House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she will not seek the removal of Capitol statues depicting George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, telling reporters only the likenesses of Confederate officers should be expunged.
“It’s not about Washington and Jefferson,” Pelosi told reporters Thursday.
Pelosi has requested a bipartisan congressional panel to remove 13 Confederate statues that stand in the Capitol complex. Republicans on the panel said they have no power to remove the statues and that only the states that put them there can revoke them.
House Democrats last month introduced legislation to remove the Confederate statues, but it has not come up for a vote. The GOP-run Senate is unlikely to consider the measure in the likely event that it passes the Democratic-led House.
Pelosi controls the artwork in the House hallways and removed portraits of former House speakers who were members of the Confederacy. Their statues should go, too, she said.
“I do believe that if people have committed treason against the United States of America. Their statues should not be in the Capitol.”
Civil unrest has led protesters to target other statues, including those Washington and Jefferson, who were slaveholders.
A statue of Washington stands in the rotunda, considered to be the highest place of honor in the Capitol. A bust and a portrait of Jefferson are displayed in the Senate.
