by Frank Holmes, reporter
Democrats just had a major setback when they slapped down trying to pull off an audacious scheme to add extra seats to Congress, which would be filled by far-left representatives and senators from a “state” that doesn’t even exist.
A left-wing law firm tried to sue its way right into a bigger Democratic majority on Capitol Hill. Thankfully, their shameless plan just got slapped down by the Supreme Court.
Beltway lawyers filed a lawsuit for the courts to give the District of Columbia — that’s Washington, D.C., to the rest of us — its own congressional delegation.
Forget court-packing. This new tactic is Congress packing.
The timing is awfully suspicious: Lawyers wanted the courts, all the way up to the Supreme Court, to force Congress to accept a new Democratic congressman and two U.S. senators, just as President Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion spending spree is short of exactly two votes in the Senate.
How convenient!
The lawsuit tried to say it’s unjust for people in D.C. not to have their own representatives, who would likely be on the hard-left faction of the Democratic Party.
“Residents of the District of Columbia are the only adult American citizens subject to federal income taxes who lack voting representation in Congress, except for felons in some States,” according to the legal brief filed by the Covington & Burling law firm.
The law practice argued that the current state of the law violates the equal protection and due process clauses of the Constitution—even though the Constitution says that people living in Washington are not supposed to have their own Senators.
The lawyers say that people in D.C. should have their own slate of congressmen, just like every “other” state—but there’s just one problem with that: D.C. is not a state, and it was never meant to be.
Washington, D.C., is currently a city, and cities don’t get Senators.
The court turned down a petition to hear this case, just like they turned down another case just like this a year ago. But Democrats thought they could gin up media controversy to pressure the justices into changing their minds.
“I had a feeling that once we got it going, we could get enough interest generated that the Supreme Court would take it,” said Charles A. Miller, a lawyer from Covington & Burling. “Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way.”
The Supreme Court said this was blatantly unconstitutional. Since D.C. is the place where Congress meets, Congress was meant to make its decisions. Originally the District originally had no governor (or mayor). The Constitution says that “the Congress shall have Power To… exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States.”
It looks like the Founding Fathers thought the district should stay out of politics, because it would always increase government, since that’s the major industry in the drained swamp basin.
And that’s what Democrats are hoping. They’ve been trying to grant D.C. statehood for a generation. Congress passed a constitutional amendment for D.C. statehood in 1977, but it was never ratified.
Bills to make D.C. a state failed in 1976 and 1998. But then the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives introduced and passed a bill to make Washington, D.C., the 51st state in 2020.
“Let’s be very clear what [D.C. statehood] is all about: It’s all about creating two new Democrat U.S. Senate seats,” said Rep. James Comer, R-Ky. “This bill is part of the progressive pathway that President Biden, Leader (Chuck) Schumer, and Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi have to reshape America into that socialist utopia that the Squad talks about.”
But that bill’s stuck, too, so now they’re just trying to sue their way into a Congress. The lawsuit comes as the Democrats’ big government agenda is stalled in Congress—they just don’t have the votes to shove through multi-trillion-dollar spending bills over and over again. Forget about “Medicare for All,” government daycare for three-year-old kids, and amnesty for maybe tens of millions of illegal aliens.
A few extra Democrats would go a long way toward making that happen—or, it could have, if the Supreme Court hadn’t been doing its job.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”
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