![]() Mayor Muriel Bowser implemented a vaccine mandate for businesses - prompting Republicans in the House and Senate to threaten to overturn it. Those criticisms ramped up significantly over the last month, after D.C. Congress, in the meantime, regularly fails to pass annual federal budgets, leading to periodic government shutdowns.īut the number of moderate Republicans in Congress who once supported the city's right to govern itself has dwindled, just as a rising corps of more conservative members have stepped in to criticize D.C.'s Democratic leaders for their management of the city, especially since the pandemic hit two years ago. ![]() The city has also seen continued fiscal stability and growth over the last two decades, with yearly budget surpluses and more than $1.5 billion set aside in a rainy day fund. the 51st state since 2020, and last year the Senate held its first hearing on a statehood bill since 2014 (The bill has since stalled in the Senate.) The House has twice passed a bill to make D.C. leaders and residents who have otherwise seen their fight for statehood advance further over the last two years than it had in decades before that. The new threats are a dose of cold water for D.C. But I can't remember having to beat back an attack on home rule itself. "Every single Congress, I have had to beat back their efforts to overturn the legislation that the District passes. "I have not seen a threat like this since I became a member of Congress," said Norton in an interview with DCist/WAMU. ![]() But Norton says there has never been as direct an attack on the city's ability to govern itself as Clyde's bill would be. affairs, including budget provisions that prohibit the city from spending money on specific programs or causes (marijuana legalization, clean needles, and abortions for low-income women among them) ordering the city to hold a referendum on reinstating the death penalty (it failed) and not counting the votes for a ballot initiative that legalized medical marijuana (the initiative passed). The District currently doesn't have full control over its legislation, and anything passed in D.C. ![]() 6 insurrection to a " normal tourist visit" - told the Daily Caller that "D.C.'s unseemly and declining status proves its leaders are unfit to properly maintain our nation's capital." residents gained in 1973 under a congressional bill signed by President Richard Nixon. Andrew Clyde, says he is drafting legislation that would repeal home rule, effectively wiping out the democratically elected mayor and legislature that D.C. if they win the majority, possibly even attempting to abolish the District's elected government and return it to complete congressional control.Īt least one Republican, Georgia Rep. Norton's warnings follow a story published last week in the conservative Daily Caller that laid out plans by senior Republicans - including current House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy - to significantly ramp up congressional oversight over D.C. But she is now raising the alarm over what she says are new threats to D.C.'s authority to govern itself, especially if Republicans manage to win back the House of Representatives in midterm elections later this year. Eleanor Holmes Norton has dealt with all manner of congressional challenges to the District's autonomy and local government. In her three decades on Capitol Hill, D.C. Eleanor Holmes Norton celebrated the statehood bill's passage through the House outside the Capitol Building in June 2020.
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