Rep. Tim Burchett intends to block New York socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier from a House seat if she wins, over her claim she used the American flag as a napkin.
The Tennessee Republican says he will force a parliamentary showdown in January if the Mamdani-backed Democrat takes New York’s 13th District on Nov. 3, aiming to stop her from being seated before she can take the oath.
The New York Post reported that Burchett plans to use a simple majority vote when the new Congress convenes, citing a deleted 2019 social media post in which Chevalier treated the Stars and Stripes as a wipe cloth.
Burchett frames the remark as more than bad taste. He calls it a direct insult to the oath every member swears and to the Americans who died under that flag.
In his Knoxville congressional office, Burchett keeps the Purple Heart and the 48-star flag that covered the casket of his maternal uncle, Roy Hicks. Hicks was wounded in the Normandy hedgerows shortly after D-Day and later died fighting German forces.
Burchett tied that family history straight to Chevalier’s old post.
Rep. Tim Burchett said:
“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 went further on the same point.
Burchett added:
“I thought, man, that same dadgum flag hung on my uncle’s casket. It’s the same flag that that men and women fought and died for to free the slaves, and that’s what they’re using as a napkin.”
Chevalier’s 2019 Twitter post, later deleted, read: “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.” She has said she regrets the comment. Her campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Burchett’s plan.
The napkin remark is not the only entry on Chevalier’s public ledger. She took part in the 2024 campus takeover at Columbia University. She was a key player in an anti-Israel group that once said it was “fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.” She attended an anti-Israel rally the day after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
During the 2020 election cycle, an online post of hers called the United States a “f, ing disgrace” and labeled then-President Joe Biden a “war criminal.”
She upended Rep. Adriano Espaillat in the Democratic primary for the 13th District, which covers northern Manhattan and the western Bronx. She now faces Republican Jomo M. Williams in the general election. If she wins, she would be in line to join the House on Jan. 3, 2027, unless Burchett’s motion succeeds.
Burchett has also needled the broader leftward drift in safe Democratic seats. He has referred to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as “my buddy” and the “friendly neighborhood Marxist,” and he argues his own party’s opponents need a course correction.
Burchett said:
“I think the Democrat Party needs to... get some guts, and get their rudder back for the working people.”
The Constitution gives each chamber authority over its own roster. The text states: “Each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own Members.”
Burchett wants to use that clause before the oath is administered. He notes that Democrats, like Republicans, have family members who died for the country and asks whether any Democrat will join him in refusing to seat someone who mocked the flag.
Burchett put it this way:
“You take an oath to uphold the Constitution, and and you’re pretty much disavowing it right there. I just think we’ve lost our compass.”
He also said:
“If we vote to seat them, is one Democrat going to say no? I’m not going to vote to seat those people. Are they gonna say anything? Democrats died for this country as well as Republicans did.”
History cuts both ways. In 1967 the House excluded Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, a Democrat from a Harlem-based district. In 1969 the Supreme Court ruled that the House had exceeded its authority by blocking a duly elected member who met the constitutional qualifications of age, citizenship, and residency. Reporting on Burchett’s plan notes that no election irregularities or formal qualification defects have been asserted against Chevalier, which makes any seating fight an uphill climb.
Political scientist Dr. Jeffery Jenkins of the University of Southern California Price School of Public Policy said contested elections “can muck up the legislative process and take time away from real governing.” He noted there have been more than 600 contested elections in the nation’s history, but they have not been “truly meaningful” since the turn of the 20th century.
Jenkins added a caution about the current climate.
Jenkins said:
“That said, the last decade or so has made me wonder if we’re in a ‘new normal’ for what’s possible. And that might include turning back the clock to strategies the parties used a century ago.”
GOP operative and former senior House leadership aide John Feehery struck a different note on speech tests for seating.
Feehery said:
“If we refused to seat folks in Congress who said things that we strongly disagreed with, nobody in the House would be seated.”
Burchett recently flew with President Trump on Air Force One to Tennessee, underscoring his standing inside the Republican conference as he prepares the January maneuver. The plan remains contingent on Chevalier winning on Nov. 3. If she does, the opening day of the new Congress will test whether a majority is willing to draw a hard line on open contempt for the flag before any oath is sworn.
Voters can send almost anyone to Washington. They should not have to accept a member who treated the national colors like a diner napkin and then expected the gavel to look the other way.
