Pantsuits and Lawsuits with Attorneys General Kris Mayes and Dana Nessel

Taxation Without Representation

• Attorneys General Kris Mayes & Dana Nessel

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A district spoke, and power stalled. When voters in Arizona’s 7th chose Adelita Grijalva, the oath never came—leaving more than 800,000 people without a voice for 50 days. We take you inside the legal fight to end the delay, the constitutional questions it raised, and the very real ways a shutdown and a locked office can silence a community that did everything right at the ballot box.

Adelita shares the ground truth: pro forma sessions that swore in others but not her, long security lines without the member’s pin, no email or phones, and a stack of constituent cases with nowhere to go. From veterans benefits and immigration emergencies to Social Security help, the gears of government froze for an entire district. We talk through why that matters far beyond Arizona—because if a Speaker can pause representation, every voter is one procedural tactic away from losing their seat at the table.

We also dig into the bipartisan outrage, from conservative legal voices to longtime progressives, and why a simple, automatic swearing-in rule could prevent abuse regardless of which party holds the gavel. Then we connect the dots to the Epstein files and a discharge petition designed to force transparency, centering survivors’ rights over partisanship. Adelita explains the push for full disclosure, accountability for anyone implicated, and how Congress can reclaim its role while honoring separation of powers.

If you care about fair representation, clean process, and real services reaching real people, this story matters. Hit play, learn what changed, and see what comes next. If the conversation resonates, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can find it.

SPEAKER_07:

Hi, and welcome back to Pant Suits and Lawsuits, everybody, the podcast keeping you up to date and informed on all things legal and our current political and legal landscape. I am Arizona Attorney General Chris Mays, and this week uh we are missing A.G. Dana Nessel, but I am in I am joined by a very special guest.

SPEAKER_02:

Hi everyone, I'm Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva.

SPEAKER_07:

And on today's episode episode, join us for a conversation with Congresswoman Grijalva as we go over her unprecedented path to the Hill and what this fight was all about, our constitution, our right to representation, and yes, even about the upstate files.

SPEAKER_02:

Let's get to it.

SPEAKER_04:

Two weeks after winning a special election decisively in Arizona's 7th Congressional District, Democratic Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva still hasn't been sworn into office.

SPEAKER_06:

The Republican speaker was pressed about it.

SPEAKER_00:

House Speaker Mike Johnson has yet to swear her in due to the ongoing shift.

SPEAKER_01:

Johnson has to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_03:

In a major escalation tonight, Attorney General of Arizona and Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva of Arizona are suing Mike Johnson. And they're suing him because Grahalva has not been sworn in. So what does all this have to do with Jeffrey Epstein? Because it does at its heart. Graholva is the final vote needed for a bipartisan maneuver called a discharge petition that goes around Johnson. Goes around Johnson because he does not want a vote to release the Epstein files. This would go around him, get that vote to release the files.

SPEAKER_05:

Late today, State Attorney General sued the Speaker of the House over his refusal to swear in a duly elected member of Congress. And in that lawsuit, Arizona Attorney General Chris Mays did not mince words at all. Her lawsuit reads: quote, This case is about whether someone duly elected to the House, who indisputably meets the constitutional qualifications of the office, may be denied her rightful office simply because the Speaker has decided to keep the House out of regular session. If the Speaker were granted that authority, he could thwart the people's choice of who should represent them in Congress by denying them representation for a significant portion of the two-year term provided by the Constitution. Goes on to say, fortunately, the Constitution does not give the authority.

SPEAKER_02:

It has been fifty days since the people of Arizona's 7th Congressional District elected me to represent them. 50 days that over 800,000 Arizonans have been left without access to the basic services that every constituent deserves. This is an abuse of power. One individual should not be able to unilaterally obstruct the swearing in of a duly elected member of Congress for political reasons.

SPEAKER_07:

She's an advocate and a resident of Southern Arizona. She has been active in Arizona, first serving at the school board level, and most recently on the Pima County Board of Supervisors, becoming just the second woman and the first Latina to serve as chair. You are also the first Latina member of Congress, correct?

