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Dems need to get serious about DC statehood. For real.
No more pussyfooting. With troops in the streets, the time is now.
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A note from Aaron: ABC’s craven decision to pull Jimmy Kimmel’s show represents a major victory for MAGA in its war against free speech. In a climate where corporate media keeps obeying in advance and bending the knee to Trumpism, supporting independent media is more important than ever. If you value this newsletter — and I’m very proud of the quality explanatory journalism we do day in and day out — then please support our work by signing up for a paid subscription. Public Notice is made possible by readers like you.
Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser has spent months dancing gingerly around the White House, trying to balance two incompatible needs.
On one hand, her constituents despise President Trump (he lost the 2024 election in DC by an incredible 90-6 margin), so she doesn’t want to look like a weakling, knuckling under to him at every turn. On the other hand, she knows how vindictive he is, which means that if she doesn’t placate him he could use his power to do even more damage to the city than he already has.
So when Trump had to relinquish control of DC’s police after his invasion of the city reached the 30-day limit provided for in the law, Bowser might have thought the worst was over. No such luck: After she said the Metropolitan Police Department would go back to addressing crime and leave immigration enforcement to federal agencies, Trump had a social media tantrum on Monday, saying he “WON’T ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN. I’ll call a National Emergency, and Federalize, if necessary!!!"
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The reason Bowser and the 700,000 people she represents are in this situation is that the District of Columbia is not a state. She could try to stand up to Trump in the way governors including JB Pritzker and Wes Moore have done, but she won’t, because Trump has too many levers of power he can use to take revenge on DC.
So why aren’t Democrats using this opportunity to revive the effort to make DC a state?
We’re not asking about what they’ve done before — namely, brief and half-hearted support for the idea that wasn’t backed up by action. We’re talking about a genuine push for statehood. This overwhelmingly Democratic city was just assaulted and humiliated, its mayor reduced to groveling before the president in a sad attempt to minimize the harm done to its citizens. Meanwhile, Republican states across the country are engaged in an unprecedented wave of hyper-partisan gerrymandering explicitly intended to ensure that elections for the House of Representatives will be over before they begin.
If there was ever a time to put DC statehood back on the agenda, this is it.
How we got here
The Constitution gave Congress the power to create a “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.” Once Maryland and Virginia ceded some of their territory, DC as we know it came into being; the federal government officially moved there from Philadelphia in 1800.
District residents would have almost no political representation, but at the time, there were only 14,000 people living there, so the fact of their disenfranchisement may have presented less of an affront to democracy than it does today. Over time, partial rights were granted: In 1961, the 23rd Amendment allowed DC residents to cast ballots for president, and in 1973, Congress passed the Home Rule Act allowing DC to have an elected mayor and city council.