Their Own Words
Can you swear to defend something you have documented you want to abolish?
This is not an opinion piece. Every quote in this article is sourced to a primary document, an archived record, or a statement made by the person themselves. Read it and decide.
Before any member of the United States Congress casts a single vote, authorizes a single dollar of spending, or represents a single American citizen — they stand in the chamber and speak these words aloud:
“I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”
Source: U.S. House of Representatives History, Art & Archives. Title 5, Section 3331 of the United States Code.
That is the oath. It is a sworn public commitment — on the record, before the nation — to support and defend the Constitution. Not selected parts of it. Not the parts they agree with.
All of it. Against all enemies. Foreign and domestic.
Now read what some of the people currently in office or heading to Congress have said — in their own documented, archived, primary-sourced words — about the Constitution, about America, and about the system they swore or will swear to defend.
CmonSense is not telling you what to think. We are assembling the documented record and asking you to use common sense.
What Their Own Words Say
Darializa Avila Chevalier
Democratic nominee, New York’s 13th Congressional District Status: Won primary June 2026. Heading to Congress, January 2027.
Avila Chevalier is 32 years old. She is a DSA member and doctoral student who ousted a five-term incumbent to win her primary. She will almost certainly be seated in the United States House of Representatives in January 2027.
On the American flag: Her post, archived by the Wayback Machine and confirmed authentic by Snopes — a primary digital archive record: “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.” Posted December 23, 2019.
On borders: In a June 2026 interview, she called free movement an “ideal vision” and stated: “Capital can move freely across the world, but people are trapped.” She has also stated she supports abolishing ICE and opposes all deportations.
On deporting people convicted of breaking U.S. criminal law: When asked directly, she opposed it. Her documented statement: the criminal system “isn’t perfect, but it exists” — but deportation, in her view, is always “rooted in deeply racist ideology.”
On her broader political framework: She has described her political views as informed by the writings of Angela Davis and Assata Shakur. For the documented record on Shakur — born Joanne Chesimard: she was convicted in 1977 of the first-degree murder of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster during a 1973 shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike, sentenced to life plus 26 to 33 years, escaped from prison in 1979, fled to Cuba, and was placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list with a $1 million reward. She died in Havana on September 25, 2025, at age 78, having never returned to serve her sentence. Source: NBC News, PBS NewsHour, court records.
On her archived posts: A CNN KFile review of hundreds of archived social media posts documented calls to abolish police, prisons, and borders; posts about communism; calls for open borders and zero deportations; posts calling to seize private property and nationalize major industries. When confronted with these posts during a live radio interview on primary Election Day, she walked out.
She will take the oath in January 2027.
Can you swear to defend something you have documented you want to abolish?
Zohran Mamdani
DSA member. Mayor of New York City. Status: In office since January 1, 2026.
Mamdani is currently the most powerful DSA official in the country. He holds executive authority over the largest city in the United States. He personally campaigned for and endorsed the three DSA candidates who won New York congressional primaries in June 2026.
On his political philosophy: At a February 2021 Young Democratic Socialists of America conference — livestreamed and archived — he called for “seizing the means of production.” That is the Marxist formulation for abolishing private ownership of business, industry, and property.
On his goals in office: After 100 days as Mayor, Jacobin — a socialist publication aligned with his movement — described him as “caught between two projects: that of managing capitalism and that of overturning it.” The question they posed was whether he would pursue “socialist policy of class struggle” or “class collaboration based on a false hope of managing capitalism better than the capitalists.”
On his endorsements in June 2026: Three DSA candidates he personally endorsed won Democratic congressional primaries — including Darializa Avila Chevalier, whose documented posts he said he “never saw.”
He did not take the congressional oath. He took a mayoral oath. But the movement he leads is now sending candidates to Congress who will.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib
DSA member. Sitting U.S. Congresswoman, Michigan’s 12th District. Status: In office.
Has taken the congressional oath.
Tlaib is a sitting member of Congress and a documented member of the Democratic Socialists of America. She took the congressional oath on January 3, 2019.