SPEAKER_02:

From Arizona, yes, I am.

SPEAKER_07:

Indeed. And uh she is the daughter, as I said, of Representative Ro Grijalva, who was a giant in Arizona politics. We lost in March. And it is really my pleasure to introduce um my friend in Arizona's newest representative, Congresswoman, Adelita Grahalva. I love the sound of that after so long fighting to be able to say that. Uh, how are you? Thank you for joining us on pantsuits and lawsuits.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, thank you. And thank you, I have to say, thank you so much for your support. What I loved is, you know, there were so many people here supporting me in district supporting me, and they're like, You're attorney general. I'm like, I know, right? I love her. Because you're like, this is not, I mean, it's not personal. I mean, I think that you're great and you're great at your job, but the reason why is because you focus what you're doing on advocating for Arizona. And in this case, it's like CD7 hasn't had a voice in like from the time I was elected. Before then, my dad passed away in March. And so nobody working on legislation. And so every day was just a delay in silencing our community, and it was not okay. And so I so much depreciated you, your willingness to like, we're gonna do this together. And um, I do think it had it, I had an I think it had an impact. It still didn't happen as quickly as we wanted. And the biggest issue for me is that I don't think that the House of Representatives should be taking direction from the judicial brands. I get that, but absent any kind of leadership here, that's what it's there for. So I do think ultimately, had the had the case gone forward, it would have been successful. But now I feel it's my job to make sure that legislation is in place to prevent this from ever happening to anyone else.

SPEAKER_07:

Oh, I think yeah, I'd love to hear about that. And so true. And yeah, you're right. I mean, ultimately, though, we love you, and you're gonna you are an amazing member of Congress. It was about your constituents, right? The 813,000 constituents that went without representation, and you now hold the record for the longest delay in seeding a member of Congress following a special election. I mean, can give our viewers uh and listeners a sense of that timeline as those days dragged on. What did it feel like? What was it?

SPEAKER_02:

You know, I was elected on September 23rd, and there are a couple of opportunities for us to um like we had this time where I thought, okay, I'm gonna get sworn in. There's, you know, it's it's not it's a pro forma session, which basically means there's nothing happening as far as there's no scheduled votes, but you can take action, you can commit to you know, doing something at a next session, all of that. And so I thought, because Speaker Johnson had sworn in two Republicans that were also elected in a special, right, and pour them in on a pro forma session that I would that would be my reality too. And so when that didn't happen, and there was no clear explanation as to why, it's just well, we don't do that. Well, okay. Even if you literally just did, it's okay. And so I thought, all right, October 7th. And then, you know, he closed down the house and it was dark. And every pro-forma session, I had another member of Congress going up and advocating for me, whether it was Representative Steton or Representative McGovern or Representative Ranking Member Raskin. I mean, every every time that we would meet, somebody else was screaming. So I'm like, okay, I appreciate the support, but the back and forth with like no end in sight, it was very frustrating. And, you know, then to have the speaker say really disparaging things about me, never having communicated with me at all, and talking about what I should be doing and that the rules are not different for her. You're like, you literally shut down the house for 50 days, the longest down in history, and talking about me not working, you know, when what how we normally do things? It was really surreal.

SPEAKER_07:

And so that could have been the worst part. It's like, really? You know, and then I think at some point he said, What did he say about you? Bless your heart.

SPEAKER_02:

Bless her heart.

SPEAKER_07:

Yeah, it's like it, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02:

Y'all know what that means. Yes. If you're using a hand, it's something somewhere in the middle area. Like, that's what it felt like. And then just you know, the things I could and couldn't do. But anyone who's in any elected office or anyone who's in at a nonprofit organization at any kind of business, if you don't have a budget, you can't do anything. And worse here in Congress, because if you don't have this pin, yeah, you you don't have it. This is literally like when you go to Disneyland in the fast pass. That's what this feels like here. It doesn't have the same effect in in state, but here it's like you get to go through security quicker. You have an elevator that's different because you're always rushing back and forth. So it really did hamstring a lot.

