As the two parties square off over an imminent government shutdown, Democrats are accusing House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) of keeping the House of Representatives out of session to delay a vote on the Epstein files.
The House had been scheduled to vote on Monday and Tuesday, but Johnson canceled the votes in order to put more pressure on Senate Democrats to accept a government funding bill Republicans pushed through the House earlier this month.
The canceled votes are also pushing back the swearing-in of Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, a Democrat who won a special election last week to fill her late father’s Arizona seat. Grijalva would provide the crucial 218th signature on a “discharge petition” forcing a vote on legislation to make the Justice Department release its investigatory files on the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
“Any delay in swearing in Representative-elect Grijalva unnecessarily deprives her constituents of representation and calls into question if the motive behind the delay is to further avoid the release of the Epstein files,” Rep. Katherine Clark (Mass.), the No. 2 Democrat in the House, complained in a letter to Johnson on Monday.
Three Democratic members of Congress from Minnesota, including House representative Ilhan Omar, were blocked from entering...