At the 2025 DSA National Convention — her documented speech, quoted in The Guardian’s coverage of the convention and republished on the DSA convention website: “We are standing at a crossroads in American history... We are going to take this country back for our working families and defeat these pathetic, cowardly, hateful fascists. We’re going to win because we don’t have any other options, and yes, we are going to free Palestine.”
She was the keynote speaker at the convention that produced the “Workers Deserve More” platform — the same platform that calls for abolishing the United States Senate, subordinating the President and Supreme Court to Congress, and drafting a new constitution.
She swore to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. She then gave the keynote address at a convention that adopted a platform to replace it.
The DSA — Their Own Published Words
Source: platform.dsausa.org, dsausa.org, archived convention proceedings
These are not characterizations. These are direct quotes from the DSA’s own published platforms, caucus statements, and convention records.
“DSA stands for the total dissolution of the United States empire.”
“The U.S. is a prison house of nations founded on genocide, built by slavery, maintained by exploitation, and expanded through conquest.”
“There can be no question of submitting to a political order that exists to divide and conquer the working class, that slices up the government and divorces it from the will of the people — that is set in stone and almost impossible to amend.”
“Black people cannot be free under a constitution written by slaveholders; indigenous people cannot win sovereignty under a constitution designed to facilitate their elimination; women cannot be free under a constitution written before they had the right to vote.”
“Red Star is a Marxist-Leninist caucus in DSA. Our primary goal, the goal which informs all of our organizing work, is to abolish capitalism and, ultimately, to achieve communism. We do not believe that capitalism can be reformed into socialism — it must be overthrown and replaced.”
These caucuses operate inside the same organization whose members are currently winning congressional primaries and holding municipal office across the country.
This Is Not New. The Senate’s Own Archives Prove It.
The argument being made today is not a new one. It has a documented history going back more than a century — and the primary source for that history is the United States Senate itself.
The U.S. Senate History, Art & Archives — a government primary source — documents the following:
On April 27, 1911, the first Socialist member of Congress, Victor Berger of Wisconsin, introduced House Joint Resolution 79. The resolution read:
“Whereas the Senate in particular has become an obstructive and useless body, a menace to the liberties of the people, and an obstacle to social growth... All legislative powers shall be vested in the House of Representatives. Its enactments, subject to referendum... shall be the supreme law, and the President shall have no power to veto them, nor shall any court have the power to invalidate them.”
Berger stated on the floor of Congress: “Our Constitution is really a hindrance to any reasonable growth in our public life, and it should be changed.”
That was 1911.
The DSA platform published in 2025 calls for abolishing the Senate, subordinating the President and courts to Congress, and drafting a new constitution. The language is different. The argument is identical. And the people carrying it are now winning Democratic primaries — 115 years later.
The Question the Full Record Earns
There is a word in the congressional oath that most people read past.
“Against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
The Founders put that word there deliberately. They understood that the gravest threats to a republic do not always come from outside its borders. They come from within — from people who use the language and structures of democracy to dismantle the principles beneath it. From people who run for office, take the oath, and then work from inside the building to change what the building was designed to protect.
George Washington warned about it in his Farewell Address — available at the National Archives — cautioning against factionalism and the erosion of constitutional principles from within. Madison documented the structural danger in Federalist 47. Jefferson said a republic can only survive with an informed citizenry.
CmonSense is not telling you these people are evil. We are not calling them traitors. We are doing something simpler and more important.
We are showing you the documented record — in their own words, from their own platforms, from their own archived posts — and we are asking you to use common sense.
They will take the oath to defend the Constitution.
You have now read what they have documented they believe about it.
The only question left is whether you were paying attention before you voted.
What You Can Do Right Now
The Founders did not build this republic to be maintained by politicians. They built it to be maintained by citizens.
— Go to congress.gov and look up the voting record of every person representing you — Go to platform.dsausa.org and read the DSA platform in their own words — Search the archived records of candidates in your district before November 2026 — Ask every candidate, on the record: Do you support the Constitution as written? Do you support the congressional oath you will take? — Share this with someone who is not paying attention yet
The Founders gave you every tool you need. Jefferson said it plainly: a nation that expects to be ignorant and free expects what never was and never will be.
You are not ignorant. You just read the primary sources.
Now decide what you are going to do with them.
Facts. Logic. Common Sense.
— CmonSense
