On Thursday, the House of Representatives passed House Resolution 51 along party lines. This legislation would grant statehood to the federally controlled District of Columbia, dubbing it the state of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth in honor of abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
While D.C. has three electoral votes (won by Biden at a whopping 92.1% according to CNN), its House delegate cannot vote on legislation. H.R. 51 seeks to give D.C. two voting senators, one voting member of the House, and a governor.
Constitutionalists have pointed out that our founding documents forbid D.C. statehood in this manner:
"But DC statehood is unconstitutional!"
They know. They just don't care.
— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) April 22, 2021
The 23rd Amendment, as acknowledged in the bill, poses the greatest hurdle to the district becoming a state through legislation. The Constitution allows D.C. to appoint electors for President and Vice President as if the District were a state with the least population.
The bill excludes a small portion of D.C. including federal buildings and monuments from the “Douglass Commonwealth”:
“The commonwealth (1) shall consist of all District territory, with specified exclusions for federal buildings and monuments, including the principal federal monuments, the White House, the Capitol Building, the U.S. Supreme Court Building, and the federal executive, legislative, and judicial office buildings located adjacent to the Mall and the Capitol Building . . .”
Zack Smith at The Heritage Foundation explains that if the district surrounding federal property were to be granted statehood, three electoral votes could be dictated by the residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. If the 23rd Amendment was not repealed, the first family would dictate the same amount of electoral votes as the entire state of Wyoming. H.R. 51 provides no specific timeline for the passing of a new constitutional amendment.
Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY) referred to GOP representatives opposing the bill as “racist trash”:
“I have had enough of my colleagues’ racist insinuations that somehow that the people of Washington D.C. are incapable or even unworthy of our democracy. One Senate Republican said that D.C. wouldn’t be a ‘well rounded working class state.’ I had no idea there were so many syllables in the word ‘white.’ One of my House Republican colleagues said that D.C. shouldn’t be a state because the district doesn’t have a landfill. My goodness, with all the racist trash my colleagues have brought to this debate I can see why they’re worried about having a place to put it.”
Democratic legislators are advocating for the elimination of the congressional filibuster in order to bypass the 60-vote hurdle in the Senate:
It’s LGBTQ+ equality or the filibuster.
It’s DC Statehood or the filibuster.
It’s voting rights or the filibuster.
It's the Dream Act, gun safety reforms, campaign finance reform, and equal pay or the filibuster.
The choice is clear. We must #EliminateTheFilibuster
— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) April 22, 2021
Even the moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is wary to support the measure, according to CNN:
“I got so many things on my plate that I haven’t even gotten to that yet.”
It comes as no surprise that Democrats are utilizing their control of the House and Senate to secure power in perpetuity. It seems the filibuster is the last bulwark against mob rule.
