Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) plans to try to block Democratic nominee and New York socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier from taking her seat in Congress if she wins the Nov. 3 election -- over her saying she used the American flag as a napkin.
Page A9From§Eachthe early evening edition — 3 October 2026
Flag etiquette is mandatory for a congressional nominee, optional for the President's own social media account.
As it ran on the front
I asked this back in September. I answered it, wrote it down, moved on. Does the flag cover for everybody, or only for some people? I thought that one was closed. Then this week it came back wearing a different coat, and I have to ask it again, because it doesn't come out the same shape.
Start where I did in September. On the 7th, the President's own account posted a map — the American flag stretched across North America, over Canada, over Greenland, over Iceland and some islands in the Caribbean besides. The wire's word for what the flag did to all of it, not mine: covering. I wrote that word down. It does quiet work — fabric laid over something, the way a cloth goes over a stain. By the 8th, Iceland's government had called in the American ambassador about it. A country summoning a diplomat over a flag laid across its own coastline, on a social media account. That's the Monday phone call the Hill reported, not my arithmetic.…
…(cont) The rest of September kept at it. I don't know who saw it before it went out. I only know it went out that way, and stayed up long enough for the Hill to write about it.
This week, the account did it again — posted a sitting senator's personal cellphone number, Tom Cotton's, with an instruction attached: call him, pressure him, get him to move a bill off the floor. Four wire services ran the number before the day was out. Call it a season of things getting put into the open that somebody might have preferred stayed covered — a phone number, a typo, a tape, a map.
Now here's today's filing, the one that sent me back to my September note. Congressman Tim Burchett, of Tennessee, told the Post he plans to try to block Darializa Avila Chevalier — the Democratic nominee for a New York House seat she hasn't won yet, running in the November 3rd election — from taking that seat if she wins it. The reason given, in the Congressman's own words to the paper, is that she said she used an American flag as a napkin. Not a vote, not a bill — a napkin, on her own account, before she's sworn into anything. That's the whole file in front of me. I checked for a second page. There wasn't one.
I thought about this on the drive in, in the car that needs a fan belt and complains about it some mornings. There's a rag folded on the passenger seat, there to keep the vinyl from cracking in the cold. That's a cover too — same word, same job the flag was doing over Reykjavik, something laid over something else so the wear underneath doesn't show. No ambassador has been summoned over my car seat, not that I've read. But I don't own Iceland, and the rag on my seat isn't anybody's flag.
Excuse me — before you go, one more thing, because I wrote this question down in September and crossed it out, thinking it was settled. Which flag got a formal objection lodged against it, by name — the one laid over Reykjavik, or the one on the napkin? And which one only got covering?
“They'll move heaven and earth to block a woman from a seat in Congress over a napkin, but when the President's own account drapes the flag over a sovereign country's coastline, the only phone call anybody makes is Iceland's, to our ambassador. That's not about respect for the flag, that's about who's allowed to touch it. One version of disrespecting it gets you blocked from a seat; the other gets you a map and a shrug.”
“Look, Congressman Burchett is simply standing up for a bedrock American value — reverence for the flag, something every — did I say every? Let me rephrase. As for the Iceland business, that's clearly a design choice, a bold patriotic design choice, and the ambassador thing is probably a translation issue. I don't think I said "translation issue." That doesn't sound like me.”
Earlier in this story
- President posts senator's cell number over clock bill same week his convention chair admits rallies dropped votes By Sal · the early evening edition, 3 October 2026
- President whose rallies dropped his own numbers broadcasts a senator's personal number instead. By Sal · the early bird edition, 3 October 2026
The receipts
· Iceland summons US ambassador after Trump post showing American flag covering island from the morgue, 8 Sep 2026
· Trump posts map with American flag emblazoned over Canada, Greenland, Mexico from the morgue, 7 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.