Norton Keeps Anti-D.C. Amendment from Meadows and Gosar from the House Floor

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today announced she kept the Meadows-Gosar amendment to H.R. 1, the For the People Act, attacking D.C. statehood and home rule from reaching the House floor. The Rules Committee rejected the amendment at Norton's request. H.R. 1, a pro-democracy bill that includes numerous findings to expand democracy in the United States, includes extensive findings justifying statehood for the District of Columbia. The Meadows-Gosar amendment would have struck those findings and instead said that Congress should exercise even more oversight of D.C., that the District should never become a state, and that statehood would require a constitutional amendment. H.R. 1 is expected to be debated on the House floor this week and if passed, as expected, it will be the first time in our nation's history that either chamber of Congress has endorsed D.C. statehood.

"We stopped Representatives Meadows and Gosar at the gate as they tested their gratuitous anti-democracy amendment aimed at the District," Norton said. "I am grateful to the Rules Committee for burying this insulting amendment in the graveyard of authoritarianism where it belongs. I look forward to the passage of H.R. 1, endorsing greater democracy everywhere in our country, especially in the nation's capital."

Representative Meadows has racked up a losing history of trying to trample on D.C. home rule, including repealing D.C.'s Local Budget Autonomy Act, sabotaging D.C.'s health insurance market, and steering money away from D.C. public schools.

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