SHOCK MOVE HITS ZOHRAN MAMDANI’S SOCIALISTS – ‘CANNOT ENTER CONGRESS’
Steube Targets a Mamdani-Backed House Nominee Over the Oath—But the Proposed Rule Raises a Different Constitutional Question
A Republican congressman is trying to turn the controversial record of one of New York’s newest Democratic nominees into a fight over who should be allowed to take a seat in the House.
Rep. Greg Steube of Florida said in late June that he wanted the House to adopt a rule barring a member-elect from taking a seat if that person refuses to swear the constitutional oath of office.
His comments were directed at Darializa Avila Chevalier, the democratic socialist who defeated longtime Rep. Adriano Espaillat in New York’s 13th Congressional District primary and was strongly backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
“The oath to defend the Constitution isn’t optional,” Steube wrote on X.
“If you’re elected to Congress but refuse to swear it, you shouldn’t be sworn in!!”
The idea sounds straightforward.
Article VI of the Constitution requires senators, representatives and other federal and state officers to be bound by an oath or affirmation to support the Constitution.
Federal law already prescribes the oath used by members of Congress.
It requires them to promise to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” and to “bear true faith and allegiance to the same.”
So if a member-elect literally refused to take the oath, there would already be a serious obstacle to assuming the duties of office.
That is why the more difficult question is not whether Congress can require the oath.
It already does.
The question is what Steube’s proposed rule would do beyond that existing requirement.
Steube raised the idea during an appearance with conservative commentator Benny Johnson on June 24, the day after Avila Chevalier won the Democratic primary.
“This program has given me the idea to file an amendment to the rules,” Steube said.
He followed with a social-media post the next day calling for a House rules change to ensure that anyone who refuses the oath is barred from taking a seat.
As of August 14, however, Steube has not publicly released detailed legislative text explaining how such a rule would operate.
That missing text matters.
A rule limited to someone who simply refuses to say the oath would largely reinforce a requirement that already exists.
A rule allowing House leaders to decide that a member-elect is not sincere enough to take the oath would raise a much larger constitutional problem.
The distinction is especially important in Avila Chevalier’s case.
There is no public evidence that she has announced that she will refuse to take the constitutional oath if she wins the November election.
Separate reports have said she plans to kneel while taking the oath.
That would be politically provocative.
But kneeling is not the same thing as refusing to swear or affirm the oath.
Article VI requires the oath or affirmation.
It does not prescribe a posture.
So the current public controversy is not actually about a declared refusal to take the oath.
It is about whether Avila Chevalier’s past statements and political associations make Republicans doubt that she could take it in good faith.
That is a very different standard.
Steube has pointed to Avila Chevalier’s history as a left-wing organizer, including her involvement in pro-Palestinian activism at Columbia University.
The Associated Press has described her as having helped organize pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia.
Progressive organizations supporting her campaign also describe her as having helped lead the 2023–24 Columbia encampment.
Other reporting has described her as a co-founder or key organizer associated with Columbia University Apartheid Divest, or CUAD.
The group later became notorious for rhetoric that went far beyond ordinary calls for university divestment.
A now-deleted CUAD statement included the line: “We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.”
The statement also said the organization sought instruction from militants in the Global South and framed its struggle in revolutionary and anti-imperialist terms.
Those words are real and legitimately controversial.
But another distinction is necessary.
A statement published by an organization is not automatically a personal statement by every person who helped organize with that organization.
The public record supports describing Avila Chevalier as deeply involved in Columbia’s pro-Palestinian organizing.
It is more difficult to prove that she personally authored, approved or adopted every later statement published under CUAD’s name.
The same caution applies to another phrase now circulating in the political fight: “Death to America.”
Critics have linked Avila Chevalier to a protest movement in which that rhetoric appeared.
That is not the same thing as establishing that she personally wrote or said the phrase.
The stronger factual case against her relies on statements that can actually be attributed to her.
That record is already controversial enough without assigning every slogan used by allied activists directly to the candidate.
One such statement involved the American flag.
An archived social-media post attributed to Avila Chevalier said: “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.”
The post has been independently authenticated.
Avila Chevalier has also faced scrutiny over other deleted posts from the years before her congressional campaign involving communism, abolishing police, abolishing borders and attacking establishment Democrats.
She has said she regrets some of her earlier language and has argued that she has grown since those posts were written.
Voters can decide how much weight to give that explanation.
