Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Calls For DC Statehood

WASHINGTON, DC -- One of the highest profile individuals in Congress, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), is the latest to call for D.C. to be recognized as the 51st state as the House mulls a bill on Thursday that would do just that.

"DC was the 1st territory in the United States to free the enslaved," she wrote. "It’s where Black Americans fled the tyranny of slavery & towards greater freedom, to DC. Yet today it’s where 2nd class citizenship reigns, and the right to vote is denied.

"It's time to recognize D.C. statehood," she added.

DC was the 1st territory in the United States to free the enslaved.

It’s where Black Americans fled the tyranny of slavery & towards greater freedom, to DC. Yet today it’s where 2nd class citizenship reigns, and the right to vote is denied.

It’s time to recognize DC statehood. https://t.co/AkfaRHw38C
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 19, 2019

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform held a hearing Thursday on legislation that would turn most of the natoin's capital into the State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth, and limiting the Constitutionally mandated federal district to the National Mall and a few surrounding buildings.

Republicans spent the hearing slamming D.C. as corrupt and financially unstable, while Democrats argued that it is unconscionable that a city with more than 700,000 residents -- more than Vermont and Wyoming -- would have no voting representation in Congress.

This is the first congressional hearing in 25 years on the issue of D.C. statehood.

The hearing deals with Norton's D.C. statehood bill, HR 51, which currently has 216 voting cosponsors, and the endorsement of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.

The bill would shrink the federal district to the "federal core" including the National Mall, U.S. Capital, White House, and other federal buildings clustered in that area. It's not the first time the original 10-square-mile district has been shrunk: Congress passed legislation in 1846 returning all the District's territory south of the Potomac River to Virginia, creating Arlington and Alexandria.

Democratic presidential candidates have come out in favor of D.C. statehood, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who listed D.C. statehood as one of several fundamental changes he hoped to make as president during a debate earlier this summer among other contenders for the Democratic nomination.

"When I propose the actual structural democratic reforms that might make a difference -- end the electoral college, amend the Constitution if necessary to clear up Citizens United, have D.C. actually be a state, and depoliticize the supreme court with structural reform -- people look at me funny," he said.

However, while D.C. statehood has a chance to pass the Democrat-controlled House and advance further than it ever has, it has no chance at getting through the Republican-controlled Senate or President Trump because it would virtually guarantee two new Democratic U.S. senators and one U.S. representative. Instead, some Republicans have suggested that the District be absorbed into Maryland, which is already heavily Democratic. Other Republicans argue that D.C. residents should continue to not have any representation at all.

D.C. statehood also still has a long way to go to earn popular support among Americans. A Gallup poll in June found that 64 percent of Americans opposed making D.C. the 51st state and just 29 percent supported it. Even among Democrats, the proposal had just 39 percent support.