The House took aim at Washington, D.C.’s autonomy Tuesday, passing a pair of bills that would overturn local laws while leaving another measure to restore the District’s budget waiting in the wings.
Lawmakers voted 266-148 on a bill that would block noncitizens living in D.C. from voting in local elections, with 56 Democrats joining Republicans in support. The chamber also voted 235-178 on a bill that would reverse parts of a local police accountability overhaul, with 30 Democrats backing the measure and four Republicans voting against it.
Now the bills head to the Senate, where their prospects are unclear.
As the GOP-controlled House moved to second-guess local officials, it continued to sit on another measure to reverse a $1.1 billion budget cut Congress imposed on the District three months ago. The continuing resolution enacted in March kept spending at fiscal 2024 levels, including D.C.’s city budget. While the Senate quickly passed a fix, the House has yet to act, even though President Donald Trump called for a vote “IMMEDIATELY,” and Speaker Mike Johnson said he would bring the fix up for a vote “as quickly as possible.”
After sitting in limbo, D.C. officials released a supplemental budget in May that avoided layoffs but suspended hiring. On Monday, Republicans on the House Rules Committee blocked an attempt by Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa., to allow a vote on the D.C. budget fix bill.
During debate on the House floor, Democrats sought to frame the legislation passed Tuesday as an unnecessary intrusion into local matters. The policing bill would reverse portions of the local 2022 law and again allow the Metropolitan Police union to collectively bargain over disciplinary procedures.
Its sponsor, GOP Rep. Andrew Garbarino of New York, argued it would help D.C. recruit and retain cops. “Just under two years ago, one of our own colleagues was mugged at gunpoint several blocks from the Capitol,” he said on the floor. “That might not have happened if [Metropolitan Police] weren’t understaffed.”
But Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton noted that D.C.’s violent crime rate hit a 30-year-low last year and decried the fact that Garbarino’s bill took priority over the budget fix. “The timing of the introduction and consideration of this bill is stunning,” she said.
Congress voted to block the entirety of the local policing overhaul in 2023, but then-President Joe Biden vetoed that disapproval resolution. Biden, however, did allow Congress to block a different D.C. law, a revamp of the local criminal justice system that would have reduced the sentencing severity of many local crimes.
Urging his colleagues to reverse another local law on the floor Tuesday, House Oversight Chair James Comer called D.C.’s choice to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections a “radical change,” contending it gives undue power to undocumented immigrants and foreign diplomats.
Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost pushed back, noting that foreign diplomats would need to “renounce their right to vote in their home country” in order to cast their ballots. Frost also argued that undocumented immigrants wouldn’t want to draw attention to their status by registering to vote.
Norton accused her Republican colleagues of hypocrisy and said they “refuse to make the only election law change D.C. has requested, which is to make D.C. a state so they can hold elections for voting members [of Congress].”
Republicans have long railed against any decision to allow noncitizen residents to vote in citywide and neighborhood elections, saying it’s a slippery slope toward the complete erasure of national sovereignty. House Administration Chair Bryan Steil, R-Wis., argued Tuesday that Democrats want to “use Washington, D.C., as a petri dish for liberalizing voting laws across the country.” The bill passed Tuesday was sponsored by Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas.
The specter of noncitizen voters, and fraudulent ballots in general, has driven the GOP to pursue broad voter ID laws, even though numerous studies have shown the problem is not widespread.
The House passed a similar bill aiming to reverse D.C.’s noncitizen voting last Congress, but the Senate never took it up. The House is expected to consider a third D.C.-specific bill later this week that would require local officials to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
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