U.S. House of Representatives
Elections 2018 When 30-year incumbent
Jimmy Duncan announced his retirement in July 2017, Burchett entered a crowded seven-way Republican primary to succeed him. He defeated his nearest challenger, state representative
Jimmy Matlock, by just under 12 percentage points. He faced Democratic nominee Renee Hoyos in the November general election. The 2nd has long been a Republican stronghold. With a
Cook Partisan Voting Index of R+20, it is one of the nation's most Republican districts, and tied for the third-most Republican district in Tennessee. It is one of the few ancestrally Republican districts in the South; the GOP and its predecessors have held it without interruption since 1859. For this reason, the Republican primary has long been reckoned as the real contest in this district. Democrats have not made a substantive bid for the seat since 1964, and have received as much as 40% of the vote only twice since then. As expected, Burchett won the general election in a rout, taking 65.9% of the vote to Hoyos's 33.1%. When he took office in January 2019, Burchett became only the seventh person (not counting caretakers) to represent the 2nd since 1909. This district gives its representatives very long tenures in Washington; all six of Burchett's predecessors held the seat for at least 10 years, with three of them serving at least 20 years. He also ended a 54-year hold on the district by the Duncan family.
John Duncan Sr. won the seat in 1964, and was succeeded upon his death in 1988 by his son, Jimmy. In February 2018 the
Knoxville News Sentinel reported that Burchett had failed to report a $10,000 payment from a solar electric company on his campaign finance forms and various financial disclosure forms. The story reported that two months earlier the
FBI had questioned people about Burchett committing income tax evasion. After the story broke, Burchett gave a statement to WBIR that he was correcting errors in his campaign financial disclosures and income tax forms, describing his failure to report all income as an "oversight".
2020 Burchett was reelected in 2020 with 67.6% of the vote, defeating Democrat Renee Hoyos.
Tenure Donald Trump in the
Oval Office, 2020
Agriculture In March 2024, Burchett was one of 10 House Republicans who signed a letter to the
House Agriculture Committee opposing the inclusion of the Ending Agriculture Trade Suppression (EATS) Act in the 2024
farm bill. The EATS Act would have invalidated state and local laws regulating agricultural goods sold in interstate commerce, including farm
animal welfare laws like
California's Proposition 12. The letter argued that the legislation would undermine
states' rights and cede control over U.S. agricultural policy to the Chinese-owned pork producer
WH Group and its subsidiary
Smithfield Foods.
Iraq In June 2021, Burchett was one of 49 House Republicans to vote to repeal the
AUMF against Iraq.
Immigration Burchett voted against the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2020 which authorizes
DHS to nearly double the available
H-2B visas for the remainder of FY 2020. Burchett voted against the Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 1158), which effectively prohibits
Immigration and Customs Enforcement from cooperating with the
Department of Health and Human Services to detain or remove
illegal alien sponsors of
Unaccompanied Alien Children.
2023 U.S. House Speaker election During the 118th congressional speakership Election, Representative
Matt Gaetz and a handful of other representatives were holdouts in voting for Rep.
Kevin McCarthy for speaker. Burchett voted for McCarthy on every ballot. While people claimed that after Burchett walked over and whispered into Gaetz's ear, Gaetz and others abstained, giving a majority to McCarthy for speaker, Gaetz had in fact begun abstaining before this conversation.
Israel-Palestine Burchett voted to provide Israel with support following
October 7 attacks.
UFOs Following a report published by the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence on January 12, 2023, Burchett expressed his views about an alleged government coverup of the nature of
UFOs, saying, "we've been covering this up since the '40s" and that he doesn't "trust [the] government, [and] there's an arrogance about it, and I think the American public can handle it." On March 7, 2023, Burchett expanded on these claims, saying that UFO technology is possibly "being reverse-engineered right now" but we "don't understand" how it functions. He maintains that the U.S. has "recovered a craft at some point, and possible beings". In January 2025 Burchett claimed that aliens have secret underwater bases. Burchett was one of the members of Congress interviewed in
The Age of Disclosure (2025), a documentary film about UFOs and claimed government programs involving recovery of
alien technology crashed on Earth.
