Only a few years in the past, the motion for Washington, DC, statehood was gaining steam. In 2020 and 2021, Democrats within the Home handed payments to make DC the 51st state, re-energizing the struggle to grant residents of the nation’s capital illustration in Congress.
These payments had been finally doomed due to robust Republican opposition. However now, statehood for Washington, DC, appears much more far-fetched. Earlier this week, President Donald Trump took the extraordinary step of ordering a federal takeover of DC’s native police division. He additionally mobilized the DC Nationwide Guard, deploying troops within the metropolis to allegedly struggle crime.
This didn’t essentially come as a shock. For a while, Trump has fantasized about taking on DC altogether, saying that the federal authorities would do a a lot better job working the town than its present mayor, Muriel Bowser.
So, how did DC go from constructing a rising motion for statehood to a hostile federal takeover in only a few brief years?
The easy reply is that Republicans at the moment are in energy, and so they’d wish to make an instance out of DC. However even with out Republican management of the White Home or Congress, statehood and full self-governance have all the time been an uphill battle, as a result of there’s additionally a deeper historical past of the federal authorities’s paternalistic relationship with the nation’s capital.
DC’s self-governance has all the time been controversial
Washington, DC, was particularly established to function the nation’s capital. The US Structure gave Congress the energy to create a small federal district that doesn’t exceed 10 sq. miles to function the seat of the federal authorities. In 1790, Congress handed the Residence Act, which paved the way in which to construct a brand new capital alongside the Potomac River. And so, DC was established by carving out land from Maryland and Virginia (which later took its portion again) and was underneath Congress’s jurisdiction. That meant there could be no democratically elected mayor or native authorities.
However DC grew right into a full metropolis, with residents dwelling there on a everlasting foundation — not simply to serve the federal authorities. And, for many of the metropolis’s historical past, these residents had been completely disenfranchised — unable to get illustration in Congress and even vote for president. That modified through the civil rights period, when DC’s voting rights (or lack thereof) garnered extra consideration, in no small half due to the town’s giant Black inhabitants, which, by 1960, had develop into the bulk. In consequence, the structure was formally amended in 1961 to grant DC residents the precise to vote for president, however the modification stopped in need of granting them illustration in Congress.
Even then, DC didn’t have a democratically elected native authorities. So, in 1974, Congress handed the DC Dwelling Rule Act, which allowed residents to elect their very own mayor and council. That lastly gave the nation’s capital some type of self-governance, however Congress finally retained its energy to overrule native legal guidelines and budgets if it so happy.
The federal authorities’s resistance to giving DC autonomy is finally rooted in racism. Referred to as Chocolate Metropolis, DC was the epicenter of Black arts, tradition, and politics. And because it gained the precise to vote for native officers, DC has solely ever elected Black mayors. In consequence, opposition to DC statehood has typically leaned on the paternalistic and racist notion that Black folks can’t be trusted to manipulate themselves — that the town’s residents merely don’t know what’s greatest for them. That’s why conservative lawmakers have pointed to points like crime or corruption as proof that DC can’t be trusted to be a state.
In 2021, for instance, Steve Scalise, the Republican Home majority chief, wrote, “Why ought to the District of Columbia be granted statehood when it could possibly’t even carry out fundamental governmental duties like defending its residents from criminals?” Scalise additionally stated that the town was just too corrupt to be a state. These sorts of arguments have been repeated by folks on the precise for many years, even though states, together with Scalise’s personal Louisiana, are well-known for his or her corruption and crime. So even when these points had been a official concern (they shouldn’t be), then why ought to the residents of DC be handled any in another way than different Individuals?
A part of the rationale lately has much less to do with specific racism and extra to do with partisan politics. If DC had been to get full illustration in Congress, it will undoubtedly profit Democrats, because the metropolis is overwhelmingly Democratic. (Trump, for instance, solely bought 6.5 p.c of the vote in DC in 2024.) That explains why Democrats are on board with DC statehood whereas Republicans are fiercely opposed.
However that is the pure extension of the overt racism that has lengthy outlined opposition for DC self-governance. Earlier than the Dwelling Rule Act, President Lyndon B. Johnson reorganized how the district was ruled and appointed Walter Washington to function the mayor-commissioner of DC. When Washington, who was Black, submitted his first funds to Congress, the response was astonishingly racist; John McMillan, a Democrat from South Carolina who chaired the Home Committee on the District of Columbia, despatched Washington a truckload of watermelons.
Now, Republicans may not play the identical techniques, however the diploma to which they ignore Black Washingtonians and their rights is unmistakable. “Sure, Wyoming is smaller than Washington by inhabitants, however it has 3 times as many staff in mining, logging, and development, and ten occasions as many staff in manufacturing,” Tom Cotton, the Republican senator from Arkansas, stated in 2021 in a speech opposing DC statehood. “In different phrases, Wyoming is a well-rounded working-class state.”
However, as I famous then, roughly 140,000 folks in DC’s labor drive had been thought of working class in 2016, in keeping with the Middle for American Progress, whereas about 220,000 staff in Wyoming had been thought of working class. Probably the most notable distinction in these two populations is that the overwhelming majority of DC’s working class was made up of individuals of colour, whereas 84 p.c of Wyoming’s working class was white.
The implications of federal management
Federal intervention in DC’s affairs has typically poorly served residents, and never simply because they’ve, by the years, been denied voting rights, self-governance, and illustration in Congress. Congress’s meddling in native legal guidelines has finally served the pursuits of lawmakers from different states and never the pursuits of the folks dwelling within the metropolis.
One of the notable examples of this was through the AIDS epidemic. Within the Nineteen Nineties, DC spent cash on needle trade packages, which analysis has proven is vital in stopping the unfold of infectious illnesses, together with HIV/AIDS. However, Congress banned the town from utilizing its personal funds on needle trade packages — a ban that lasted 9 years. Throughout that point, the town noticed a surge in infections and had the very best fee of HIV per capita within the nation, even exceeding charges in growing international locations. And, as a result of DC was a majority Black metropolis, the coverage disproportionately affected Black folks.
Trump’s plan to federalize the native police drive follows these precise footsteps — putting his personal pursuits above these of DC residents and their elected officers. The transfer is a blatantly political one. Trump is utilizing DC as a warning to different cities: For those who go progressive felony justice legal guidelines, then he’ll strive his greatest to intervene.
It’s a paternalistic intuition, one that’s anti-democratic at its core, taking native management away from the arms of voters. And what’s unlucky for DC is that Trump’s transfer just isn’t completely unprecedented. It falls in keeping with how the federal authorities has lengthy considered DC’s self-governance: at greatest an inconvenience, and at worst, a menace.
