Why isn't D.C. a state? Trump's takeover reignites calls for statehood.
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), a longtime advocate for D.C. statehood, brought the issue to the forefront in a news conference Monday, calling Trump's actions 'unsettling and unprecedented.'
'We know that access to our democracy is tenuous,' Bowser said. 'This is why you have heard me and many, many Washingtonians before me, advocate for full statehood for the District of Columbia.'
Advocates had their best chance in the decades-long fight for statehood in 2021, when the House passed a bill to make D.C. the 51st state and Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress and the White House. But even then, the legislation never made it to a Senate vote. The GOP's current dominance in Washington makes the statehood movement even more of a long shot.
Here's what to know about the unusual status of the nation's capital and its more than 700,000 residents.
The framers of the Constitution mandated the creation of the District of Columbia — a seat of the federal government over which Congress would 'exercise exclusive legislation' — with the intention of creating a neutral place to conduct the business of the federal government during a time when the union between the former 13 colonies was still new.
In making D.C. a district and not a state, the framers denied its residents many of the rights held by other Americans. They have no votes in Congress — they have a delegate in the House of Representatives who can participate in debates and committee work but cannot vote on legislation — and their local government has no control over the D.C. National Guard.
D.C. residents got a voice in their local government in 1820, when Congress allowed White male landowners, and later all White men, to vote for mayor. In 1867, Black men were also granted the local vote, provoking a backlash. In 1874, Congress revoked home rule for everyone.
Washingtonians secured the right to vote for president only via the 23rd amendment in 1961, and before the passage of the 1973 Home Rule Act, unelected leaders appointed by the president ran the District.
The Home Rule Act has its limits. Congress can still veto local legislation and budgets. And on Monday, Trump invoked Section 740 of the act, which gives the president the authority to take temporary control of the city's police force if he 'determines that special conditions of an emergency nature exist.'
'Though we pay taxes — in fact, we pay more than most states, per capita — we're not a state,' Bowser said Monday. 'We don't control the D.C. National Guard. We don't have senators or full autonomy. Limited home rule gives the federal government the ability to intrude on our autonomy in many ways.'
Creating a new state would require an act of Congress — something that has so far eluded proponents of statehood, despite decades of activism on the issue.
The House voted on D.C. statehood in 1993, but the bill failed 277 to 153, with a large number of Democrats voting against it. However the issue gained momentum around 2020 when protests in the wake of the death of George Floyd led the Trump administration to deploy the National Guard in D.C. despite opposition from Bowser.
In June 2020, the House voted to declare D.C. the nation's 51st state for the first time since the establishment of the District of Columbia, with just a single Democrat voting against it. However the bill was not brought to the floor of the Republican-controlled Senate and was opposed by the White House. In 2021 it passed the House again, but also failed to progress, despite President Joe Biden supporting the issue.
The Washington, D.C. Admission Act, championed by D.C.'s nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives, Eleanor Holmes Norton, proposed shrinking the federal government to a two-square-mile enclave including the White House, Capitol Hill, Supreme Court and other federal buildings that would remain under congressional control. The rest of D.C. would be known as the state of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth, named for famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The bill also proposed elections for two senators and one state representative.
The issue remains an important one for Democrats, tapping notions of equality and racial justice in a plurality Black-city, with supporters claiming it would right historical wrongs and ensure voters are properly represented.
Norton (D) said in a statement last week that enacting her D.C. statehood bill was the 'only permanent remedy that will protect D.C.'s ability to govern itself.'
'D.C. residents, a majority of whom are Black and brown, are worthy and capable of governing themselves without interference from federal officials who are unaccountable to D.C.,' she said.
However, Republicans have criticized efforts to establish new representatives as a power grab by Democrats struggling to advance their agenda. In May 2020, Trump said Republicans would be 'very, very stupid' to allow D.C. to become a state because the city's Democratic population would likely swell the party's ranks in Congress. 'No, thank you. That'll never happen,' he told the New York Post at the time.
Critics also point to the city's size and say statehood could mean it has undue influence over the federal government. Proponents say that the city's 700,000 residents make it comparable to other states like Delaware, Alaska and Vermont and that D.C. residents pay more federal taxes than residents in 22 states.
In January, Norton and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) announced they would introduce the statehood bill again, and Trump's recent deployment of the National Guard to D.C. has reinvigorated the debate.
But with Republican control of the House, Senate and White House, the chances of a D.C. statehood bill passing are slim.
. .
