On Monday, the White House activated the District of Columbia’s National Guard and federalized its police force. Donald Trump called the decision a “historic action” to “re-establish law and order.” In a remark reminiscent of the Supreme Court’s decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson that allowed cities to criminalize sleeping or camping on public property, Trump also threatened to jail the homeless if they didn’t leave the city.
DC’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, condemned the move:
We know that access to our democracy is tenuous. That is why you have heard me and many, many Washingtonians before me advocate for full statehood for the District of Columbia. We are American citizens. Our families go to war. We pay taxes, and we uphold the responsibilities of citizenship.
The Constitution’s Enclave Clause allowed Congress to establish a federal capital where it would “exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever.” But nothing was said about how the district’s residents would be represented, since seats in Congress and votes in the Electoral College are dispersed among states, not districts. Although the Twenty-Third Amendment fixed the Electoral College issue, and the Home Rule Act of 1973 allowed Washingtonians to elect a mayor and city council, DC still lacks voting members in Congress, and Congress can still review and override laws made by the city’s elected officials.
Simply put, the seven-hundred-thousand-plus residents of DC, the seat of so-called American democracy, still lack basic democratic rights. Trump’s takeover of Washington’s police force is adding insult to the injury of the United States’ long history of denying equal political standing to the capital’s residents.
This has been the case since the turn of the nineteenth century, when Congress moved into DC and passed the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801, stripping residents of their voting rights. The outrage was intense, and the first…
Auteur: Luke Pickrell
