Will Speaker Johnson ever call the House back? 800,000 Arizonans are without a voice

Right now, more than 800,000 people in Arizona’s 7th District are without representation in Congress. Their duly elected representative, Adelita Grijalva, is being denied the right to be sworn in by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) not because of any wrongdoing on her part, but because Republican leadership has chosen to hold her seat hostage for political leverage.

Let’s be clear: this is not a clerical delay or a scheduling issue. This is a deliberate act. Johnson has refused to administer the oath of office to Rep.-elect Grijalva, effectively silencing nearly a million Arizonans and stripping them of their constitutional representation.

Amid a Republican-engineered government shutdown, Johnson has made a deliberate choice not to fulfill the most basic duty of the House: swearing in its elected members. That’s not leadership. It is political obstruction.

There is a larger battle at stake right now. Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire would cause incalculable damage. About 20 million people would either lose their health care or see their premiums skyrocket. Among them, roughly 1 million Latinos would immediately lose their insurance, with another 5 million at risk in the coming year.

Arizona’s 7th District is predominantly Latino. By blocking Grijalva from taking her oath, Johnson is not only silencing her constituents but also putting the health and financial security of millions of Americans at risk, including her overwhelmingly Latino district.

By refusing to seat Grijalva, Johnson is denying Arizona’s working families a voice in the most critical debates of the moment — debates about whether the government stays open, whether families keep their health coverage, and whether the Affordable Care Act subsidies that millions rely on are preserved or gutted.

This is not just a crisis of governance. It’s a crisis of democracy.

The people of southern Arizona cast their ballots in good faith. They chose Adelita Grijalva to fight for them in Washington. Now, their votes are being tossed aside in a power play orchestrated by a Speaker who has already shown contempt for Democrats. Johnson has made it clear he’d rather appease Donald Trump’s inner circle than honor the will of the voters.

This hostage-taking is part of a broader Republican pattern: when they can’t win fairly, they move the goalposts. When they can’t govern, they grind government to a halt. When they lose elections, they delegitimize them. In this case, they’ve taken it one step further — they’ve erased representation altogether.

Each day that passes without Grijalva taking her oath is another day Arizonans go unheard. Constituents can’t get federal casework done. They can’t advocate for resources in their communities. They have no seat at the table as Congress decides the future of their health care, their jobs, their safety, and their democracy.

Johnson is gambling with people’s lives and livelihoods, believing that political brinkmanship will bring Democrats to heel. But what he’s really doing is revealing how fragile our institutions can become when power is placed above principle.

It’s time to call this what it is: an abuse of power.

The American people deserve a Congress that represents them — not one that plays games with their votes, their voices and their futures. The people of Arizona’s 7th District deserve to have their representative sworn in immediately.

Grijalva won her election fair and square. She earned the right to serve. Every hour that Mike Johnson withholds that oath is another hour democracy stands on hold.

Adriano Espaillat represents the 13th District of New York and is chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.