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fox News
a minute ago
- Fox News
DAVID MARCUS: Trump takes on Smithsonian's lefty bias and statue-toppling libs melt down
Democrats who cheered the toppling of statues of American heroes such as Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt in 2020, are suddenly deeply concerned that the Trump administration is seeking to curate the Smithsonian museums to better express American exceptionalism. Please, spare us. Take Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota and self-professed white guy taco connoisseur, who took to X this week. "If you're trying to erase history, you're on the wrong side of it," he wrote. But where was this pious outrage when protesters illegally tore down a 90-year-old Christopher Columbus statue at his state capitol in 2020? That erasure of history was done by an angry mob, with no process. I know, because I read all about it in a 2022 article with the fluffy bubblegum title, "Meet the Indigenous Activist Who Toppled Minnesota's Christopher Columbus Statue." Care to take a guess where that article was published? I swear, I'm not making this up: It was in the Smithsonian Magazine. Here's a gem from the apologia, sympathetically describing the vandalism, "'It's a beautiful thing because we have suffered from what [Columbus] did to us,' said Dorene Day, an Ojibwe woman who brought several of her children and her grandchildren to the protest." I'm sure you will be shocked to know that the Smithsonian article did not quote a single Columbus supporter, or even acknowledge that such a position was remotely possible. It basically lamented that the statue had not come down sooner. This is exactly the kind of one-sided, far-left version of history that President Trump and his administration seek to rectify with their review of the museums' offerings. Don't get me wrong, the Smithsonian is a wonderful institution. But the leftist lean has been clear for a long time, including the initial exclusion of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas from the African American History museum. This speaks to an issue that goes back much farther than the radicalism of 2020. For decades, perhaps half a century, progressives have held hegemonic control over our cultural and historical institutions; Their rule went all but unchallenged. In their version of events, America is always at fault for the oppression of Americans and pretty much everything else that's wrong in the world. One display about Cuban immigration blames U.S. intervention in Latin America and entirely leaves out the name Fidel Castro. This all raises the question of who gets to decide how we tell the story of our nation? In 2020, under the approving gaze of Democrats, it was protesters who illegally made the decisions. And even when statues were removed "officially," it never involved a referendum, rather wokesters just formed little committees and had their way with our history. In their version of events, America is always at fault for the oppression of Americans and pretty much everything else that's wrong in the world. According to a recent poll, only 37% of Democrats do not think there is anything to celebrate as the United States turns 250 years old next year. This is because the elites in the academy and our cultural institutions have instilled this version of events in the "well educated." The story of history changes over time. It was not until the 1950s, for example, that the Crusades began to be looked at as some kind of racist, colonizing enterprise, and today, it is being revisited by some scholars, viewed more as a needed defensive counterattack against Muslim aggression. This is not to say that one version of events, be they about the Crusades or the Civil War, is right or wrong. But what is wrong is to ignore the arguments in favor of American greatness so as to only expose our dark underbelly. Essentially, somewhere along the line, the decision was made that patriotism does not belong in the museum. It is a bizarre stance that flies in the face of the very history of museums, and there is no reason for the Trump administration to let this fester any longer. Walz and the statue-toppling hypocrites really need to sit this one out. They have already proven that they will happily destroy history to suit their agenda, so they have no leg to stand on in denying conservatives a seat at the Smithsonian table. The process to make changes to the Smithsonian under Trump are open, public, and transparent. Finally, this can be a national debate and not just leftists forcing anti-American ideas down our throats. This process is a lot more than we ever got in 2020, when history was simply taken from us. Many Americans, from coast to coast, welcome it.
