Every new member of Congress raises their right hand and swears to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States." They promise to take that oath "freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion."
Rep. Keith Self, a Texas Republican, has a question about that last part. How does someone swear to defend the Constitution without reservation when their own party's platform calls for replacing it?
The Democratic Socialists of America's platform calls for a new constitution. It also calls for abolishing the U.S. Senate, abolishing ICE, abolishing the police and prisons, and abolishing capitalism. None of that is hidden. It's published on their website.
DSA-backed candidates are on the ballot for the House this year, and two of them have already beaten sitting Democrats in primaries. If they win next week, Self says they shouldn't simply be waved through.
"The House has both the authority and the duty to ensure that anyone who takes that oath does so in good faith, without mental reservation or purpose of evasion," Self said. He added that anyone who has personally embraced destroying the Constitution has no business being sworn in to defend it.
The tool he's pointing to has been gathering dust for decades: an oath challenge. Normally, all 435 members take the oath together on the first day of a new Congress. But a member-elect can object to another member taking it. When that happens, the challenged member steps aside, and the full House debates and votes on whether to let them be sworn in.
It's been done before, and to a socialist.
In 1919, Wisconsin voters elected Victor Berger, a member of the Socialist Party, to the House. The House refused to seat him, citing his disloyalty during World War I. When Wisconsin sent him back in a special election, the House refused him again. The vote wasn't close.
Critics are already calling Self's idea an attack on democracy, saying voters chose these candidates and Congress has no right to overrule them. They'll point to a 1969 Supreme Court case, Powell v. McCormack, which held that the House can't refuse to seat an elected member who meets the Constitution's requirements of age, citizenship and residency.
Self's answer is the oath itself. Taking it isn't optional. Article VI of the Constitution requires every member of Congress to swear to support it. A member who can't take that oath honestly hasn't met the Constitution's requirements, no matter how many votes they got.
Will it work? The odds are long. A challenge would need a majority of the House, and the courts may have the final word. Self's critics also point out that not every DSA member supports every line of the platform.
The question Self is raising doesn't go away if the vote fails, though. If a candidate doesn't support replacing the Constitution, abolishing the Senate and abolishing the police, they can say so before they raise their right hand. Asking someone whether they mean the oath before they take it is the House doing its job.
Self is pushing on a second front, too. This week he announced he's cosponsoring the Judicial Loyalty Act, which would require federal judges to be natural-born citizens. "This is a commonsense safeguard to protect the Constitution from foreign influence and ensure those who interpret our laws have undivided loyalty to the United States," he wrote.
Both measures come back to the same question: should the people holding power under the Constitution be committed to keeping it?
The DSA's platform says the Constitution should be replaced, and the oath says it should be defended. It's hard to see how someone can mean both on the same day.