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**AUGUST 22, 2025**

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For my whole professional career, I have argued that Democrats should make D.C. a state. Not only would it grant representation to the 700,000 people living there who currently lack either senators or representatives, it would grant Democrats two guaranteed Senate seats in a chamber that is systematically biased against them. Alas, back in 2021 Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin allowed a D.C. statehood bill to be filibustered, which has now greatly enabled Donald Trump’s military occupation [link removed] of the nation’s capital. Hopefully the party won’t make that mistake again—if they ever get another chance.

**–Ryan Cooper, senior editor**

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BRYAN OLIN DOZIER/NURPHOTO VIA AP PHOTO

How Moderate Senate Democrats Enabled Trump’s D.C. Takeover [link removed]

President Trump’s military occupation of Washington, D.C., is based on outrageous lies. It is also already causing chaos, with one District vehicle already totaled when it was T-boned by an MRAP truck [link removed]. (The driver was not seriously injured, thankfully.) The fact that huge mine-resistant vehicles are being driven aimlessly around a city that is notably

**not**littered with IEDs tends to indicate that their presence is meant for intimidation, as the same kind of vehicle [link removed] was used during South African apartheid.

I suspect this is a trial run for a classic coup d’état, where the military seizes control of the legislature and other important buildings, and declares Trump dictator-for-life. Whether that would work is an open question. But it is clear that a handful of moderate Senate Democrats, by refusing to end the filibuster and grant statehood to D.C., paved the road down which Trump is now driving armored vehicles.

For many years now [link removed], I have been one among many arguing that D.C. should become a state. The arguments are obvious: As the District’s license plates sarcastically point out (“Taxation Without Representation,” they note), there are about 700,000 American citizens living there who have no representation in Congress. That is an outrageous violation of the principles that underlay the founding of this country. American citizens should have representation in their own government. (The same is true of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.)

D.C. statehood would also reduce the partisan bias of the Senate. On its face, the Senate is a ludicrously unfair institution that grants unjustifiable overrepresentation to randomly depopulated states—Wyoming residents count about 70 times as much as Californians—but for much of American history that was counterbalanced by small states not having a reliable partisan bias. That is no longer true: The median Senate seat is slanted about three points [link removed] to the GOP, and for much of recent history [link removed] Republicans have controlled the chamber despite losing the majority of votes for senators. Two more reliable Democratic senators would reduce that structural unfairness.

There is a more practical factor, however, that is arguably most important of all. States possess wide powers over their own budgets and laws, and enjoy certain restrictions [link removed] on presidential powers to federalize their National Guard troops. Federalizing police is not allowed at all.

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