Those statements give Steube a political argument.
They do not automatically give the House a constitutional power to exclude her.
The Supreme Court addressed that broader principle in Powell v. McCormack in 1969.
The House had refused to seat Adam Clayton Powell even though he satisfied the Constitution’s age, citizenship and residency requirements.
The Supreme Court held that the House could not use its power to judge members’ qualifications to create additional qualifications beyond those fixed by the Constitution.
Congress can discipline a sitting member.
The House can expel a member with a two-thirds vote.
But exclusion at the front door is constitutionally different.
The constitutional oath may itself be treated as an additional requirement because Article VI expressly imposes it.
That still does not mean the House can invent a political loyalty test around the oath.
If Avila Chevalier were elected, appeared in the chamber and took the legally required oath, refusing to seat her because members believed her past statements made the oath insincere would be far more constitutionally vulnerable than refusing to seat someone who simply declined to take it at all.
That is the unresolved issue hidden inside Steube’s proposal.
A House rule cannot easily convert political disagreement into a new qualification for office.
Members of Congress routinely take the same constitutional oath while holding radically different views about what the Constitution means.
They disagree about gun rights, abortion, executive power, immigration, federalism, speech, religion and the scope of Congress itself.
The oath does not require ideological uniformity.
It requires the member to swear or affirm support for the Constitution.
Whether a member later violates that duty can become a question of ethics, discipline, criminal law or even expulsion.
But deciding before a member is seated that her political philosophy makes her incapable of taking the oath would be a much broader power.
That does not make the oath symbolic or meaningless.
House history treats it as a serious legal and institutional requirement.
Members-elect ordinarily take it on the House floor at the beginning of a new Congress after the Speaker is chosen.
Members elected in special elections take it before beginning their service.
The current language is set by federal statute and has remained essentially unchanged for decades.
Steube is therefore correct about the basic premise: the oath is not optional.
Where the debate begins is whether a new House rule is necessary to enforce something that existing constitutional and statutory law already requires.
Avila Chevalier’s political position makes that argument more than theoretical.
She is now the Democratic nominee in New York’s 13th District after defeating Espaillat in the June 23 primary.
The district covers parts of Upper Manhattan and the Bronx and is heavily Democratic.
She is on the November 3 ballot against Republican and minor-party opponents.
If she wins, she will have to take the same oath as every other representative before performing the full duties of the office.
Nothing in the current public record establishes that she intends to refuse it.
Her relationship with Mamdani explains why the controversy has attracted attention beyond one House district.
Avila Chevalier worked as an organizing lead in Mamdani’s 2025 mayoral campaign.
The mayor endorsed her congressional bid and campaigned with her during the primary.
Her victory, along with other wins by Mamdani-backed candidates, was widely viewed as evidence that the mayor’s political organization can influence Democratic primaries beyond City Hall.
Republicans are therefore treating her not only as an individual candidate but as an example of the political movement Mamdani has helped build.
That connection is real.
It does not make every controversy involving Avila Chevalier a controversy involving the mayor personally.
Steube’s proposed House rule would apply to members-elect of Congress, not to Mamdani.
The mayor does not administer the congressional oath and has no formal role in deciding who is seated in the House.
The political link comes from his endorsement and his broader alliance with New York’s democratic socialist movement.
That is enough to make the story relevant to Mamdani’s influence.
It is not enough to say the oath proposal is a direct legal challenge to the mayor.
The second story sometimes paired with the oath controversy has an even larger timing problem.
Mamdani did suffer an early setback in federal bankruptcy court involving thousands of rent-regulated apartments owned by the Pinnacle Group.
But that happened in January, not this week.
Pinnacle filed for bankruptcy in May 2025 after lender Flagstar Bank moved toward foreclosure over more than $560 million in mortgage debt.
The bankruptcy involved a large portfolio of New York apartment buildings, including more than 5,000 rent-regulated units.
After taking office on January 1, Mamdani quickly tried to intervene.
His administration asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David S. Jones to delay an auction of the Pinnacle portfolio.
The city argued that the proposed sale raised serious questions about whether a new owner would have enough financial capacity to maintain the buildings, make repairs and comply with rent-stabilization rules.
City officials also said Pinnacle owed roughly $12.7 million connected to thousands of housing-code violations and unresolved tenant complaints.
Mamdani framed the intervention as both a creditor issue and a tenant-protection issue.
Jones rejected the city’s request to delay the auction on January 8.
