Update, 6/16/20: Three more Democratic senators have signed onto D.C.’s statehood legislation in the upper chamber — Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters of Michigan, and Jon Tester of Montana. Peters is the ranking member on the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and would likely become chair if Democrats take the majority in November. The statehood bill would need to pass through that committee. There are currently 40 senators supporting the statehood bill, none of whom are Republicans.

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Two new members of Congress have signed onto legislation that would make D.C. the 51st state, the week after the president deployed military and federal law enforcement on District streets.

Senator Jacky Rosen (D-Nevada) has signed on to the legislation in the upper chamber, bringing the total number of co-sponsors to 36, and Representative Ron Kind (D-Wisconsin) is on board in the House, bringing the total co-sponsors to 224. This represents the most legislative support that a measure for D.C. statehood has ever had, and includes enough votes to pass in the House.

“There’s a real sense this bill is becoming irresistible because it is bringing together so many inflection points of the moment,” says D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, who serves as the District’s representative in the House but lacks full voting power. “What you saw was the president essentially commanding cavalry to push aside peaceful protesters so he could march to St. John’s Church, and that, if anything, helped the public to understand why the District needs statehood.”

D.C. statehood advocates have long noted that the District has a larger population than both Vermont and Wyoming, yet has zero senators and a non-voting delegate. While residents pay federal taxes and serve in the armed forces, they have no final say in where those taxes go, whether the nation goes to war, the confirmation of judges, or other matters determined by Congress. The city’s status allows officials unelected by residents to have a final say in where D.C.’s locally raised funds can go, and recently led to D.C. getting shortchanged by $750 million in federal coronavirus aid.

“Often we think of statehood in terms of our lack of voting representation in Congress, but this week was an unfortunate reminder that our lack of autonomy has far-reaching and, in this case, scary consequences for the more than 706,000 tax-paying Americans who call D.C. home,” Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office said in a statement, noting that “we have seen D.C. streets occupied with unidentified law enforcement troops, peaceful protesters attacked by federal police, and federal helicopters use war-like tactics to intimidate residents and members of the press.”

Due to a series of high-profile tussles with President Donald Trump, Bowser has had a far more prominent national platform to make the case for statehood. A Gallup poll from last summer found that a majority of Americans did not back statehood for D.C., but Norton says that Bowser “is using her platform with what Trump has given her to make people understand that we live in the nation’s capital and don’t have the same rights as everyone else.” Bowser, for instance, could not deploy the D.C. National Guard, unlike state governors.

Rosen said in an emailed statement that “Americans have a constitutional right to protest. It was completely unacceptable for the President of the United States to use tear gas to clear out peaceful protestors in Washington for a photo-op. I co-sponsored legislation supporting D.C. statehood because Washingtonians deserve a full voice in Congress and in government.”

Kind’s office has not immediately returned a request for comment. Rosen and Kind are the first new congressional sponsors this year.

Bo Shuff, the executive director of D.C. Vote, says that the advocacy group has been running educational advertisements about statehood in a number of states, including Nevada. He says these latest co-sponsors are an example of the group’s strategy “to move from the left to the center to the right.” However, no Republicans in either the House or Senate have signed on. (When New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew switched from the Democratic to Republican party, he also withdrew his co-sponsorship of the statehood legislation.)

Josh Burch, the founder of Neighbors United for Statehood, says that the advocacy group has been working in tandem with Nevada organizations like Indivisible and the Nevada League of Women Voters to push for Rosen to get on board, and are employing a similar strategy in states like Washington, Michigan, Rhode Island, Arizona, and Maine.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer last week reaffirmed his pledge that the bill will get a vote on the House floor by the end of 2020—it passed through House committee in February, marking the first time in nearly 30 years that Congress voted on D.C. statehood. If only co-sponsors voted for it in the House, the bill would have more than the 218 votes necessary to pass, but Norton expects even more Democratic members will vote in favor of it.

On June 10, Norton sent a letter asking any Democrats who have’t yet joined onto the bill to do so. “Like me, you are undoubtedly watching as your states are being heavily impacted by the recent protests stemming from the killing of George Floyd,” she wrote. “Unlike me, however, your state is able to respond to these protests without threat of having its local police federalized, and your governor is able to deploy its National Guard … These remarkably undemocratic issues can only be corrected through D.C. statehood.”

But she’s not nearly as confident about her GOP colleagues getting on board. “We’re not giving up on Republicans at all, but we’re not foolish enough to believe that in this first historic passage of the bill Republicans will come on,” says Norton.

The bill would turn D.C.’s eight wards into a new state, which would be represented by two senators and one House member. The U.S. Capitol, the monuments, and other sites would remain federal property.

Trump said in May that D.C. statehood would “never happen unless we have some very, very stupid Republicans around,” noting that the heavily blue District would likely vote in Democrats. While Republicans are largely opposed to statehood, they often make claims that the measure is unconstitutional or that D.C.’s local government is too scandal-plagued to deserve full autonomy.

“It’s another example of the president saying the quiet part out loud,” says Shuff. “He makes it clear it’s not about constitutional objections. It’s about denying citizens their right to participate in order to maintain power.”

While the bill is expected to pass in the House, its prospects in the Senate are dim. Last summer, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called it “full-bore socialism” and pledged that the measure would go nowhere in the upper chamber.

Norton says that the Senate will only pass D.C. statehood legislation if Democrats are in control, and she is encouraged by the current polling for the general election. “It does look like, Democrats have a good chance of taking over the Senate,” she says.

The delegate was part of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, and the protests she is seeing in D.C. and across the country “very much have that flavor now that we can make something happen that couldn’t happen before,” says Norton. “The country is caught within that sense that the injustices of the past need to go — statehood is ripe for Americans to look closely at.”

More: 
The Past, Present, And (Potential) Future Of D.C. Statehood, Explained

This story has been updated with comment from Senator Jacky Rosen, Josh Burch, and quotes from Eleanor Holmes Norton’s June 10 letter to her Democratic colleagues.