During her first trip to Capitol Hill after winning her seat last month, Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva set up shop in a small conference room in a corner of a House office building.
The walls were beige, the furnishings nondescript, the ventilation minimal and the temperature so unseasonably warm that Ms. Grijalva, a Democrat from Arizona, laid a hand-held fan on the table to keep herself and visitors cool.
These are not the usual trappings for an incoming member of Congress.
Four floors below that stuffy conference room was the office that Ms. Grijalva, 54, was expecting to occupy. It had belonged to her father, whose seat she was elected to fill after his death in March. A plaque with her name had already been placed by the door.
But that door was locked, and Ms. Grijalva did not have the keys. Instead, in what should have been her first week as a newly elected congresswoman, Republicans were refusing to seat her.
With a fight over government funding raging and Speaker Mike Johnson toiling to avoid a vote that would force the Trump administration to release the Epstein files, he has opted to keep the House out of session — and Ms. Grijalva out of her seat.
With no apparent end to the impasse, she is left in congressional limbo. Mr. Johnson said last week that he would swear her in once the House returned to session. But he then abruptly canceled planned votes again this week, forcing Ms. Grijalva to wait even longer to represent the people in her district, even as the shutdown threatens to disrupt government services.
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The post Elected but Not Seated, Grijalva Waits to Sign Epstein Petition appeared first on New York Times.
