Representative Tim Burchett keeps his uncle's WWII casket flag hanging in his Knoxville office.
Now a New York socialist who wiped her hand on an American flag is on her way to Congress.
Burchett just reached for a constitutional move no congressman has tried in over fifty years.
Darializa Avila Chevalier's Record Goes Far Beyond a Deleted Tweet
Darializa Avila Chevalier won New York's Democratic primary for the 13th Congressional District – which takes in northern Manhattan and the western Bronx – by defeating five-term incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat, backed by socialist NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
She faces Republican Jomo M. Williams on November 3 in a district so reliably Democratic that winning the primary was the election.
The 13th District has a sizable Orthodox Jewish community — the same voters Espaillat represented for a decade by supporting Israel.
Chevalier co-founded Columbia University Apartheid Divest – the militant group behind the violent 2024 campus encampment that openly supports Hamas "armed resistance."
The group declared it was fighting for "the total eradication of Western civilization."
On October 8, 2023 – the day after Hamas slaughtered 1,200 Israelis – Chevalier was at a pro-Hamas rally in Times Square.
The Washington Free Beacon reported she also showered convicted Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh with praise – a woman found guilty of her role in a 1969 Jerusalem supermarket bombing that killed two people.
She reposted "Israel doesn't exist" on social media and called America a "f—ing disgrace" and Joe Biden a "war criminal."
In September 2026, she was arrested protesting Benjamin Netanyahu's UN visit in New York City.
In 2019, she posted that she had forgotten napkins and wiped her hand on the American flag behind her instead. She deleted it when the post surfaced during her campaign.
She says she regrets that one. Everything else stands.
When the New York Times editorial board asked her to walk back her most radical statements, she refused.
She's not an outlier in today's Democratic Party – she's the model.
The Powell v. McCormack Precedent Burchett Is Daring Democrats to Ignore
The Supreme Court answered this exact question in 1969.
In Powell v. McCormack, the Court ruled the House exceeded its authority by refusing to seat Rep. Adam Clayton Powell – an elected congressman who met every constitutional qualification for office.
Powell had won re-election while the case worked through the courts. The 91st Congress seated him. The House that voted to keep him out had to let him in.
Chevalier meets every constitutional qualification.
Tennessee Representative Tim Burchett is moving anyway.
He plans to use a simple majority motion on January 3 – the moment new members take the oath – to block Chevalier before she's seated.
He told the New York Post he will make this move whether Republicans hold the majority or become the minority.
"You take an oath to uphold the Constitution, and you're pretty much disavowing it right there," he said.
The flag he's defending once covered the casket of Thomas R. Hicks – Burchett's maternal uncle – wounded after D-Day fighting through the hedgerows of Normandy.
Hicks died fighting Nazis.
Burchett still has his Purple Heart.
"I'm looking at a 48-star flag that hung on my uncle's casket," Burchett said, "and then see somebody going to get elected to Congress in New York who said they use that flag for a napkin."
Then came the question every Democrat should have to answer: "If we vote to seat them, is one Democrat going to say no?"
Columbia University Apartheid Divest Just Sent Its Leader to Congress
Reason called her the first person elected to Congress who came "directly from" the campus radical world – the encampments, the boycott campaigns, the group she co-founded that posted "death to America" and meant it.
The Squad has a sequel, and this version makes AOC look like a moderate.
The movement that turned America's elite universities into antisemitic circuses in 2024 just sent its first member to Congress.
Chevalier didn't stumble into radicalism.
She built the movement and then ran on it — with Justice Democrats funding the campaign and the Democratic Socialists of America behind her every step of the way.
Burchett is forcing every Democrat in the House onto the record – either stand with the woman who used the flag your grandfather died for as a napkin, or break with the socialist wing swallowing their party whole.
Not one Democrat has said a word.
Sources:
- Geoff Earle, "Rep. Burchett planning to block NYC socialist Chevalier from Congress after she claimed to use American flag as napkin," New York Post, October 3, 2026.
- "Socialist in Tight House Race Showered Convicted Palestinian Terrorist With Love and Praise," Washington Free Beacon, 2026.
- "Darializa Avila Chevalier Will Be This Congress' First Campus Radical," Reason, 2026.
- "Mamdani-Backed Dem Led Radical Anti-Israel Group that Demanded 'Total Eradication of Western Civilization,'" National Review, 2026.
- Staff, "Darializa Avila Chevalier Arrested Protesting Netanyahu at UN General Assembly," Fox News, 2026.