Rebeca Ibarra: I'm Rebeca Ibarra, and this is The Takeaway. This week the House voted along party lines to pass legislation that would make the District of Columbia a state. This is the second time the House has voted to grant statehood to DC, the legislation, also known, as H.R. 51 now heads to the Senate. If passed by the Senate and signed into law, the legislation would establish Washington Douglass Commonwealth as the 51st state. Yes, the state would be renamed for abolitionist and civil rights leader Frederick Douglass, DC residents would gain two senators and a voting Congressperson. Advocates for statehood have tied the battle for DC statehood to the fight for equal voting rights and racial equality, as black residents represent the largest racial demographic group of the district's more than 700,000 citizens.

The nationwide reckoning over systemic racism and the groundswell of support for voting rights has elevated the fight for statehood. Now as the DC statehood bill hits the Senate, it faces a number of hurdles, including the filibuster. Joining us now to discuss what statehood would mean for her constituents is Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton of Washington DC. Welcome to The Takeaway, Representative Norton.

Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton: Glad to be with you.

Rebeca: Representative, you've represented Washington DC in Congress for about 30 years, and have spent much of that time championing statehood for DC. How does it feel to have legislation for statehood pass the House for the second time?

Representative Norton: The reason I haven't been able to get statehood before now is because I've been in the minority for most of my time in the Congress. The moment I got in the majority, I pressed hard for statehood, and now it feels that we are well on our way because more than 54% of the American people, according to a very detailed poll, support statehood, and that's the effect of telling Americans what they did not know. Many Americans were confused. They thought we had the same rights that they had. Some believed we shouldn't. Some just didn't know. The effects of the hearings has been to essentially educate the public. For example, they didn't know that the residents of their nation's capital pay the highest federal taxes per capita, highest in the United States, and yet don't have the same rights as other Americans.

Rebeca: How did statehood for DC become a tenet of the Democratic Party platform?

Representative Norton: It would be in the Democratic Party platform because statehood issues have always been divided. Republicans have tended to support statehood when the people involved were Republicans or from Republican states and vice versa.

Rebeca: Representative Norton, you were active in the civil rights movement and helped organize the 1963 March on Washington. Today, 46% of DC's more than 700,000 residents are black, so does this fight for statehood feel like a civil rights battle to you at all?

Representative Norton: It does feel like a continuation of the battles I fought actually as a student. A student for equality for African Americans. Now for most of its time as a jurisdiction, the District has been majority white, and yet was not treated equally. While my experience in the civil rights movement and my own lineage as a third-generation Washingtonian have all helped to shape my enthusiasm for statehood, it comes from very different points on the spectrum.

Rebeca: Even though this legislation will now advance to the Senate, it faces an uphill battle without Republican support, but there's also concern about the legislation lacking full support from Senate Democrats. Is that right?

Representative Norton: We do have a few Democrats still to get from more conservative Democratic states, but we have more than 90% of the Democrats as co-sponsors for the bill. Yesterday, we passed this bill in the House of Representatives, giving it a big push in the Senate. We believe that the filibuster is on its last legs. Remember, the Senate has gotten rid of the filibuster for nominations. In fact, they've gotten rid of the filibuster for everything except legislation. The Senate held up organizing this year, this session because of the filibuster. The Senate is determined to get rid of the filibuster because this majority Democratic senate knows that the reason it got the majority is because the republicans who had had control of the Senate had passed nothing. Legislation from the House went to the Senate to die, and the people gave the Senate to the Democrats. When the filibuster goes for everything else, it's going to go for DC statehood, so I'm optimistic about this bill in the Senate as well.

Rebeca: Representative, how have Republicans you've been talking to in Congress responded to the argument that not allowing DC to become a state effectively disenfranchises its more than 700,000 residents?

Representative Norton: The arguments have been essentially partisan, some of them absurd, that we don't have the kinds of stores or industry as states have, but, basically, statehood, and that is not only for the District of Columbia but for every state, has simply been a partisan matter.

Rebeca: How significant is having support from the White House in the fight for DC statehood for you? Because this week, President Biden issued a policy statement in which he expressed his support for H.R. 51 and statehood for DC.

Representative Norton: White House support has been truly important, and the President's strong statement of support means that we have a pull to get this done, not just a push from the Congress. It really means a great deal to the progress we're making on statehood that Democrats control the House, the Senate, and now the presidency as well. That's why we're making such a big push this session of Congress.

Rebeca: Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton is Washington DC's delegate in the House of Representatives. Representative Norton, thank you so much.

Representative Norton: My pleasure.

 

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