The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill on Thursday that would make the District of Columbia the 51st state.
The bill narrowly passed in the Democratic controlled House for the second time in less than a year, on a 216-208 vote. No Republican supported the measure.
The bill will now go to the 50-50 Senate where it faces strong opposition from Republicans who are already accusing Democrats of a “power grab” and vows to filibuster the new legislation.
Washington, D.C., is heavily Democratic. As a state, it likely would elect two Democratic senators, potentially altering the balance of power in the Senate.
Democrats, who have been advocating statehood for the capital of the United States for decades, hope to take advantage of last November’s election of President Joe Biden as well as control of the Senate and House to admit a new state for the first time since 1959, the year Alaska and Hawaii joined the union, according to Reuters.
“For far too long, the more than 700,000 people of Washington, D.C., have been deprived of full representation in the U.S. Congress. This taxation without representation and denial of self governance is an affront to the democratic values on which our Nation was founded,” the White House stated in its official endorsement of the cause, according to The Hill. “Establishing the State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth as the 51st state will make our Union stronger and more just.”
Washington D.C. currently has one delegate in the House, Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) who cannot vote on any legislation.
If the city becomes a state, D.C.would have at least one House member. Its population of around 700,000 is more than that of the states of Wyoming and Vermont.
