Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced last week that H.R. 51, the Washington, D.C. Admission Act to grant statehood to the District of Columbia will get a vote this Friday, June 26. The vote became imperative after Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr essentially occupied the city by force, using federal officers to attack peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square on June 1 so Trump could have his Bible photo op at St. John's Church and maintaining that force in the days following. The city had essentially no recourse; it is controlled by the federal government. The last time statehood was voted on by the House was 1993.
"Over the past few weeks, we saw further examples of why the District of Columbia's lack of representation in Congress is so damaging," Hoyer said in announcing the vote. "We are the only free nation in the world whose capital doesn't have voting representation in their parliament." The non-voting delegate to Congress from the District, Eleanor Holmes Norton, is the sponsor of the statehood bill. "Three generations of my family have yet to attain the votes Americans take for granted," she said. "Statehood is priceless. Statehood assures that living in the nation's capital is about pride, not prejudice." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi added "This deprivation of statehood is unjust, unequal, undemocratic and unacceptable."
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The bill would establish a new state, the State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth. It would have two senators—D.C. currently has no Senate representation—and a House representative who would actually have a vote that counts. The National Mall, the White House, Capitol Hill and some other federal property would remain federally governed, and all the rest would be the new Douglass Commonwealth.
The House is almost certainly going to pass it, with at least 200 members having signed on already. The Senate, well, it's the Senate. Mitch McConnell almost just as certainly won't let it come to the floor. He calls the push for statehood for D.C. "full-bore socialism." Which is a new interpretation of one of the founding principles of the United States, that whole "no taxation without representation" bit that was so instrumental in the Revolution. It's also interesting that he's there in D.C. working every day, with dozens and dozens of people cleaning his offices, bringing his mail, cooking the food that he eats, keeping the lights running, and providing security to the offices and the Capitol, and most of them are people who live in the District. He has inordinate control over their lives and they have no power against him. And he says giving them representation is socialism.
There are now 40 Democratic senators who've signed on as cosponsors to the Senate bill, with just seven holdouts. As Stephen Wolf points out, at a population of 700,000, D.C. has more people than Wyoming or Vermont, which have full representation as do all of the predominantly rural states. So question number one is what in the hell is wrong with Sens. Angus King (the Maine independent who votes with Democrats), both of Rhode Island's Democrats Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Doug Jones of Alabama, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, and Washington's Maria Cantwell?