SPEAKER_07:

Well, talk, yeah, talk a little bit more about that because that's a kind of back behind the scenes uh detail that I think our viewers would love to hear about. Like what, you know, I I remember seeing the amazing videos that you did where you went into, I was so funny, but not funny. Yeah. You went into your office and tried to use the the copy machine and the computers, but you couldn't actually because you didn't have an email address. I mean, what obviously you can't vote, but what other kinds of things uh could you not do because he had not sworn?

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, there is um, I couldn't vote, couldn't have didn't have access to any of the laptops. One of the dates that they were here, he brought people out of um they were furloughed, and he brought people out of furlough to come and help me. They brought a bag, like a manila folder of cell phones from the staff that were here with my dad. Wow. And said, Oh, here's cell phones. I'm like, where the numbers, or how do you unlock these? And they're like, we don't know. We were just told to give you the cell phone. So it was this whole, it was just a big farce and it was just a charade of like, see, we gave you a cell phone. I'm like, but I don't know how, I mean, it's not mine. I don't know phone numbers. What am I supposed to do with this? Um, and there were a lot of other things that, you know, when you anytime you're traveling, you can use your budget to offset that. So, like Uber's and you know, all of the stuff, I didn't have any of that access to any of it. So all of that was out of pocket. And people would say, well, you could use your campaign account. No, that's not what people donated to my campaign for. So I do that right. So it was just trying to navigate that um process. And it was a it was difficult. And then when you come in the building, you know, there's heightened security. And so you have to take literally everything off. So I mean, this bracelet my dad gave me, I wear it all the time. I have, I mean, it was like that. It was, it was a little bit more amplified than normal um TSA when you're going into a flight. So when we're going there, going through that, it's like I didn't have any, I was elect, which here means nothing. You're like, yeah, you're going to, you'll get invited to meetings, but I didn't know where to go. I had to be escorted in by another member of Congress. Yes, another member of Congress was walking, and I thought, can I hook a ride with you? So we're walking in because nobody, they're not going to let me in without somebody else kind of vouching for me. Yeah. And it was, it, it was very, that part was very frustrating. And then when I'd have meetings, I would try to not leave the building. Like there's a series of different ways you can go to the Capitol, you can go to the canon. I'm in the Longworth, you can go to Rayburn, and they're all connected underneath through like tunnels. You can use, I would try to use that because if I left the building to come back in because it was a shutdown, there was only one entrance, and the wait was usually 20 minutes, which would mean that I would miss meetings.

SPEAKER_07:

Yeah, sure. I mean what a nightmare. So I mean, one of the things that that you know, we were concerned, obviously, we we took legal action, you and I together. We sued uh the how the Republican House of Representatives, and you know, um Mike Johnson, et cetera. Um, not directly Mike Johnson for for uh strategic reasons. But I mean, I think one of the reasons in addition to just wanting to get you seated so that you could represent your constituents on a whole host of important issues, um, was a concern about whether they might try to do this in 2026. I mean, if they were if they were allowed to do this to you, you know, I had a lot of folks, you know, just regular constituents say, hey, can't they do this in 2026 to try to, you know, essentially block an election? Uh speak to that.

SPEAKER_02:

Like you know, it was so unprecedented that all of those hypotheticals that before you used to think, well, that will never happen. Right. Now it's it it's very much real and tangible because it's it already did. We were in the longest shutdown in history. We I they now that now the cutoff is 50 days. And so if you know, if Speaker Johnson or whoever the speaker is decides not to swear in a duly elected member, there's precedent now. So that has to change. And it's one of the things that I've said repeatedly, we actually have language that is with legal in looking at how do we prevent this, regardless of party. Like you should be the next before the session.

SPEAKER_07:

That's an important point because you know, what's to stop Democrats from doing this in the future? You know, if the Republicans do it, then the Democrats could do it. I mean, so that your legislation would stop that on both.

