Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) said he plans to block New York Democratic Socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier from being seated in Congress if she wins the Nov. 3 election, citing a resurfaced post in which she said she wiped her hand on an American flag.
Burchett told the New York Post he intends to make the move when the new Congress convenes in January, using a simple-majority vote to prevent newly elected lawmakers from being seated before they take the oath of office.
The Tennessee Republican argued the flag comment is disqualifying for anyone about to swear the oath.
“You take an oath to uphold the Constitution, and and [sic] you’re pretty much disavowing it right there. I just think we’ve lost our compass,” he said.
Burchett called the comment an affront to his own family’s military service. His father was a World War II Marine, and his maternal uncle, Roy Hicks, was wounded shortly after D-Day battling German forces in the Normandy hedgerows. The congressman keeps the flag that covered Hicks’ coffin in his Knoxville office.
“I’m looking at a 48-star flag that hung on my uncle’s casket and [he] died fighting the Nazis, and then see somebody going to get elected to Congress in New York who said they use that flag for a napkin,” he said.
Burchett said he will offer the motion whether Republicans hold the House or fall into the minority. The congressman flew with President Donald Trump on Air Force One to Tennessee last week.
Chevalier, who faces Republican Jomo M. Williams in the general election, made the comment in a December 2019 post on X that has since been deleted: “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.” She later said she regretted it.
The 32-year-old Democratic Socialist upended five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat in the primary for the 13th Congressional District, covering northern Manhattan and the western Bronx, after an endorsement from New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. She co-founded a group that once described itself as “fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization,” and maintained a deleted account that hyped communism and Marxism. Asked whether she is a communist, she said, “I’m not. I’m a democratic socialist.”
The plan faces long odds. GOP operative John Feehery, a former senior House leadership aide, said the chamber could not function under such a standard.
“If we refused to seat folks in Congress who said things that we strongly disagreed with, nobody in the House would be seated,” Feehery said.
The Constitution makes each chamber the judge of its members’ elections and qualifications. The Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that the House had exceeded its authority in excluding Rep. Adam Clayton Powell (D-NY), who had been duly elected and met the constitutional qualifications for office.
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