TOPLINE
For the first time in U.S. history, the House of Representatives voted — along mostly party lines — to declare Washington, D.C., the nation’s 51st state on Friday, a move proponents say would right decades of disenfranchisement, though the bill is dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled Senate.
KEY FACTS
Statehood has long been a demand of District residents, who say they’ve been subject to taxation without representation since they lack senators and a representative who can vote in the House.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Md.) said Democrats chose to put the bill on the floor now after D.C. was treated as a territory in the CARES Act, the $2 trillion stimulus package Congress passed last month, and after federal troops were deployed in the city to quell protests in the wake of George Floyd’s killing.
Both the White House and GOP leadership in the Senate have indicated they do not support making D.C. a state, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says he will not bring the legislation to a vote in the Upper Chamber.
In an interview with the New York Post last month, President Trump said he was vehemently against the idea because it would add guaranteed Democratic seats in Congress and promised to veto a D.C. statehood bill should it reach his desk: “That’ll never happen.”
The bill would admit the state of “Washington, Douglass Commonwealth” as the nation’s 51st state and its boundaries would encompass the district’s residential and business areas, but would exclude the federal monuments, the White House, the Capitol Building, the United States Supreme Court Building, and the federal executive, legislative, and judicial office buildings close to the National Mall and the Capitol.
Just one Democrat, Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), a Democrat in a red district that went for Trump in 2016, voted against the bill.
Crucial quote
“For more than two centuries, the residents of Washington D.C., the District of Columbia, have been denied their right to fully participate in their democracy,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said during a news conference at the Capitol in the lead up to the vote.
Chief critic
House Republicans roundly denounced the bill as a purely political move. “This is a pure political bill,” Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) said.
Some Republicans, such as Harris, have argued the best way to enfranchise the 700,000 people who live in the District would be for D.C. to rejoin Maryland. “Go to the Maryland General Assembly, fully controlled by Democrats, and say, ‘Take it back.’ … Don’t steal this land from Maryland!” Harris added.
Key background
The lack of statehood for the capital is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The founders worried that if the capital were to become a state, it would have outsized influence simply because of its proximity to the halls of power. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution reads, “The Congress shall have Power To …exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States.”
Big number
More than 700,000 people live in Washington, D.C., more than Vermont and Wyoming.
Surprising fact
D.C. residents did not have a say in who was elected president until 1961, with the passage of the 23rd amendment to the Constitution, which granted them votes in the electoral college.
Further reading
D.C. statehood approved by U.S. House for first time in history (Washington Post)
House set to vote on DC statehood to create Washington, Douglass Commonwealth (ABC News)
