The U.S. House of Representatives has scheduled its historic vote on D.C. statehood for June 26, House Democrats announced on Tuesday. 

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced the date at a press conference with D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Mayor Muriel Bowser, and D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson.

The announcement comes as Mayor Bowser has repeatedly clashed with President Donald Trump over the federal response to local protests against the killing of George Floyd. The mayor has harshly criticized the president’s use of military force to quell the demonstrations, emphasizing that his actions are only possible because the District does not have full local control of its own affairs. 

“Like a scene from a dystopian movie, Americans saw images of soldiers in camouflage arrayed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Units of federal law enforcement officers lacking any identifying insignia roamed downtown,” Bowser wrote in an op-ed published in the Washington Post on Sunday. “This blatant degradation of our home right before my own eyes offered another reminder — a particularly powerful one — of why we need statehood for the District.” 

The legislation is expected to pass in the House, where it has majority support. It would be the first time that a chamber of Congress has ever passed legislation on D.C. statehood. Back in February, the House’s Committee on Oversight and Reform moved the bill forward, marking the first time in almost three decades that federal lawmakers had voted on statehood legislation.

The bill would turn the District’s eight wards into a state called the Douglass Commonwealth, represented by two senators and a voting representative in the House. Sites like the National Mall and the Capitol, however, would remain under federal control.

The Republican-led Senate is unlikely to pick up the measure. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called the notion “full-bore socialism” last year and vowed never to introduce the bill. 

In support of statehood, Hoyer criticized D.C.’s federal coronavirus relief package, which gave the District less than half the amount of money allocated to states. D.C. received about $500 million in that bill despite being more populous than two states and having more coronavirus cases than 19 of them. 

Hoyer also mentioned the federal response to recent local protests against police brutality. During the unrest, President Donald Trump called National Guard troops in from around the country, and even stationed active military around the District and threatened to deploy them if he deemed it necessary. Because of the city’s status as a federal district, the mayor had little say in the president’s decisions to involve the military and other federal police forces in protest response. 

A little over two weeks ago, federal law enforcement forcefully cleared peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square in front of the White House so Trump could take a photo at St. John’s Episcopal Church. The move drew widespread condemnation from both local leaders and across the country. 

Bowser noted that federal intervention again on Tuesday, saying it violated both the protesters’ right to peaceably assemble and D.C.’s “principles of local autonomy.”

“The shouldn’t be troops from other states in Washington, D.C.,” she said. “There shouldn’t be federal forces advancing against Americans, and there very definitely shouldn’t be soldiers stationed around our city waiting for the go to attack Americans in a local policing matter.”

Despite having a population of more than 706,000 people, which is larger than both Wyoming and Vermont, and paying federal taxes, D.C. does not have voting representation in Congress and lacks the autonomy over its own affairs that states enjoy.

“Right now, America’s the only country that doesn’t allow its citizens to have a voting member of the parliament, in our case we call it the Congress,” Hoyer tells DCist in an interview. “And I thought that was contrary to our democratic principles.”

More than 220 members of the House have co-sponsored the bill, and five more members of Congress have signed on to co-sponsor the legislation (either in the House or the Senate) in the weeks since the protests began, including Senator Jacky Rosen (D-Nevada) and Representative Ron Kind (D-Wisconsin).

Norton noted that momentum on Tuesday. If the measure were to become law, she said, “For the first time, statehood will put an end to our oldest slogan, ‘Taxation without representation.’”

The 1973 Home Rule Act enacted D.C.’s current governing structure, giving the District the power to elect its own mayor and 13-member city council.

However, the act included some exceptions, requiring D.C. to get Congressional approval on all District laws and giving the federal government ultimate control over the city’s finances. The act also did not give D.C. any voting representation in Congress.

In May, President Trump said he did not support statehood for the District, and that it would never happen because Republicans would not be “stupid” enough to allow it. 

“They want to do that so they pick up two automatic Democrat — you know it’s a 100 percent Democrat, basically — so why would the Republicans ever do that? That’ll never happen unless we have some very, very stupid Republicans around that I don’t think you do. You understand that, right?” Trump said in an interview with the New York Post.

Hoyer addressed Republican opposition to the measure on Tuesday, calling out McConnell by name.

“I hope that Senator McConnell cares enough about our democracy to allow a vote on this bill in the United States Senate,” he said. “not just to pigeonhole, not just to say to 700,000 people, ‘We don’t respect you enough to even give you a vote in the United States Senate in which you do not have a vote.’ 

He continued, “So, I’m hopeful we will move this forward not just through the House of Representatives, but also the United States Senate.”

This article has been updated with comment from Steny Hoyer.