WASHINGTON — Most freshman lawmakers spend their first year, or even years, working on Capitol Hill in obscurity. Not Adelita Grijalva.

Before she even raised her hand to take the oath of office, the Arizona Democrat this fall was fortuitously thrown into the national spotlight and has become an unexpected but unwavering voice for sexual assault survivors.

For 50 days after Grijalva won a special election in a safely blue seat in Arizona, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., refused to seat her while the House was out.

Though the House was out, Grijalva and her would-be Democratic colleagues clashed with Johnson in the halls of the Capitol. Johnson, they argued, was keeping the House out of session to delay Grijalva from becoming the clinching 218th signature to force a vote to release the Jeff

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