JUST IN: 72 House Republicans Join Unanimous Democrats to Pass Bill Removing Confederate Statues from Capitol

Statues of James Zachariah George (L), a colonel in the Confederate Army and U.S. Senator from Mississippi, and Edmund Kirby Smith, a native Floridian and a Confederal general, stand inside the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center. (Photo credit: Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images)

A strong bipartisan House majority passed a bill on Wednesday that would remove all statues of Confederate solders from the U.S. Capitol, with 72 Republicans joining a unanimous Democratic caucus to vote in favor of the bill.

According to Roll Call, the bill passed with 305 ‘yea’ votes versus 113 ‘nay’ votes (and 13 Republicans not voting). The bill specifically targeted the bust of Roger Brooke Taney, a Supreme Court justice who wrote the majority opinion in the infamous Dred Scott case that effectively upheld slavery. The House measure would also remove all statues from the Capitol’s Statuary Hall that portray anyone who voluntarily served in the Confederacy.

Despite the show of strong, inter-party support, the House bill is likely dead on arrival in the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has expressed opposition to federal legislation removing the statues. Instead, he has urged the states, which are granted two statues each in the Capitol to decide the fates of any Confederate statues representing them.

Currently, in addition to the Taney bust, there are 11 statues representing members of the Confederacy in the Capitol, among them are the rebellion’s first president, Jefferson Davis, first vice-president, Alexander Hamilton Stephens, and its most prominent general, Robert E. Lee.