Mike Johnson’s conduct during the government shutdown wasn’t merely unbecoming of a Speaker of the House — it was disgraceful. Faced with the routine responsibility of swearing in Arizona’s newly elected representative, Adelita Grijalva, he chose instead to keep the House dark. Not out of necessity. Not out of principle. But because seating her would have given the chamber the 218th vote needed to force a discharge petition to release the Epstein files.
Rather than doing the job taxpayers fund him to do, Johnson hid behind the shutdown, pretending that delaying a member’s swearing-in was standard procedure. It was not. And everyone watching knew it. Earlier this very year, Republicans were sworn in under nearly identical circumstances. But when the math turned inconvenient, Johnson invented a rationale to keep a duly elected Member of Congress from taking her place.
This wasn’t savvy politics. It was manipulation. The shutdown handed Johnson a convenient excuse to lock the doors, vanish from sight, and avoid the moment Grijalva would become the decisive vote he didn’t want. He shortened the session, went home, and kept the House idle — all while Americans across the country were living with the fallout: federal workers without paychecks, services frozen, families left to navigate uncertainty that Congress itself had prolonged.
By preventing Grijalva from being sworn in, Johnson did more than inconvenience Arizona’s 7th District. He silenced it. He denied its constituents representation during a pivotal moment. He used the machinery of government not to serve the public but to serve his own political discomfort.
And for what? To delay a petition that might expose truths he and his allies would rather keep buried? To avoid the optics of a bipartisan action occurring under his watch? Whatever the calculation, it was not democratic. It was obstruction — calculated, deliberate, and executed under the cover of a shutdown he helped extend.
Johnson’s behavior raises a troubling question: If the Speaker of the House is willing to compromise the integrity of the chamber to keep one member from taking the oath, what else is he willing to bend, warp, or break when the stakes are higher?
A leader who believes in the institution would have reconvened the House, sworn in the representative voters chose, and let the chips fall where they may. Instead, Johnson treated the House like a barricade he could raise or lower based on his own fears.
He owes the American people an explanation. Not spin. Not misdirection. A real explanation for why he manipulated procedure, sidelined a district, and used a shutdown as cover for partisan self-protection.
If he can’t give one, then it may be time to ask whether the House deserves a Speaker who believes in democracy — rather than one who hides from it.