House Will Vote on Bill to Remove Confederate Statues from Capitol

The House is scheduled on Tuesday to vote to remove statues honoring Confederate and other white supremacist leaders from the United States Capitol, renewing an effort to rid the seat of American democracy of symbols of rebellion and racism.

Democrats and Republicans in the House were expected to vote in large numbers to approve the legislation, which aims to expunge from public view a bust of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney and nearly a dozen other figures associated with the Confederacy or white supremacist causes. It would then go to the Senate, where Democrats have vowed to use their new majority to try to advance it. Its fate is unclear given Republican opposition.

“We can’t change history, but we can certainly make it clear that which we honor and that which we do not honor,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland and the majority leader, who helped write the bill. “Symbols of hate and division have no place in the halls of Congress.”

The vote will mark the latest round in a yearslong debate on Capitol Hill and across the country over the role of Confederate statuary and symbols in public spaces, and the implications of removing them. Though that debate has lost some of its intensity over the last year, proponents of removing or relocating Confederate monuments and erecting new ones to commemorate the national struggle for equal rights have notched steady progress.