Congress's attempt to overturn a crime law makes the case for DC statehood
For the first time in 30 years, Congress is on the verge of voting to overturn a law approved by Washington, DC’s city council, a move that underscores how much control federal lawmakers have over the district’s policies. The law — passed by the city council last year — updated DC’s criminal code, much of which has not been changed in more than a century. And although the DC city council chair has since tried to withdraw the law from congressional consideration, the Senate intends to move forward with a disapproval vote since the House has already held one.
Lawmakers’ push to roll back the city’s criminal justice reforms has renewed attention on how DC’s lack of statehood status makes it subject to the whims of the federal government. And it’s a reminder of the costs of the failure to make DC a state. Locally, that’s meant congressional control over the city’s laws and its budget, as well as federal taxes but no votes in Congress for the city’s residents. More broadly, it’s meant that Democrats haven’t been able to add to their votes in the House and Senate, something that DC statehood would likely result in since the city has typically elected Democratic leaders.
“This would be like Texas telling Massachusetts that their laws shouldn’t apply,” says Monica Hopkins, the executive director of the ACLU DC, of Congress’s actions. “There is no place more evident than in this resolution that DC is being used as a platform for messaging for politicians who are running for office.”
The effort to overturn the DC law has been driven by Republicans in the House and Senate, who’ve sought to use the measure as a way to paint Democrats in both the city, and nationally, as “soft on crime.” It’s also the latest instance of a mostly white Congress trying to undo the policies backed by the elected officials of a city where nearly 50 percent of the population is Black, a move that many local activists have decried as both undemocratic and racist.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/congress-s-attempt-to-overturn-a-crime-law-makes-the-case-for-dc-statehood/ar-AA18ku6m
