On Wednesday, November 12th, the tides turned. After 44 days of a non-functioning government, protests, cries for help, and the releases of heavily-censored files so disgusting that the public won’t talk about them, the script flipped.
The government shut down on October 1st due to a disagreement within the federal government when it came to the budget. The left wing was clear about their terms to end the shutdown: affordability, lower health care costs, and more law-abiding behavior from the president. What did the right want? There was an air of deception, and something they weren’t saying.
Well, less than a month before the government shutdown was announced, Jeffery Epstein’s ‘Birthday Book’ was released on September 8th. This stirred some public discussion, especially with the inclusion of Trump within the pages. While photos of the two of them together and word of their previous friendship is not breaking news, the outline of a young, naked woman drawn by Trump within the pages came as a bile-rising shock to some people. The contents of the outline are cryptic, but the tone of the whole book is clear. President Trump has been very adamant that the Epstein Files stay locked away, and many people were suspicious about just how much more our president is hiding from us.
Not only did the government shutdown take attention away from the pages of incriminating evidence, it also delayed the swearing in of Adelita Grijalva –the democratic representative of Arizona– by seven weeks. Grijalva was expected to be the 218th signature needed to push a vote within Congress to release the files.
It was indeed her hand that pushed the White House into a frenzy on that fateful Wednesday. What is key to understand here is that once 218 signatures are on a Congressional petition, the signatures are frozen and none can be removed. So, in the last ticking minutes before Grijalva was sworn in, President Trump frantically begged for the Republican signees to remove their names, knowing that his fate was sealed once Grijalva entered office.
For the first time in a while, he was right. Just moments after her swearing in, Representative Adelita Grijalva turned the tables, setting in motion what is the inevitable release of the Epstein files. She signed her name, making the petition 218 signatures long, and all 218 of them were frozen there, in destined place. The majority leader of the House finally agreed to bring the issue to the floor, and the vote was set to take place on November 19th.
On that fateful day, the Epstein Files Transparency Act was signed into law after passing unanimously in the Senate and 427 votes in favor in the House, with only one vote countering the ruling. Clay Higgins, a representative on behalf of Louisiana, was that single written nay when the time came. He believed that releasing the files would “reveal and injure thousands of innocent people.” With the push of the 218th signature and the almost undisputed vote, the deed was done. The Epstein Files will be released before December 19th, 2025.
Despite a seven week delay on her inclusion into Congress, Representative Grijalva did not disappoint. She was begged to change history, and she delivered. Welcome back, Epstein.