Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Thursday said House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) should deliver the oath of office to Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.).
“She should be sworn in,” Greene said during an appearance on CNN’s “The Source.”
The Georgia representative has railed against Johnson’s decision to keep the lower chamber out of session until the government shutdown is resolved.
“I’m not allowed to work, and I’m not allowed to represent my district. And we’re not even passing our appropriations,” she told anchor Kaitlan Collins.
“And my rural district is the type of district when they have appropriation requests, they’re extremely important. These are small towns, so they may be asking for something important for a water plant or a road or a bridge. And they don’t have the type of tax base or funding that they’re able to just easily fix those things,” Greene added.
The Speaker said last month that House members are at home in their districts, doing “meaningful” work.
Johnson also has said while the House is out of session, he cannot swear in Grijalva, who won a special election to replace her late father, Rep. Raul Grijalva.
Her swearing-in would allow her to sign on to a petition seeking to have files tied to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein released by the Department of Justice, but Johnson alleges prolonging her swearing-in has nothing to do with the push.
“As these crises unfold and intensify, Speaker Johnson refuses to swear me into office, an unprecedented and starkly undemocratic position that sets a very dangerous precedent and deprives 813,000 Arizonans of the congressional representation they deserve,” Grijalva wrote in a USA Today op-ed.
She described his actions as “negligent and cruel.”
