D.C.: Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton Decries 'Shocking' Threat from Republicans To Repeal D.C. Home Rule

- NPR, Feb. 17, 2022.

In her three decades on Capitol Hill, D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton has dealt with all manner of congressional challenges to the District's autonomy and local government. 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.

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. if they win the majority, possibly even attempting to abolish the District's elected government and return it to complete congressional control.

At least one Republican, Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde, says he is drafting legislation that would repeal home rule, effectively wiping out the democratically elected mayor and legislature that D.C. residents gained in 1973 under a congressional bill signed by President Richard Nixon. Clyde — who last year compared the Jan. 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."

The District currently doesn't have full control over its legislation, and anything passed in D.C. is subject to review by Congress. Republicans have long interfered in D.C. 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). 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.

"I have not seen a threat like this since I became a member of Congress," said Norton...

- More,
https://www.npr.org/local/305/2022/02/17/1081428500/norton-decries-shocking-threat-from-republicans-to-repeal-d-c-home-rule

https://norton.house.gov/