Tennessee school shooting response On March 28, 2023, Burchett responded to the
Covenant School shooting, where three nine-year-old students and three staff members were killed in Nashville, by telling reporters: "It's a horrible, horrible situation, and we're not going to fix it. Criminals are gonna be criminals. And my daddy fought in the
second world war, fought in the
Pacific, fought the Japanese, and he told me, he said, 'Buddy,' he said, 'if somebody wants to take you out, and doesn't mind losing their life, there's not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it.'" Burchett also said he sees no "real role" for Congress in reducing gun violence, other than to "mess things up".
2024 Kansas City parade shooting response After a local D.J. was killed and 22 others were wounded in the
2024 Kansas City parade shooting, Burchett inaccurately identified an adult attendee of the Kansas City rally, Denton Loudermill Jr., as the shooter, claiming he was an "illegal alien". Burchett's social media post received 1.4 million views. In March 2024, the falsely identified man sued Burchett for $75,000 in damages. The lawsuit, which Loudermill had filed in a
Kansas court, was dismissed in September 2024 due to lack of jurisdiction, considering the case had "nothing really to do with Kansas."
Debt ceiling In April 2023, Burchett was one of only four Republican representatives who voted against the proposed
Limit, Save, Grow Act, which raised the debt ceiling while at the same time providing for cuts to non-
mandatory spending, claiming he could not support any debt limit raise which did not provide fully
balanced budget. In June of the same year, Burchett was among the 71 Republicans who voted against final passage of the
Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 in the House.
Removal of Speaker McCarthy On October 3, 2023, Burchett was one of eight Republicans who voted to
remove Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. He said his yes vote was "sealed" after McCarthy allegedly made a "condescending" remark about his religious beliefs during a phone call. McCarthy said that he did not intend to upset Burchett.
George Soros In October 2024, Burchett told a Fox News radio station that
George Soros is "a
money changer of the worst kind" who "will destroy this country." The term money changer has been associated with
antisemitic stereotypes. Burchett denied that his criticism of Soros, who is Jewish, was antisemitic, saying that "my voting record clearly reflects my support for Israel and the Jewish people."
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Despite their highly contrasting positions on most issues, Burchett maintains a friendship with progressive representative
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whom he met during freshmen orientation as a new representative in 2019 at the beginning of the
116th United States Congress.
Iran Tim Burchett was opposed to U.S. military intervention against
Iran, calling Senators
Lindsey Graham and
Ted Cruz "war pimps" for their advocacy for bombing Iran. Burchett said there was no "
just cause" for military intervention, stating "I just don't see American boys and girls going to a faraway land that many of us couldn't even find on a map. Again, the Israelis can handle this thing. Let's let them handle it." However, after President Trump ordered
United States strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, Burchett endorsed Trump's decision, saying that Trump had made the "right move." Following personal lobbying from President Trump, who told Burchett he liked seeing him on TV and gave him signed merchandise, Burchett voted for the final version of the bill.
Congressional Stock Trading Burchett was one of the original 16 cosponsors of the Restore Trust in Congress Act (H.R.5106), introduced on September 3rd, 2025, by Republican
Chip Roy of
Texas. The act, a bipartisan effort to ban members of Congress and their spouses and dependents from owning and trading
stocks, had 119 cosponsors as of December, 2025.
Trump assassination attempt conspiracy theory In November 2025, during an interview with
Benny Johnson, Burchett said that
Thomas Crooks, who tried and
failed to kill Donald Trump during the
2024 United States presidential election, had been programmed to do so by the
American "deep state". Burchett suggested that
MKUltra, a defunct
CIA brainwashing program, had been used to "program" Crooks into an assassin. Burchett said that commentary by
Tucker Carlson had inspired his theory, and claimed that evidence for the theory had been destroyed.
Committee assignments For the
119th Congress: •
Committee on Foreign Affairs •
Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa •
Subcommittee on South and Central Asia •
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform •
Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency •
Subcommittee on Government Operations •
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure •
Subcommittee on Aviation •
Subcommittee on Highways and Transit •
Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials Caucus memberships •
Congressional Motorcycle Caucus • House RV Caucus •
Republican Study Committee ==Electoral history==