SPEAKER_02:

And my hope, and my hope it would be bipartisan, because what I really think is important that we shouldn't have other people telling the House how to do its business. You should just, there should be parameters and guidelines. And so many people, like Speaker Amerita Pelosi said, that's just a very long time to make anyone wait. I just never thought that anything like this would happen. And here we are. So my hope is that we can move forward in ensuring that regardless of who is elected, once a community speaks, that is that is what we should all implement, regardless of whether, unless they have committed a crime or some other really egregious thing, and there's a reason why they shouldn't be in office. But this this was crazy and it really can't happen again.

SPEAKER_07:

From Tim Sandifer at the Goldwater Institute to more Marjorie Taylor Green, a lot of organizations and individuals, uh, even on the right, were equally supportive of you being sworn in.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm sure that was uh a little weird to to to know that uh everybody The Goldwater Institute, which I have opposed almost everything that they've said, said, yeah, she should be sworn in. I'm like, well, well, then you know, we've crossed over into another multiverse with our agreement.

SPEAKER_07:

Must be doing something right. So um why do you think this was such an appealing bipartisan issue? Why do you think people spoke out against their own majority leader in support of you and your your lawsuit? And were you hearing privately from a lot of Republicans?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. No, um, I was surprised that there was vocal outreach, like people that were like being public on, you know, news stories and that kind of thing, saying, Yeah, no, she should have been sworn in a long time ago. That I mean, that basically shows how wrong it was.

SPEAKER_07:

People all over the state of Arizona were outraged because we were basically deprived of our ninth uh member of Congress. We have nine. We were down to eight, down to eight when you were not being uh seated. But I want to read you something. Um Craig Miller from the Northwest Side of Tucson uh wrote the following letter to the other uh into the Arizona Daily Star. He said, quote, one of the causes of the American Revolution was taxation without representation. I believe Adelita Grijalva's constituents should be exempt from federal taxes for the amount of time they are without representation due to Speaker Johnson's refusal to seat her, end quote. So, I mean, why why do you think uh people felt so strongly that their constitutional rights were being affected? It was in a very poignant letter.

SPEAKER_02:

I think one of the arguments that Speaker Johnson made was, well, we're in a shutdown, and so it shouldn't matter. I mean, you're we're not voting anyway. But there's so many things that really the bulk of what I think a good member of Congress does is provide services to their constituents. Right. And literally still, because of that delay, I mean, everything sort of takes a long time. So just to give you an idea, our phones in the district office are getting turned on tomorrow.

SPEAKER_07:

Wow.

SPEAKER_02:

Members of right. There are only tomorrow? Tomorrow. Right. There, so once we finally signed the agreement, and again, remember that it's not just I get to sign and it's done. It has to go through legal channels. I mean, there's security that has to go through the capital police, have to go through the space to make sure it's okay. I mean, there are all these things that it's not as easy as it was when I was at the county and you could just say, yeah, we're gonna do this. It's fine, we're done. As long as it's not illegal, we're good to go. That's not the case here. So we had, just to give you an idea, from September 23rd through November 11th, there were over um almost like 300 people reached out to the office to put in a request for constituent services. Those people, we still don't have access to their information because that was the uh, I think it's like the um office of the capital administration or something like that. They have access to that and they still haven't turned that over yet, probably because we didn't have emails set up and they can't sort of hand that stuff over yet. But even from November 11th through last week, we had 43. Wow. Yeah, and those were coming.

SPEAKER_07:

343.

SPEAKER_02:

Yep. And that's just and and those were people who took the initiative to try to find it. I mean, remember, we just got an like a website up.

SPEAKER_07:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

site or whole campaign site dropping things off at our for at our headquarters people reaching out on Facebook and Instagram and going to my mom and dad's house. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07:

Going to your mom and dad's house, really. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Because people are used to going, they know where my dad lived. And that he he was that type of representative. Like you literally felt like you could knock on the door. And a lot of people did.

