A Democrat was sworn into office by Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday, filling the late Rep. Gerry Connolly’s vacant seat in Virginia.
Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va), Connolly’s former chief-of-staff, comfortably defeated Republican Stewart Whitson, a former FBI agent, in a special election to become the next lawmaker to represent Virginia’s 11th Congressional District.
Actually, they call it a landslide.
With the swearing in, Johnson’s majority in the House is now 219-213, meaning republicans can only afford to lose two votes on party line bills.
Late Wednesday, Walkinshaw signed Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna’s petition to force a floor vote on the release of the Epstein files.
“The discharge petition in the House … is really the only mechanism to circumvent that ironclad control that Donald Trump has over my Republican colleagues,” Walkinshaw told POLITICO afterward.