There is tremendous pressure on GOP congressional legislators to release the Epstein files, mostly from democrats and from a smattering of Republicans along with almost every justice-seeking organization worldwide. Some innocuous sections of the files have been released but to date there is still no timetable to release the full oeuvre, and certainly no promise of redacted versions.
In fact, every obstacle possible has been used by house speaker Mike Johnson to frustrate those who seek the truth. While we clearly know that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were associates and friends, the question remains however: To what extent did Donald Trump knowingly participate in the actions for which American financier and convicted sex offender was accused of including serial sex trafficking of women and girls. The amount of concern about what is in these files, including client lists, seems to confirm that something very damaging to the president is there. If there is nothing then publish the files in order to clear the president’s name.
But, and this is a big “but,” even if conclusive evidence could prove that the president knowing participated in illegal, let alone immoral acts and crimes, would Republicans and the MAGA base actually care? Would they withdraw their support? To whom would they turn for re-election support? He has opened the door to unfettered power beyond their wildest dreams. Who can say NO to that. He has already committed crimes, told lies, abused power, manipulated persons, peoples, and nations, stolen wealth, profaned various divinities, without a shred of remorse or honesty. My hunch is that sexually exploitive crimes would simply join a long and growing list of heinous offenses. Conservative legislators, constituents, global leaders especially those on the political right express little or no real concern whatsoever. I just don’t see how Johnson, Vance, Vought, Miller, Kennedy Jr. and the whole gaggle of gangsters sleep at night then rise the following morning to meet a new day of more of the same.
As always James Greenberg’s analysis of the current state of congressional affairs is poignant, even if it only tells us what, why, and how such manipulative injustice works out in Washington these days. What we need now is specific next steps, not a blithe and increasingly dismal hope in corrective midterm results. I am still haunted by all those rows of Army generals, mute, silent, and it seems muzzled.
The sad state of affairs gets sadder by the day.
The Epstein Files and the Silencing of Adelita Grijalva
Why Speaker Johnson is blocking a duly elected representative and what it means for democracy — James B. Greenberg on Substack — Oct 12, 2025
Adelita Grijalva won her special election in Arizona’s 7th district to succeed her father, Raúl Grijalva. She was duly certified, prepared to serve, and ready to represent over 800,000 constituents—myself among them. Yet weeks later, she remains unsworn. Speaker Mike Johnson calls it procedural, citing the government shutdown. But the delay reads as deliberate — a tactical refusal to seat a certified winner.
At the heart of the fight is a set of files—the long-suppressed records related to Jeffrey Epstein. A discharge petition is circulating in the House to force their release. Grijalva has promised to be the decisive 218th signature, the one that tips the balance. By keeping her out, Johnson prevents the petition from reaching the floor. This isn’t just about one oath. It’s about whether Congress will confront a scandal that implicates power itself.
This kind of maneuver has precedent. In 1967, the House refused to seat Adam Clayton Powell Jr., a prominent Black congressman, despite his re-election. The Supreme Court ended that practice in Powell v. McCormack (1969), ruling that if a candidate meets the constitutional requirements of age, citizenship, and residency, and is duly elected, the House must seat them. Today, Johnson’s refusal to swear in Adelita Grijalva revives that abuse of power, testing whether those constitutional limits and democratic norms still carry force.
The refusal also carries cultural and symbolic weight. Grijalva is a Latina woman, representing a district with a large working-class and minority population. By withholding her oath, the leadership is not just silencing an opponent—it is disenfranchising communities that have long struggled to secure representation in the halls of power. Denying their voice in Congress is not a neutral act—it resonates with the history of who is counted as a full participant in American democracy.
What makes the obstruction especially telling is the nature of the Epstein files. They are not confined to one man’s crimes. They represent a network of secrecy and elite impunity. Blocking Grijalva keeps those secrets buried a little longer. Johnson’s delay buys time for those who fear exposure. His resistance is more than bureaucratic matter—it is an effort to block transparency and keep silence where accountability should begin.
Taken together, Johnson’s tactic becomes part of a broader machinery of disenfranchisement. Just as gerrymandering redraws districts to weaken opposition, and voter suppression laws restrict access to the ballot box, refusing to seat a member nullifies an election after the fact. It is another tool in the same kit: bending rules and procedures to deny representation.
The oath of office is a civil ritual of belonging. To swear in a representative is to recognize them as a full member of the political body. Withholding the oath inverts that ritual, turning it into a signal of exclusion. Johnson’s choice is not merely a technical delay—it is a public act meant to show who counts and who does not.
For constituents, the consequences are immediate. Without a sworn representative, ordinary Arizonans are left without casework support. Social Security checks delayed, veterans without an advocate for benefits, families unable to get help on immigration petitions—these are the hidden costs of procedural gamesmanship. While national headlines focus on Epstein, everyday people in Tucson and Yuma bear the burden of disenfranchisement.
The stakes here go beyond one seat in Congress. If partisan leaders can refuse to swear in a duly elected member for strategic reasons, then no election result is safe from manipulation. Representation becomes conditional, subject to the Speaker’s political calculus rather than the will of voters. That undermines constitutional law, and with it the core principle of representative government.
Johnson’s refusal to seat Grijalva is a rehearsal for authoritarian control. It normalizes the idea that democratic outcomes can be undone by procedural fiat. It suggests that the will of the people counts only when it serves the majority in power. This is not a bureaucratic matter—it is choreography: a performance designed to intimidate, to delay, to redefine the boundaries of citizenship itself.
The real “enemy within” is not dissent, but the use of power to silence opposition and bury the truth. The Epstein files are a flashpoint because they threaten to expose uncomfortable realities about privilege and complicity. Blocking Adelita Grijalva is about more than one member’s seat—it is about whether Americans will accept secrecy, exclusion, and disenfranchisement as ordinary features of political life. Democracy erodes not only through violence, but through silence, delay, and the quiet denial of belonging.
Suggested Readings
Bourdieu, Pierre. Language and Symbolic Power. Translated by Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson. Edited by John B. Thompson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Brown, Wendy. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. New York: Zone Books, 2015.
Gupta, Akhil. Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012.
Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt. How Democracies Die. New York: Crown, 2018.
Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486 (1969).
Rosaldo, Renato. “Cultural Citizenship in San Jose, California.” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 17, no. 2 (1994): 57–63.
Scheppele, Kim Lane. “Autocratic Legalism.” University of Chicago Law Review 85, no. 2 (2018): 545–583.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995.
Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1969.
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Take Note - Reflections on life, music, politics, retirement and more by Ken Gray 
So sad … And we in Canada need to pay attention … Things like this can happen here, and there are Canadians who would cheer it 😦 UGH!!!
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