SPEAKER_07:

And and you know, I think about the the you know the um outreach you could have gotten that you might want to send my way, you know, to law enforcement or to our consumer uh fraud section to help people with consumer fraud issues. All the things that you would do as a member of Congress or I would do as an AG if I've got an issue I need to send your way. I can't do that if you're in office or not in office yet. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Or legislation that we need to push through things I want to co-sponsor. I mean the next the next available date that I could I co-sponsored 35 bills. They're like, I think you broke a record. I'm like well I had to be doing something over the last 50 days. I was reading like yep I want to co-sponsor that I want to co-sponsor this as soon as I got a voting card and an account I was like okay we're off to the races here.

SPEAKER_07:

Well I we couldn't uh possibly end this conversation with talking about the reason that Mike Johnson didn't want to swear you in um do you think it had to do with the Epstein files uh petition and can you let our viewers know where all of that stands?

SPEAKER_02:

So right now um Trump has directed the DOJ to release as many files as possible according to the White House. I don't have a lot of faith in the White House and their word because Trump said if elected on day one he would release the files and he had to be compelled by a discharge petition from the House and a vote in the Senate in order to sign it into law. So this is not, I mean he could have done this without a vote of the House. So I'm very concerned about what we're actually going to see. But right now we're just hoping for the kind of transparency that everyone is asking for. And you know people say well what if Democrats are are implicated? I don't care who I don't care what party they are if they committed crimes against children and women they deserve the legal consequences that are coming and the survivors deserve justice and then an opportunity to finally be able to move on from this. I mean I can't imagine for and I talked to the two of the survivors I cannot imagine having to relive your story over and over and over again and have people online criticize the validity criticize you know what they're saying what they're you know well it didn't seem to bother them too much. They seem to be living a good life I'm like stop I mean to me that is just some of the most unconscionable sort of things that I've seen and heard like this was a child. And then you have someone on the news that has quite a big following saying it wasn't illegal. They just liked younger which is so good.

SPEAKER_07:

That is the most disgusting thing I've ever heard ever I just I cannot and and Adelina these are these are Republicans who claim to believe in victims' rights you know uh and and who are all about and and you know we do a lot of victims' rights work here at the AG's office. We work with victims all the time we support them it's part of our constitution in here in Arizona um we have a victims bill of rights and and these Republicans claim to believe it and yet they turn around and they don't listen to these Epstein victims and they downplay what they went through.

SPEAKER_02:

And you're right it's disgusting it really is I mean try to explain that I have you know my daughter's 18 she's going to be 19 later this month my son is 17 and my youngest is 14 and try to explain to them what these people went through and how long they have been advocating for some justice and the fact that they reached out to law enforcement they reached out to the they've done all of the right things and it took you know this Chicana from Tucson to like okay fine we're waiting to sign this discharge petition let's get her done and that I feel was why we got so much attention and why Trump had to had to finally say yeah you know I'm encouraging everyone everyone should sign on to this discharge petition never explaining why he didn't do it himself why he didn't just release everything himself. Never here we go.

SPEAKER_07:

Yeah well I know your dad would be and is so proud of you but I also know that you are going to be a leading voice in what the Democratic AGs want to see which is Congress standing up for itself and its separation of powers and your prerogatives and and stopping Donald Trump from violating the separation of powers so you are going to be I know right there in that fight. I signed on to that discharge petition too so I'd after the Epstein files the next day I signed on to seven other discharge seven you were indeed ready to go so that is uh that is all the time we have today I want to thank uh Congresswoman Grijalva for being with us and um thanks for everybody for tuning in to this episode episode of Pan Suits and Lawsuits. Thanks Adelita for jumping in and giving our viewers an awesome behind the scenes recounting of one of the most remarkable episodes of uh congressional American history um and uh pant suits and lawsuits will be back uh soon uh with more from your uh uh your favorite uh attorneys general including Michigan's Dana Nessel be sure to follow our departments on social media for the latest updates about the work that we are each doing in Arizona and Michigan and be sure to subscribe subscribe uh and until next time uh be safe everybody thanks so much