Johnson Swears In Republican in Record Time After 50-Day Delay for Dem

House Speaker Mike Johnson swore in Matt Van Epps to Congress Thursday morning, less than two days after Van Epps won a special election for the Tennessee 7th congressional district seat.

The time it took to swear in Van Epps, a Republican, was much shorter than the seven weeks Johnson waited before swearing in Representative Adelita Grijalva, a Democrat. Grijalva won a special election to represent Arizona’s 7th congressional district on September 23 to replace her father, Representative Raúl Grijalva, who passed away in March. She was only sworn in on November 12.

Johnson initially refused to swear in the younger Grijalva for days, and once the government shut down at the beginning of October, claimed that he couldn’t do so until that impasse was resolved. The more likely reason was that Grijalva would have been (and later became) the deciding vote on a petition that would trigger a House vote on the government releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Van Epps’s vote is critical for the narrow House Republican majority, and since Congress and President Trump have now approved the Epstein files, Johnson doesn’t see the need to drag his feet. Van Epps, a former commissioner of the Tennessee Department of General Services and Army helicopter pilot, was endorsed by Trump. However, he defeated his Democratic challenger Aftyn Behn by a much smaller margin of victory than expected, leading national Republicans to worry about the 2026 midterm elections.

This story has been updated.