KJZZ’s Friday NewsCap revisits some of the biggest stories of the week from Arizona and beyond.
To talk about the federal government shutdown, Rep. David Schweikert joining Arizona's governor race and more, The Show joined Chip Scutari of S+C Communications and former Democratic congressional staffer Roy Herrera.
Conversation highlights
LAUREN GILGER: Let's talk about that, Roy, about newly elected Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva. She has not been sworn in yet.
This has been a couple of weeks now since since the election, and it led to that pretty exchange we heard a little bit of at the top there between Arizona's two senators, Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego, and the Speaker of the House Mike Johnson outside of his office.
The speaker basically saying we'll reopen the government if you do that, then, you know, we'll swear her in, but we're not going to do it until then.
Roy, Democrats say this is because Republicans don't want another vote on another issue, right? The Epstein files.
ROY HERRERA: That's right. I mean, Congresswoman[-elect] Adelita Grijalva would be the 218th signatory on the petition, the discharge position which would force a vote on the Epstein files, releasing the Epstein files.
So when you look at this, I mean, it's, it's again defying precedent in a number of ways. One is we don't, never seen a speaker sort of deliberately delay the, the swearing-in of a Congress member based on, you know, some policy outcome or some issue that's going on before Congress. It's always done quickly.
And then when, and it's also precedent defying even with this particular speaker because we've seen a number of Republicans win special elections in other states that were immediately sworn in, you know, this year, but he's going against all of that.
And the only logical conclusion to me anyways, and I think this is what Sen. Kelly and Sen. Gallego were pointing out, is that he doesn't want this 218th vote to release the Epstein files and in that sense he's protecting pedophiles and doing sort of the thing that Trump wants, which Trump doesn't want these files to be released. So to me that is the logical conclusion.
Of course he could put that to bed by just swearing her in, and we wouldn't have that anymore because that is typically what happens. Typically there's a special election. It's immediate, the person is immediately sworn in and that district gets their representation.
GILGER: What do you make of this, Chip?
CHIP SCUTARI: Well, it's, it's baffling on a few levels. One is, you know, technically Speaker Johnson hasn't violated any rules, and that's what they're going with.
But it's baffling to me just as a Republican, Republican or Democrat, doesn't matter, that the Congress and the Senate are, are supposed to be equal separate branches to the executive branch. But they're acting, they have just capitulated to President Trump in the White House to just give away their power.
So you would think that, you know, back not that long ago, speaker of the House, very powerful, you know, Senate president, very powerful. They were kind of running their own kingdoms and then they'd coordinate with the White House, you know, RD when times were needed.
So once again, Speaker Johnson is kind of just giving in to the White House and doing their bidding instead of just having, you know, Grijalva sworn in because she's going to get sworn in eventually whenever the shutdown is done, and then there's going to have the 218th vote for the Epstein to release the Epstein files or whatever the process is.
GILGER: So like that's going to happen at some point, regardless.
SCUTARI: Yeah, so it's building up, it's actually inflating the Epstein story than anything. So I think it's gonna backfire. I don't know why I would have just done it and, you know, be respectful and courteous, and as Roy said, it sets a horrible precedent if this is what we're going to do now, if, you know, if the Dems win back the House in 2026, are they gonna stop, you know, Republicans from being sworn in. It's just not how America should work.
GILGER: The word precedent getting thrown around.
Let me ask you one question before we go to a break on the Epstein files and how that plays among both electorates. Like, it seems like most voters will tend to agree, like, yeah, this is something we should probably release.
HERRERA: I think it's one of those issues that there's support on both sides of the aisle. Like why don't we release this thing? Let's see what's in there.
And certainly, you know, before all of this, a lot of Republicans, including Trump, were saying that yeah, let's let's release it. And suddenly he's changed his mind on that. And again that begs the question why.
SCUTARI: Yeah, and poll after poll has shown that I want to say 60%, 70% of American voters across the political spectrum has said let's release the files and see what's in there and get to the bottom of this.
And it's really there's a lot of victims and survivors here too that want justice for themselves and want this issue to be aired as it should be.
