance.

Without access to the phone line, Grijalva had no way of knowing who contacted her House office, and she anticipates hundreds of requests for assistance to be transferred over. 

Grijalva intends to sponsor a bill that would prohibit a lengthy swearing-in delay from happening to any other elected official again, she told The Copper Courier. 

The delay is unprecedented, un-American, undemocratic, and never should have happened, Grijalva said.

Why did it take 50 days for Grijalva to assume office?

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) initially set Grijalva’s swearing-in to Oct. 7, when the House was expected to return to regular session. 

Johnson then pushed the date to Oct. 14 after deciding not to reconvene the House amid the government shutdown, which began on Oct. 1, 2025, and lasted for 43 days—the longest in modern US history. 

Then, Johnson said he would not swear in Grijalva until the government reopened, indefinitely delaying her from taking office—leaving southern Arizona without a voice in Congress and stopping Grijalva from hiring staff, accessing her office, logging onto computers, and blocking her from communicating directly with any departments in the federal government.

“If I were Republican, I would not have waited this long. If I were a man, I would not have waited this long. We all know that the rules are always different for women of color and people of color,” Grijalva said in a Nov. 12 news conference with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Earlier this year, the House swore in two Republicans and one Democratic representative within 24 hours of their elections—before their results were even certified by their state elections officials, and during pro forma sessions when legislative bodies met but no business was conducted. 

Johnson repeated excuses for why he continued to delay Grijalva’s swearing-in ceremony, including that she needed “pomp and circumstance,” despite Grijalva calling to be sworn in immediately. 

“Adding insult to injury is when Speaker Johnson would placate and make misogynistic comments about what I should and should not be doing,” Grijalva said in the news conference.

When he was finally ready, Johnson did not directly notify Grijalva of the ceremony, and she found out she would be sworn in through media reports and Democratic leadership, she told The Copper Courier.

Ahead of the swearing in ceremony, Johnson never communicated with Grijalva, she said.

“This is an abuse of power. One individual should not be able to unilaterally obstruct the swearing in of a duly elected member of Congress for political reasons…Our democracy only works when everyone has a voice,” Grijalva said in her House floor debut.

As soon as Grijalva stepped away from the podium after addressing the House floor as a newly sworn-in member, she signed a bipartisan petition to trigger a vote that would force the Department of Justice to release all federal files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein—in a stand against Republican leadership. 

READ MORE: Adelita Grijalva sworn in as the House’s newest member, paving the way for an Epstein files vote

Grijalva’s signature was the last slot needed to put a discharge petition to release the Epstein files over the 218-vote threshold, bypassing Republican leadership’s attempts to keep the documents out of the hands of the public.