Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called for the removal of nearly a dozen Confederate statues of soldiers and officers, from the U.S. Capitol building Wednesday, following the death of George Floyd and dayslong protests against racial injustice nationwide. In a letter to Joint Committee on the Library Chairman Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and Vice Chair Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., Pelosi wrote, “The halls of Congress are the very heart of our democracy. "I stand ready, and call on the Chair of the Joint Committee to swiftly approve the removal of these statues," Lofgren added. Pelosi attempted to have the Confederate statues removed in 2017, appealing to then-Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wis.“The Confederate statues in the halls of Congress have always been reprehensible,” Pelosi wrote to Ryan in August 2017. According to a 1864 law passed by Congress, Statuary Hall allows each state to place up to two statues in the Hall.

Source: Fox News June 11, 2020 00:00 UTC