Republican Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee says he will try to block New York Democratic Socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier from being seated in Congress if she wins her Nov. 3 election, pointing to a resurfaced social media post in which she described wiping her hand on an American flag.
Burchett told the New York Post he plans to bring the motion when the new Congress convenes in January, relying on a simple-majority vote that can stop newly elected members from being seated before they take the oath of office.
Burchett argues the flag remark should disqualify anyone about to take that 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.
The congressman said the comment is personal for him. His father served as a Marine in World War II, and his maternal uncle, Roy Hicks, was wounded shortly after D-Day fighting German forces in the Normandy hedgerows. Burchett 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,” Burchett said.
Burchett said he intends to force the motion regardless of whether Republicans control the House or end up in the minority after the election. He recently flew with President Donald Trump on Air Force One to Tennessee.
The post in question dates to December 2019, when Chevalier wrote on X, in a message since deleted: “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.” She has since said she regrets the comment.
Chevalier, 32, is running in New York’s 13th Congressional District, which covers northern Manhattan and the western Bronx, against Republican Jomo M. Williams. She won the Democratic primary by defeating five-term incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat after securing an endorsement from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. She co-founded a group that once described itself as “fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization” and ran a now-deleted account that promoted communism and Marxism. Asked directly whether she is a communist, she said, “I’m not. I’m a democratic socialist.”
A Long Shot Under House Rules
Republican strategist John Feehery, a former senior House leadership aide, said Burchett’s approach would make the chamber unworkable if applied broadly. “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 gives each chamber of Congress the authority to judge the elections and qualifications of its own members, but that power has limits. In 1969 the Supreme Court ruled the House had overstepped its authority when it excluded Rep. Adam Clayton Powell of New York, a Democrat who had been duly elected and met the Constitution’s qualifications for office.
