Update 7/29: The House Committee on Oversight and Reform rescheduled the hearing on legislation to make D.C. the 51st state for September 19, according to Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Update 7/15: The hearing has been postponed until the fall because special counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony before the House was scheduled on the same day.

Original:

A historic year for the D.C. statehood movement continues, as the House Committee on Oversight and Reform schedules a hearing to discuss legislation to make the District the 51st state on July 24. It will be the first time in decades that the lower chamber has officially considered statehood for the District.

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s non-voting representative in the House, announced the hearing on Thursday at the D.C. War Memorial on the National Mall, flanked by Mayor Muriel Bowser and D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, among others. (The location has symbolic value: In 2012, Norton was among the D.C. officials who successfully fought the rededication of the memorial as a national monument, rather than one specifically for District residents who died during World War I, and the District has residents serving in the armed forces, though does not have a vote on whether or not the country goes to war.)

The hearing fulfills a promise made to Norton by Maryland Representative Elijah Cummings, the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. While Norton has introduced a statehood bill every term she’s served, this year’s iteration has broken her previous records for co-sponsors (more than 200, all Democrats) and came with support from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Since then, the Democrat-led House voted to endorse the notion of D.C. statehood in an omnibus voting rights bill. The GOP-held Senate has declined to take up that legislation.

However, in a first for upper-chamber Democrats, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said D.C. statehood was a top priority for strengthening voting rights. The Senate version of the bill garnered the sponsorship of longtime local holdout Mark Warner, a senator from Virginia, and all of the Senate Dems who are currently running for president.

On Thursday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland representative, published an op-ed in the Washington Post entitled “I was hesitant about D.C. statehood. Now I believe it’s the only path forward.” He was the final local Democrat who hadn’t backed D.C. becoming the 51st state, and now he is co-sponsoring Norton’s legislation in the House.

Norton’s bill would make D.C.’s eight wards a full state, represented by two senators and one representative in the House with full voting powers. The Capitol Complex and the National Mall would remain federal property. Currently, the District has a larger population than two states and pays federal taxes, but has limited representation on Capitol Hill.

The last time the House held a hearing on D.C. statehood was in 1993. More recently, in 2014, the Senate had a hearing on D.C. statehood, which was well attended by local activists but had a poor showing of senators.

Norton remains undeterred by the bill’s slim chances in the Republican-controlled Senate. “If we get through the House, it will bring tremendous pressure,” she said on The Kojo Nnamdi Show in March. “You’ve gotta go one House at a time.”