The Democrats are rejecting Trump’s call to preserve monuments to the defenders of slavery.
There are 10 statues in the Capitol's National Statuary Hall Collection honoring individuals who served in the Confederate army or government.
By ELANA SCHOR
08/17/2017 11:30 AM EDT
Updated 08/17/2017 03:37 PM EDT
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi urged Republicans to join her in supporting the removal of Confederate statues from the Capitol. | Win McNamee/Getty Images
The nationwide debate over the removal of monuments to the Confederacy is coming to the U.S. Capitol.
While President Donald Trump on Thursday urged the preservation of "our beautiful statues and monuments" honoring Confederates, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) plans to craft legislation that would remove the Capitol's statues lionizing supporters of the slave-holding era and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is calling for their elimination.
Pelosi on Thursday urged Republicans to join her in supporting removal of the Confederate figures from the Capitol, lending new momentum to Booker's effort. Only a few Democrats had previously called for the statues' removal after white supremacists staged a violent rally in Charlottesville over that city's likeness of Robert E. Lee.
“The Confederate statues in the halls of Congress have always been reprehensible," Pelosi said in a statement. "If Republicans are serious about rejecting white supremacy, I call upon Speaker [Paul] Ryan to join Democrats to remove the Confederate statues from the Capitol immediately."
Congressional GOP leaders have previously stated that decisions on replacing Capitol statues should rest with individual states, and Ryan's office affirmed that stance earlier this week, POLITICO reported. A Ryan spokesman responded to Pelosi's call by reiterating his previous statement.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) was less adamant than Pelosi, welcoming Booker's proposal but turning the focus back to Trump's recent comments on white supremacist groups.
“President Trump and Steve Bannon are trying to divert attention away from the president’s refusal to unequivocally and full-throatedly denounce white supremacy, neo-Nazism, and other forms of bigotry," Schumer said in a statement. "While it is critical that we work towards the goal of Senator Cory Booker’s legislation, we must continue to denounce and resist President Trump for his reprehensible actions.”
The push to remove the Capitol's Confederate iconography promises toreopen an emotional debate that presents pitfalls for both parties. Public polls suggest that the removal of monuments to the Civil War's losing side divides Americans, even as Trump's response to the white supremacist gathering won support from just 27 percent of respondents in a survey released Wednesday by the Marist Poll and PBS NewsHour.
In the wake of the Charlottesville rally, which left one woman dead and more than a dozen injured, Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D-Va.) and Ralph Northam, the Democratic nominee in November's election to replace him, have come out in favor of replacing the state's Confederate monuments.
The issue is more complicated for members of Congress, however, thanks to long-standing guidelines that empower state legislatures to select the statues in the Capitol that honor prominent citizens from their states.
Even so, Congress could eliminate all Confederate statues via legislation and Booker said Wednesday night that he would propose that move. "This is just one step," Booker tweeted. "We have much work to do."
Pelosi, who orchestrated the movement of Lee's likeness from Statuary Hall near the Capitol Rotunda to a less prominent spot on the first floor of the building, took a firm stance on Thursday.
“There is no room for celebrating the violent bigotry of the men of the Confederacy in the hallowed halls of the United States Capitol or in places of honor across the country," she said.
There are 10 statues in the Capitol's National Statuary Hall Collection honoring individuals who served in the Confederate army or government. Others depict supporters of slavery or the Confederacy, such as former Secretary of State and Sen. John C. Calhoun and Uriah Milton Rose of Arkansas.
"Individuals who were treasonous to the United States, who took up arms against their own country, and inflicted catastrophic death and suffering among US citizens, should not be afforded such a rare honor in this sacred space," Booker said Thursday. "These statues belong in a museum, where they are put in the proper historical context."
Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill noted Thursday that Ryan has the power to call up a single piece of legislation removing the statues or move them to "a private space in the Capitol out of public view" through the Joint Committee on the Library of Congress, a majority of whose members the Speaker selects.
"For Speaker Ryan to hide behind states’ rights to defend the symbols of the Confederacy is as shameful as it is preposterous," Hammill said by email.
Leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are also backing removal of the Capitol's Confederate statues. A spokeswoman for the Congressional Black Caucus said Tuesday the group is not presently proposing any legislative solution because GOP leaders back leaving the decisions to individual states.
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