Should Washington, D.C., Be a State?

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 51, the bill which would make a new state out of most of Washington, D.C. Even prior to that vote, there were people proposing the following design for a new flag with 51 stars:  

Finally Projected

“Taxation and Representation” was the title of a blog article I posted back in June 2016. It was partly about Washington, D.C., where, I wrote, “there is taxation but no representation on the federal level.” I also said, “Statehood for the District is one possible solution to the problem.”

At that time, I really didn’t think there was much chance of that coming about, even though most of the D.C. license plates since 2000 have complained, “Taxation without Representation.”

Here is an image of the D.C. license plates issued since August 2017: 

The issue is even more than that of taxation, of course. The citizens of D.C. are denied most of their (small “d”) democratic rights and privileges. They have no Senators and no voting member of the House of Representatives.

But, finally, on April 22 the Washington, D.C. Admission Act (H.R. 51) was passed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 216-208. Every voting Democrat voted Yea; every voting Republican voted Nay.

The House vote was in harmony with the results of the November 2016 D.C. referendum on statehood for the District of Columbia. Nearly 86% of those who voted approved the appeal for statehood.

Flimsily Rejected

Republicans almost unanimously have rejected the idea of statehood for the District of Columbia. (Are there any prominent Republicans who favor statehood for D.C.? I couldn’t come up with any.)

One objection is that D.C. is too small to be a state. Even George Will began his anti-statehood 4/21 opinion article by pointing out that the land area of the proposed state of Washington, D.C., would be only 1/18 the size of Rhode Island.

But why in the world should land area have anything to do with statehood? It is population that is important, and currently, D.C. has around 715,000 residents, considerably more than Wyoming (at around 570,000) and Vermont (approximately 625,000).

Will does suggest that D.C. be made a part of the state of Maryland, which would create the 18^th largest state with a population of more than 6,780,000. But would that be fair to the citizens of D.C.—or of Maryland?

The size of D.C. measured by population (or area) is obviously not the reason for the Republican opposition. The main issue is that fewer than 38% of D.C. residents are non-Hispanic Whites and the 62% of the population who are PoC vote primarily for the Party that is for greater racial equality.

Firmly Supported

Last week, my FB Friend Rob Marus posted this on Facebook: “I have been, for nearly 20 years now, a citizen of the District of Columbia. . . . However, nearly 250 years after the Revolutionary War, I am still denied voting representation in Congress.”

Ben Jealous, who was the president and CEO of the NAACP from 2008 to 2013, wrote an April 28 article titled “D.C. Statehood is a Voting Rights Issue—and Racial Justice Issue.” That is probably a correct assessment of the situation. 

That same day, the Montgomery County Council (in the Maryland county adjacent to D.C.) again passed a resolution in support of D.C. statehood. The Council president said, “The indefensible disenfranchisement of 700,000 residents is one of the remaining civil rights injustices of our time.”

These reasons, and many more, are clearly delineated on the  statehood (dc.gov) website, and I encourage you to click on and read the content on this webpage: “Why Statehood for D.C.”

If you are in favor of democracy and the civil rights of all U.S. citizens, as I definitely am, then you have good reason to be a firm supporter of statehood for D.C.

A Notable Nomination: Haaland for Secretary of the Interior

The first two Native American women ever were elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018. One was Sharice Davids of Kansas City, from the 3^rd congressional district of Kansas.* The other was Deb Haaland of New Mexico.

Now, Rep. Haaland is poised to become a member of President Biden’s Cabinet. 

Who is Deb Haaland?

Debra Anne Haaland was born in Arizona 60 years ago last month. She is an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo, a Native American people group who has lived on the land that is now the state of New Mexico since the 1200s.

Haaland identifies herself as a 35th-generation New Mexican, her mother being a Native American woman. Her father, however, is a Norwegian American.

(It’s interesting how Haaland is Native American because her mother was, but Obama was never considered White even though his mother was.)

Haaland was 28 when she started college at the University of New Mexico, and she gave birth to a daughter, Somáh, four days after graduation in May 1994.

As a single mother, Haaland was sometimes dependent on food stamps. Still, she went on to law school and earned her J.D. in Indian law from University of New Mexico School of Law in 2006.

Haaland’s rise to political power began when she was elected to a two-year term as the chair of the Democratic Party of New Mexico in April 2015.

To What Was Deb Haaland Nominated?

On Dec. 17, President-elect Biden announced that he was nominating Haaland as the next Secretary of the Interior. As such she would be the first Native American to serve in the President’s Cabinet.

Secretary of the Interior isn’t a particularly ostentatious position, but it is an important one. According to this website, the Department of Interior (DoI) is

a federal executive department of the U.S. government. It is responsible for the management and conservation of most federal lands and natural resources, and the administration of programs relating to Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, territorial affairs, and insular areas of the United States, as well as programs related to historic preservation. . . . The department was created on March 3, 1849.

Seal of the DoI

Why Is Deb Haaland’s Nomination Notable?

The infamous Indian Removal Act was promulgated in 1830 and especially from then until the “Indian wars” ended in December 1890 (as I wrote about in my Dec. 26 blog post), there were sixty years of repeated cruel treatment of the Native peoples in U.S. territory.

Moreover, most Native Americans did not or could not become U.S. citizens until the Indian Citizenship Act was signed into law in 1924. And even after that, it was not until 1957 that Native Americans were allowed to vote in all states.

While things are better for Native Americans now than they were 130 years ago or 97 years ago, many of those who want to maintain their ethnic identity still have to face discrimination and “second-class” citizenship.

So, after all these years, it is notable that Biden chose a Native American, who is a sitting U.S. Representative, to be the new Secretary of the Interior, responsible for “the administration of programs relating to Native Americans.”

In addition, since environmental issues are a major concern of the new administration, Haaland, consistent with her Native American heritage, is a strong advocate for environmental justice—and has been openly criticized for that by Representative Pete Stauber (R-Minn.).

I hope Rep. Haaland’s confirmation as Secretary of the DoI will be smooth and that she will do well as a member of the Cabinet.

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* The church June and I are members of is in that district, and Rep. Davids (b. 1980) was strongly supported by most of our fellow church members in the 2018 election and in 2020, when she was re-elected.