Progressive Hub

08/12/2025

On Monday, August 11th, Donald Trump’s authoritarian gaze landed on Washington, DC, the city of 700,000 people in the White House’s backyard. In a move of extreme overreach, he announced that he would be invoking Section 740 of the Home Rule Act, which gives the president the ability to command DC’s Metropolitan Police Department for “federal purposes.” Trump claimed, despite much evidence to the contrary, that DC was in the midst of a crippling crime wave that necessitated a federal response. That Trump’s power grab is legally dubious and almost certainly outside the ambit of what the authors of the Home Rule Act had in mind is beside the point. Because of its lack of statehood, DC has been a sitting target for the right wing for decades.

DC statehood is often framed as a daunting, pie-in-the-sky goal, but making DC a state would only be as hard as getting a bill passed through Congress. DC could be granted statehood by an act of Congress, signed into law by the president, and immediately be given the rights to self-government which residents of all 50 states currently enjoy.

A bill granting DC statehood, HR 51, has already been introduced in this session by DC Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton. ( A companion Senate bill has been introduced by Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen.) In fact, bills granting DC statehood have been introduced consistently since 2017.

With inconstant support from Democrats in Congress, the statehood movement has stalled out again. While Democrats profess support for DC statehood, they have done little to prioritize it in practice. Their 2024 platform makes a single mention of the party’s support for statehood, and pins the responsibility entirely on Republicans for blocking statehood votes when, in reality, intransigence within the Democratic ranks shares equal blame in recent history.