BREAKING: Mike Johnson gets BAD EPSTEIN NEWS

I'm joined now by Representative-elect Adelita Grajalva. Thanks for joining me again.

Thanks for having me.

So the one silver lining of the fact that we saw Democrats cave to Republicans in this shutdown fight is that now it looks like the House is going to reopen if this bill does go ahead and pass and you will be sworn in. Is there any indication when that might happen? Or, conversely, is there any concern that Mike Johnson will still find a new excuse now not to swear you in?

You know, I don't have a definitive date. I was on a media interview literally right after Speaker Johnson, and he did say publicly that the first order of business would be to swear me in, and so my hope is that he doesn't go back on that, but we don't know if it'll be Wednesday, Thursday, no one's given me any, given any of us any definitive date or time.

Okay, so can you walk us through the process of this discharge petition? What do we expect to happen, given that I assume one of your first orders of business will be to sign this thing?

Yes, it will be. So when I sign, as the 218th signer, in my understanding, is a member of Congress. I believe Representative McGovern will call the vote, something like that, as far as like the order of. So Speaker Johnson could have a solid vote on the issue right away. I don't anticipate that happening. I think that he's going to exhaust the seven days that he has per statute, all of the rules, and then it will come to a vote, unless he tries to come up with some other way to avoid

this vote, which he has done in the past and by, you know, closing session early for members of Congress by a week in order to avoid this vote. So I know that this is not something that they're looking forward to.

On a little bit of a different topic here, but still sticking with the idea of discharge petitions as it relates to this broader shutdown, we know that there was a guarantee of a vote in the text of this of this compromise. There was a guarantee of the vote in the Senate, but there was no guarantee that even if this thing passed the Senate that it would ever come up for a vote in the House. And again, you know better than anyone that if Mike Johnson doesn't want something to come to the floor, he just won't bring it to the floor. And given the fact that you represent the 218th vote on the Epstein discharge petition,

how are you thinking about also using this same procedure as a way to possibly get a vote to compel at least to get these members on record on the ACA extension?

Well, you know, Speaker Johnson was asked point blank, will you commit to? And he danced around that never gave a definitive answer. And so I don't anticipate that a vote on the ACA will come. And I do believe that any movement in that direction is going to have to come from a discharge petition. And what's really so frustrating about all of this

is the Republicans have been complaining about the ACA and Obamacare since 2010. And they've had 15 years to work on something better. 15 years. And here we are still doing these piecemeal requests. It's frustrating.

In their defense, though, I'm pretty sure that they just need two more weeks and really could hammer out something wonderful.

Right. Well, I mean, and that's sort of the argument, right? You know, you're gonna go ahead and commit to having a vote, to having a discussion. That doesn't mean it's going to pass. It doesn't mean that there'll be any support at all. And we won't see that in the House. If Trump doesn't endorse it, it's not happening. And so this was our way, Democrats,

this was the only way we were going to be able to see some actual movement and guarantee that rates would stay flat. And this is now we don't have that. And losing that leverage is incredibly frustrating and something that we're going to have to continue to fight in the House.

To that point, can I have your broader reaction to what we've seen in the Senate, where not only were the polls showing that the vast majority of Americans blamed Trump and Republicans for the shutdown, independent voters by a two to one margin were and Republicans for the shutdown. Independent voters by a two to one margin were blaming Trump for the shutdown. We had that this past Tuesday's election where Democrats won everything even in races in Georgia and Mississippi on the backdrop of this shutdown and that amid all of that the Democrats response here was to completely cave to Republicans and

basically reopen the government sacrificing the only leverage they had to be able to guarantee that the ACA subsidies would be included ahead of 2026.

Yeah, you know, it's really just, um, I was really disappointed to hear it. I'm really frustrated and very angry because, you know, I've talked to a mom whose monthly bill right now for insurance is $500. And the bill she received that she would that would start on January 1 is $2,400 a month.

Yeah.

To insure her and her children. What that means is it's not gonna happen. She doesn't have the capacity to be able to pay quadruple the rate to insure her and her children, but people are going to still need to go to the doctor. They're still need to, they're going to be sick,

which means they're going to go to urgent care and our emergency rooms, which are already overstretched. And we're going to see what we have been concerned about, which is the closure of rural hospitals, like an overtaxed and overstressed system that is just going to get worse.

We're going to see that in real time. And I just cannot understand why anyone, after holding out this long, this has been so painful for so many, why would you then just sort of say, this is the Republican shutdown and everyone will know it?

