{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://norton.house.gov/media/press-releases/norton-statement-house-passage-two-anti-dc-bills", "Norton Statement on House Passage of Two Anti-D.C. Bills", "2025-06-10", "2025", "2025-06", "Democrat", "House", "DC", "Eleanor Holmes Norton", "N000147", "norton.house.gov", "norton", "https://norton.house.gov/media/press-releases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said that the two anti-D.C. home rule bills passed by the House today demonstrate the Republican view of D.C. as property they can exert control over to score political points instead of working on behalf of their own constituents. The first bill, introduced by Rep. August Pfluger (R-TX), would prohibit D.C. residents who are not citizens from voting in local D.C. elections. The second, introduced by Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-NY), would repeal parts of D.C.\u2019s 2022 local police accountability and transparency law.\n\n\u201cOnce again, House Republicans have used countless hours of their offices\u2019 time that rightly belongs to their own constituents to try to repeal local D.C. laws and policies, and they\u2019ll waste even more tomorrow,\u201d Norton said. \u201cThese bills, introduced by members elected to serve other districts, seek to bully and micromanage the affairs of local D.C. Yesterday, Chair of the House Rules Committee, Rep. Virginia Foxx, inadvertently revealed how Republicans think of D.C. when she referred to D.C. as \u2018a special piece of property,\u2019 ignoring the more than 700,000 Americans who reside in the nation\u2019s capital.\n\n\u201cNoncitizen voting has been allowed in the United States since its founding, with nearly 20 cities allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections. Republicans introduced 26 bills or amendments to change local D.C. voting laws, including 14 to prohibit noncitizens from voting in D.C. or to repeal, nullify or prohibit the carrying out of the local D.C. law that allows residents who are not citizens to vote in local elections last Congress. Yet Republicans refuse to make the only election law change D.C. has requested: making D.C. a state so that it can hold elections for voting members of the House and Senate.\n\n\"Like with voting, Republicans regularly introduce legislation to repeal other types of local D.C. laws. What is different about Rep. Garbarino\u2019s bill is it also overrides the longstanding wishes of the D.C. police department. For at least a quarter century, the D.C. police department had requested increased authority to discipline officers for misconduct. The local D.C. legislature gave the department this authority after the murder of George Floyd, which Rep. Garbarino\u2019s bill would remove. The bill says it is necessary to combat rising violent crime and to improve the retention and recruitment of police officers but this bill has its facts wrong. Last year, violent crime in D.C. reached a more than 30-year low and is down 22 percent this year compared to the same period last year.\u201d\n\n\"If Republicans cared about D.C. residents or democracy, they would take up H.R. 51, the D.C. statehood bill. H.R. 51 would admit the residential and commercial areas of D.C. as a state, giving D.C. residents voting representation in Congress and full local self-government.\n\n\u201cI will continue to fiercely fight any further advancement of these bills.\u201d\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-07T01:08:28Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://norton.house.gov/media/press-releases/norton-statement-house-passage-two-anti-dc-bills"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.4377753250300884, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}