Time Magazine
a minute ago
- Time Magazine
How to Fix America's Gerrymandering Problem
President Donald Trump has thrust the country into a new political battle: mutually assured gerrymandering. And the antidote is what we call 'mutually assured representation.' The current saga began in June, when Trump called for Texas to start a congressional redistricting process in the middle of the decade—rather than after the next census in 2030. Last month, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott called a special legislative session to replace the state's current House map which would favor his party. Now, Trump's push for mid-decade redistricting in Republican-controlled states appears likely to spread to Missouri, Ohio, and Florida. If this happens, Democrats would have retaliate in the states they control in order to have a chance at winning a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives in 2026. In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul has declared her readiness to 'fight fire with fire.' In California, Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed holding a special election in November for voters to approve a ballot initiative allowing the legislature to redraw the state's congressional map. Read More: 'Time to Stand Down': Newsom Gives Trump Deadline to Call Off Redistricting Plan In Texas, Republicans are claiming that they are entitled to five more congressional seats—even if they receive the exact same number of votes as before. To achieve this, they can redraw the boundaries of the districts that Democrats won in 2024, moving Democratic voters into heavily Republican districts where their votes will not matter, and moving Republican voters into previously Democratic districts so that they can win these seats. In 2024, Republicans in Texas won 25 of the state's 38 seats, and Democrats won 13. With this new map, Republicans could win in 30 of 38 congressional districts. The proposed gerrymander is likely to give Republicans four or five new seats even if Democrats win substantially more votes for Congress than they did in 2025. According to our calculation, this will happen even if there is a five percentage point swing towards Democrats in the 2026 elections. In recent years, just a few congressional seats have determined control of the House, and a flip of just five seats on its own might determine the national result. Partisan gerrymandering makes it harder for voters to hold their representatives accountable. Congressional district elections become uncompetitive. With reelection in the general assured, candidates are focused on catering to their own party base, which tends to be a more extreme subset of their constituents. Through this process, partisan gerrymandering often reduces effective representation in Congress and can play a role in crowding out moderate and independent voters. But here's a twist: President Trump's new wave of extreme gerrymandering may actually backfire, paving the way for electoral reform. Partisan gerrymandering is unpopular with voters, as we've seen repeatedly in recent years. Voters in states such as Michigan, Arizona, Colorado, and New Jersey, have supported nonpartisan redistricting commissions. In 2021, Democrats tried and failed to pass the For the People Act, a bill that would have limited partisan gerrymandering nationwide and implemented non-partisan redistricting commissions in every state. But Republican senators blocked the bill. Gerrymandering reform often fails because only one party makes the necessary reforms. For instance, previous successful anti-gerrymandering measures in states like California and New York created fairer maps in each state—but actually cost the party in power (Democrats in both instances) more seats than the margin determining control of the House in 2024. One proposed solution is bipartisan redistricting commissions. These can fail when the parties cannot agree on a map. For instance, the Virginia commission deadlocked in 2022, leaving the courts to draw the maps. Then there are more radical solutions that effectively blow up the current electoral system as we know it, such as multi-member districts or aproportional representation. But we think it is unrealistic to get rid of a system that has been in place for two hundred and fifty years. Instead, we believe it is possible to make reforms that keep the current electoral system while also overcoming some of its flaws. We've developed a process-based solution that has a number of appealing properties. It's inspired by the problem parents face when dividing a cake between two children. How can they make sure everyone gets an equal slice? One child cuts the cake in two, and the other child chooses between the two pieces. Our approach, which we call the 'Define-Combine Procedure,' splits the map drawing process into two simple stages. First, one party divides the state into twice the number of needed districts—for example, 20 sub-districts for a state that needs 10 congressional seats. Then, the second party pairs those sub-districts into the final 10 districts. The result is a fairer map than either party would have drawn on its own. Instead of mutually assured gerrymandering, this approach leads to mutually assured representation. Read More: Gerrymandering Isn't New—But Now We Have a Solution We used real-world census and election data from 2020 in each state to forecast the results of extreme partisan gerrymandering and the Define-Combine Procedure in every state. In Texas, Republicans could draw a map where they won 30 of 38 congressional seats. If Democrats could unilaterally gerrymander Texas, they could create a map with 28 Democratic and 10 Republican seats. Depending on party control of redistricting in Texas, a whopping 20 seats could change hands. When we used the Define-Combine Procedure, the resulting map would produce 19 Republicans seats and 17 Democratic seats, with the two remaining seats changing hands depending on which party defines and which combines. This result comes much closer to the 53% of the two-party vote that Republicans won in 2020. Scaling nationwide, we estimate that extreme gerrymandering could determine which party holds almost 200 seats, out of the 435 seats in the House. Processes like ours could reduce the advantage that a party can earn just from drawing a map, with outcomes that are less biased and closer to proportional. The trick here is to use the impulse to score more seats for your party as a tool for fairness instead. It's a partisan solution for a partisan problem. One party alone cannot protect voting rights and ensure fair representation. That's why, in 1965, Democrats and Republicans came together to pass the Voting Rights Act—and why they continued to amend and renew it for the next 40 years. But, a series of Supreme Court decisions over the last 12 years have substantially weakened the Voting Rights Act and allowed states to engage in extreme partisan gerrymandering. Now, a case before the court next year is likely to further diminish its remaining provisions. Instead of settling for mutually assured gerrymandering, with less effective representation, reduced accountability, and uncompetitive elections, both parties should unite behind solutions that achieve fairer outcomes nationwide. Such an outcome seems unrealistic right now as tit-for-tat gerrymandering ramps up, but the moment when the dust settles and voters take stock of the damage done may well be the best opportunity to address the scourge of partisan gerrymandering. If we don't seize this opportunity, America will pay the price.
CNN
a minute ago
- CNN
Video: Map shows parts of Ukraine under threat as Trump and Putin meet
CNN's Nick Paton Walsh looks at the crucial parts of Ukraine that will likely be under discussion when President Donald Trump talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin later this week.