No, what they have been doing is blaming Democrats. And once seven Democrats signed on, all of a sudden, now we're in this situation, the government's gonna reopen, the bad guys are still the Democrats. When respectfully, all we were trying to do was save healthcare.

And so that's why it's gonna to be a fight at the House. My hope is that our caucus stays strong and stays together and united. And so we will now be the ones that are holding it together for the American people.

You know, we're again, hopefully days away from you being officially sworn in after more than a month of you being of your seat being purposefully held vacant by Mike Johnson. How are you thinking about this moment in terms of the need for a new generation of Democrats to be elected to the House and the Senate?

You know, what Speaker Johnson's obstruction in swearing me in, what it really highlighted is the cracks in our system, like significantly. For one person to be able to keep the government shut down this long, for one person to be able to mute the voices of 813,000 people, I mean this should never ever happen again and what we should be very concerned about if we care about the Constitution at all

and our democracy at all, is that when we look back at this moment, he's already set the precedent to be able to do this again and again. And so we have to make sure that this never happens. And to have the government shut down for the longest period of time and have no real answers, I mean, all they've done is piecemeal budgets. Why can't this Congress pass a budget that affects the whole year? Why are we only going months at a time? That's a dysfunction of this administration and this speaker and the leadership of this party,

of the Republican Party. But to your question of generational change, what it means is it's not just about age, it's about philosophy and where you come from. And if you are fighting for working people, or you are protecting the system that has allowed billionaires to exist.

And so when we look back at Tuesday, what that showed very clearly is that the overwhelming number of people want progressive values. They want people to fight for them on the things that really matter.

And that's why I feel very excited about the midterms. As long as Democrats can continue to do what we promise and fight for working families and for affordability and for rights of every individual, then we have an advantage because that's what the American people want to see us doing. And that's what they want for themselves and generations to come.

How do you square this circle here where, on one hand, you want to make sure that people recognize the need to elect Democrats to serve as a bulwark for the worst successes of this administration. But on the other hand, they see what happened, you know, with with this Democrat Senate Democrat capitulation, and they say, well, what is the point of going out for those people if they're not doing the very thing that we want them to do, which is the standard for this

administration, the very thing that they're campaigning on doing, which is to be a bulwark to this administration. So how do you square those two things? What do you say to Americans right now who are looking at this and saying, look, I'm very clear-eyed about the fact that we need a legitimate opposition party to what's happening in the White House and in the Senate and in the House, but everything that I'm seeing is a constant reminder that the opposition party that exists is not willing to meet the moment with the urgency that it

deserves.

Yeah, I think that when we look at what has happened in the last couple of days, it the the weight of this shutdown is, well, that's what we're hearing overwhelmingly. So I can't speak to these, you know, Senate Democrats that are wherever they live and they're dealing with the realities of what they're dealing with, but their constituents are gonna be mad.

Their constituents are going to be outraged at the fact that we had, we were within reach of some actual progress and they chose to walk away from the opportunity in order to, you know, appease a handful of people. Overwhelmingly, I feel like we had history on our side and we still do. I think that, you know, when you're looking at generational change, some of the most progressive

people I know are older people. It's what are we willing to fight for and how we're gonna get there. And we do need leaders that are willing to take, make the tough decisions. We do need leaders that are willing to stand up.

And we need leaders that are looking past themselves and for generations to come. And I feel like for me, it makes it a lot easier because I have three kids who are 18, 16, and 14. And what world am I leaving for them and their children? That's who I'm fighting for.

I'm fighting for people who want to make it better for the generation that's coming, not the people that are really focused more on how can I enrich myself. And we have a lot of politicians in D.C. and we need more public servants.

So that's who I'm hopeful is getting elected. Those are the people that I get excited about hearing. Those are the people that won in really tough races that didn't have a shot, like Mom Donnie. He didn't, they dismissed him right away. And what he did is he spoke to an issue of affordability

in New York because he lives there. He knows the issues, he knows the community, and that resonated with people. And so as a party, we need to support more candidates like that, more candidates like me that don't check a box

of I am the typical DCCC candidate. I'm not. I don't have independent wealth. I am a Chicana from a relatively small community. I'm not the races that they look for, but we are the people that they need to start supporting

if they want to see Democrats in a position that the rest of the, in a position of being able to make some real significant change for working families.

We'll leave it there. Adelita Grijalva, looking forward to seeing you finally after weeks and weeks and weeks get sworn in and thank you for taking the time tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.