The auction moved forward.
Later that month, the bankruptcy court approved the sale of the portfolio to Summit Properties USA for roughly $451 million.
The transaction covered more than 5,000 rent-stabilized apartments across dozens of buildings.
That was unquestionably an early legal setback for Mamdani’s administration.
But describing the ruling as something that happened “earlier this week” in August would be wrong by more than seven months.
The original framing also goes too far in describing what the city wanted to do with the properties.
Mamdani’s administration opposed the proposed private sale and wanted more leverage over the future of the portfolio.
Tenant advocates favored alternatives that could include preservation-oriented ownership structures.
But saying the administration sought to “confiscate” privately owned properties states a legal conclusion that the bankruptcy filings did not establish.
The city participated as a creditor and government regulator and sought to delay or influence the sale.
It did not simply seize the properties.
The distinction became clearer after the sale.
New York City continued to press Summit and other parties over repair obligations and tenant protections.
The city’s own tenant-protection materials now describe the Pinnacle episode as part of a continuing effort to secure repairs and protect rent-regulated tenants.
The bankruptcy court, meanwhile, prioritized the orderly resolution of the debtor’s financial obligations through the Chapter 11 process.
Those interests can conflict without either side literally confiscating property or ignoring tenant rights.
The Pinnacle story therefore illustrates a different limit on Mamdani’s power than the congressional oath fight.
As mayor, he has significant regulatory, political and legal tools.
He does not control federal bankruptcy court.
When a landlord’s assets are in Chapter 11, a federal judge applies bankruptcy law, creditor priorities and the requirements for approving a sale.
The city can object.
It can assert claims.
It can enforce housing law within its authority.
But it cannot simply order the bankruptcy court to adopt the mayor’s preferred ownership outcome.
That is why combining the two stories into a single narrative about Mamdani being “unhappy” can obscure more than it explains.
The Steube controversy is about a Mamdani-backed congressional nominee, the oath required by Article VI and the limits on the House’s power to exclude elected members.
The Pinnacle controversy is about municipal housing policy, creditor rights and a federal bankruptcy sale that occurred months earlier.
Both involve political allies or priorities associated with Mamdani.
They are not one continuous legal dispute.
The strongest case for Steube is narrower than saying Avila Chevalier is automatically “incompatible” with the country.
Her past statements are unusually provocative for someone seeking a seat in Congress.
Her involvement in radical campus politics is relevant.
The oath to support and defend the Constitution is mandatory.
Republicans are entitled to ask whether voters should trust her to take that commitment seriously.
Those are legitimate political questions.
But the strongest legal case is also narrower.
If a member-elect refuses the oath, existing law already creates the fundamental problem.
If a member-elect takes the oath, the House cannot easily refuse to seat that person simply because a majority dislikes her ideology or doubts her sincerity.
The Supreme Court has already warned against using House procedure to add new qualifications to membership.
Any Steube amendment that moves from enforcing the oath to judging a member-elect’s beliefs would have to confront that precedent.
The same discipline improves the Pinnacle argument.
Mamdani did lose an important early court fight.
The judge allowed the auction to proceed over the city’s objection and later approved a roughly $451 million transaction involving thousands of rent-regulated units.
That is a concrete limit on City Hall’s power.
But the ruling occurred in January.
The city was not simply trying to confiscate private property.
And the dispute involved legitimate questions on both sides about creditor recovery, building conditions, repair costs and the stability of rent-regulated housing.
So the two developments settle some things.
Steube has publicly called for a House rule tied to the constitutional oath.
Avila Chevalier has a documented history of radical and anti-establishment rhetoric and is now the Democratic nominee in a heavily Democratic district.
Mamdani backed her campaign.
And Mamdani’s administration suffered an early defeat in the Pinnacle bankruptcy fight.
What they do not establish is that Avila Chevalier has refused the oath, that the House can exclude her based simply on her political views, or that the Pinnacle ruling is a new August setback.
For Republicans, Avila Chevalier offers a vivid political target and a way to connect Mamdani’s movement to national Democratic politics.
For Mamdani and his allies, the challenge is defending candidates with controversial records while arguing that voters—not ideological tests imposed by opponents—should decide who serves.
And for the House itself, the constitutional line is more precise than the campaign rhetoric.
The oath is mandatory.
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Political orthodoxy is not.
That distinction is where Steube’s proposal would ultimately have to survive.
