Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) says he will move to block New York Democratic Socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier from taking a seat in Congress if she wins the Nov. 3 election, pointing to a 2019 social media post in which she wrote that she used an American flag as a napkin.
Burchett told the New York Post he plans to offer a motion 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. He said he will make the move whether Republicans hold the House or land in the minority.
The post in question, dated December 2019 and since deleted, read: “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.” Chevalier later said she regretted the comment, according to Breitbart.
“We've Lost Our Compass”
Burchett tied his objection to his own family's military record. His father was a World War II Marine, and his maternal uncle, Roy Hicks, was wounded shortly after D-Day while fighting German forces in the Normandy hedgerows. The congressman said he keeps the flag that draped Hicks' coffin in his Knoxville office.
“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,” Burchett told the New York Post.
He returned to the flag on his office wall when describing the comment's effect on him: “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 flew with President Donald Trump on Air Force One to Tennessee last week, a trip noted in Breitbart's account.
Who Is Chevalier?
Chevalier is the Democratic nominee in a New York House district and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. She faces Republican Jomo M. Williams in the general election. The Gateway Pundit's Mike LaChance reported that the district's heavy Democratic lean makes a Chevalier victory likely.
Her platform and public statements have drawn scrutiny from conservative outlets, with The Gateway Pundit asking how candidates who campaign against the Constitution's framework can be sworn to uphold it.
The Mechanics — and the Long Odds
Under Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution, each chamber is “the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members,” and members-elect are not seated until the House votes to do so. Any member can raise a question of qualification, forcing a vote.
But the plan faces steep odds, and not only because of the vote count. A 1969 Supreme Court decision, Powell v. McCormack, held that the House could not exclude a member who met the Constitution's stated qualifications of age, citizenship and residency. Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (D-NY) had been excluded; the Court ruled the House had exceeded its authority.
GOP operative John Feehery, a former senior House leadership aide, told the New York Post 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.
A Two-Track Fight
Burchett's move is less a procedural shortcut than a two-track strategy, in the reading of conservative observers: it forces a recorded vote that puts every member on the record about the flag, and it keeps a national spotlight on the candidate's 2019 post as the general election approaches. The practical blocking power is limited; the political power of the moment is not.
House control after November remains undecided. If Republicans keep the majority, Burchett's motion would test whether a simple-majority chamber will follow his lead on a question the Supreme Court has already answered in the negative. If Democrats take the gavel, the motion becomes a minority protest — and a campaign message for the next cycle.
The flag in Burchett's Knoxville office has 48 stars, the standard from 1912 to 1959. Its age is the point: it represents a country that sent men like Roy Hicks into the hedgerows of Normandy, and a country whose symbols are still saluted and folded and handed to grieving families, not used to wipe hands.
Chevalier has said only that she regrets the remark. No further statement from her campaign was reported by the outlets covering the dispute, and it is not known whether she has responded directly to Burchett's threat since it was reported.
Our Take
Tim Burchett is owed a debt of gratitude from every American who has ever stood at a graveside while taps played and watched a folded flag placed in a widow's hands. His uncle died fighting Nazis. His father served in the Pacific. He keeps the burial flag where he can see it, and now a candidate for Congress — in a district so blue a DSA member can probably waltz into the Capitol — treats the same flag like a bar rag.
The legal reality is grim: Powell v. McCormack means the House cannot keep her out for the things she said, no matter how vile. But the political reality is where this matters. A recorded vote tells voters exactly which members believe an oath to the Constitution means something, and which members shrug at a candidate who publicly disrespected the flag she'd be sworn under. Let the vote happen. Let the country watch.
