The gaslighting of Adelita Grijalva

Adelita Grijalva should be at work right now. She’s got a job to do, and one that her approximately 813,000 constituents are counting on her to do. But the duly elected representative of Arizona’s 7th district can’t start the job she landed (in a landslide, by the way) on September 23rd because the guy who needs to give her the proverbial keys to her office is refusing to do so. And then telling her it’s her own damn fault.

Speaker Mike Johnson: “I will administer the oath to her, I hope on the first day we come back to legislative session. I’m willing and anxious to do that. In the meantime, instead of doing TikTok videos, she should be serving her constituents.”

Serving her constituents? Wow, the gaslighting. One of the most classic behaviors of an abuser is to cause harm and then assign blame to the person they are harming. In my decades of work with survivors of domestic violence, I saw that happen more times than I can possibly count.

Speaker Johnson keeps on speaking about Grijalva like the whole situation is one of her own making. The excerpt is from the New Republic’s coverage of his refusal to seat her:

“Speaking on CNBC Thursday morning, Johnson denied Democratic Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva’s claim that she was unable to start constituent work because she lacks a budget, an office in her district, or even a badge allowing her access to Capitol Hill. But the Louisiana Republican insisted that wouldn’t matter, anyway… ‘She has computers and 16 employees, and there’s no excuse for it,’ Johnson snapped.”

Mike Johnson is correct about one thing: there’s truly no excuse for this.

The people of Arizona’s 7th district went to the polls and chose a candidate to represent them. They expected to have someone working for them in DC, answering constituent calls at home, and ensuring the district’s needs were met to the best of their ability. But instead, more than a month after the election, the local congressional office in Tucson is closed and the phones ring unanswered. Constituent and immigration attorney Rachel Wilson had the following to say about the shuttered congressional office: “Here I am paying taxes to the federal government… and not only is it closed but I don’t have a representative either.”

Taxation without representation. Where have we heard that before?

Without being sworn in, Grijalva lacks the resources or authority to hire staff or respond to constituents who try to contact her. So while Mike Johnson is fussing at her to start serving her constituents, she can’t. Why? Because of Mike Johnson.

It is a particularly terrible time for the district to be denied representation. Arizona’s 7th Congressional District is quite large and it contains most of the state’s border with Mexico — putting it on the front lines of Trump’s campaign against immigrants. It contains several Native American reservations and is also the home of the University of Arizona. Nearly half of the residents of the district receive Medicaid. So much of the harm that defines the Trump administration will profoundly impact the people of this district: from the gutting of Medicaid to the assaults on higher education. But the people of the district will have to face these headwinds — and a government shutdown — without anyone representing them in one of the chambers of Congress.

It has gotten to the point where Arizona’s Attorney General has filed a lawsuit against Mike Johnson for failing to seat Rep-elect Grijalva. It’s wild to see the name of the case in print: the State of Arizona and Adelita Grijalva v. United States House of Representatives. I’m thinking that AG Kris Mayes has plenty of other work to do besides trying to force the Speaker to do the right thing by Arizona and seat their newest elected official. But here we are. And let’s sit for a moment with this. Two women filing suit against a way too powerful man to simply get him to do the right thing.

Mike Johnson’s response? He called the suit patently absurd, said “we run the house”, and accused Grijalva of looking for national publicity. And he did so in a tone (if I might editorialize) dripping with condescension. But here’s the video if you want to check me on my editorializing.

See what I mean?

To accuse Adelita Grijalva of looking for national publicity when all she is doing is looking to start the job she was elected to do and represent the people she has chosen to serve is peak abusive behavior. It’s gaslighting not just the representative-elect, but her entire district. Mike Johnson is harming her and then deriding her for being harmed. He is refusing to give her what she has earned and then punishing her when she dares to demand it. He is essentially holding her and her district hostage and wielding his power like a sledgehammer. Like any abuser would do.

The painful irony is in the theory of why Johnson is refusing to seat Grijalva. From Moira Donegan’s coverage of the impasse in the Guardian: “Johnson, Grijalva thinks, is aiming to stop her becoming the final member of Congress whose signature is needed to force a vote on the release of confidential files related to Jeffrey Epstein. Currently, the petition has 217 signatures; it needs only 218. Grijalva has pledged to support it.”

If this is true, we have an absolute doom loop of abuse: Mike Johnson is harming Adelita Grijalva and the constituents of Arizona’s 7th district in service to another abuser — Donald Trump. One abuser protecting another abuser and tearing down the whole house (literally and figuratively) in the process.

I know folks are rightly outraged about the Epstein files and the people who are burning everything to the ground to stop their release. And we should be. Full stop. But while we call for the release of those files we also have to shout from the rooftops about the Speaker’s blatant abuse of Adelita Grijalva. Even without considering his evil reasons for doing what he’s doing, it is completely and totally unacceptable.

I have written before about powerful women and the men who hate them. This is the latest example of a man using his power to punish a woman trying to assert hers. I need you to tell your daughters that this is absolutely not okay. And then after that?

I need you to tell your sons.