House Democrats announced Tuesday that they will hold a vote on DC statehood next week — in what likely will be the first time a chamber of Congress approves making the nation’s capital city the 51st state.
The bill is expected to pass easily on June 26 with overwhelming Democratic support. But it will die just as surely with opposition in the Senate from Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Democratic leaders and DC officials announced the vote at a press conference. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said “this deprivation of statehood is unjust, unequal, undemocratic and unacceptable.”
The capital is home to roughly 700,000 people — more people than Vermont and Wyoming, and nearly as many as Alaska. If it were a state, DC would have one House member and two senators.
Since ratification of the 23rd Amendment in 1961, DC has had a say in presidential elections, with three electoral votes, but only one non-voting House delegate.
President Trump told the New York Post last month that “DC will never be a state” because Republicans aren’t “stupid.”
“You mean District of Columbia, a state? Why? So we can have two more Democratic — Democrat senators and five more congressmen? No thank you. That’ll never happen,” Trump told The Post in his first remarks on DC statehood as president.
Trump added: “They want to do that so they pick up two automatic Democrat — you know it’s 100 percent Democrat, basically — so why would the Republicans ever do that? That’ll never happen unless we have some very, very stupid Republicans around that I don’t think you do.”
The pending statehood bill is sponsored by Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), who said its 224 co-sponsors make passage all but guaranteed.
Norton’s bill would create a new state of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth, in honor of former resident and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Rather than make DC a state through a constitutional amendment, the bill would shrink the federal district to include the White House, the Supreme Court and the Capitol building, while making most of the city a state.
“Statehood will put an end to our oldest slogan: taxation without representation,” Norton said.
DC Mayor Muriel Bowser said she was outraged by Trump recently ordering federal officers and National Guard troops from other states into DC to quell widespread looting, arson and clashes with police after the killing of George Floyd by Minnesota police.
“It violated our principles of local autonomy,” Bowser said. “There shouldn’t be troops from other states in Washington, DC, there shouldn’t be federal forces advancing against Americans and there very definitely shouldn’t be soldiers stationed around our city waiting for the ‘go’ to attack Americans in a local policing matter.”
The House last voted on DC statehood in 1993 and rejected it 153-277, with almost half of Democrats then opposing the idea. Democrats now overwhelmingly back DC statehood. Almost all House Democrats and all but seven Democratic senators are backing the bill.
City residents are overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2016, Trump took just 4.09 percent of the vote against Democrat Hillary Clinton. The same year, 86 percent of city voters endorsed statehood.