Republican leaders say the House of Representatives will vote next week to overturn a pair of bills passed by the D.C. Council, one that would allow non-citizens vote in local elections starting in 2024 and another that overhauls the city’s century-old criminal code.

The move to overturn the two measures represents the first salvo by the new Republican majority to intervene in D.C., an overwhelmingly liberal city whose ability to govern itself has long been constrained by Congress’s formal control over the city. And it comes on two hot-button issues that have long animated Republicans politicians and their base: immigration and crime.

The planned Republicans measures — formally known as disapproval resolutions — would target the bill passed late last year by the council to allow non-citizens, including undocumented immigrants, to vote in local elections starting in 2024. D.C. lawmakers say that non-citizens pay taxes and are impacted by local policies, and should thus have a say in the people who make them. (A number of Maryland towns such as Takoma Park and Hyattsville similarly allow non-citizens to vote, albeit only legal permanent residents.)

But Republicans say that voting should remain limited to U.S. citizens.

“The idea that allowing people who are here illegally [to vote] not only undermines one of our most sacred rights, but it also sends the wrong message to those seeking to come into the country illegally,” said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise during a brief speech outlining the planned votes next week.

The second disapproval resolution would take aim at the sweeping bill passed by the council last year that overhauls the city’s criminal code, much of which dates back to its original drafting by Congress in the early 1900s. The bill clarifies and updates definitions of criminal offenses, establishes new penalties to match the severity of crimes, expands the right to a jury trial to those charged with misdemeanors, and gives people serving prison sentences new opportunities to request early release.

In his speech, Rep. Scalise said the disapproval resolution “makes it clear that Congress does not approve of the city council’s radical decision to reduce penalties for a variety of crimes, including many violent crimes.”

That refers to portions of the bill that lowered maximum allowable penalties for certain violent offenses to, as proponents argued, better match the sentences that D.C. judges were actually handing down. Those provisions have also drawn opposition from D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee III and Mayor Muriel Bowser (she vetoed the overhaul, but the council voted to override her), who said that she will be introducing legislation this month to increase penalties for certain crimes.

Speaking at a press conference on a Senate bill to make D.C. the 51st state last week, Bowser and other elected leaders said that disagreements over the revised criminal code — which doesn’t go into effect until Oct. 2025 — should be left to local officials to handle. “There will likely be differences between mayors and councils. But any changes we want to see in that legislation we will handle with presenting them to the council,” she said.

“The legislative process is one where there will be disagreements. That’s the case here with the criminal code. The District government has shown over 50 years that it’s pretty good at governing itself and working out disagreements and resolving policy issues. So there’s no need for Congress to step in, and it would be wrong,” echoed Council Chairman Phil Mendelson.

The resolution to disapprove of the bill allowing non-citizens to vote is sponsored by Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky), while the resolution targeting the revisions to the criminal code was written by Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Georgia). In 2021 Clyde compared the Jan. 6 insurrection to a “normal tourist visit,” and last year he said that D.C.’s locally run government should be abolished.

Despite their majority in the House, the Republican effort to overturn the two D.C. bills still faces an uphill climb. It takes both the House and Senate to approve similar resolutions within a specific timeframe to nullify a bill passed by D.C. lawmakers. (For the non-citizen voting bill, it’s by early March; the criminal code bill by May.) And if it clears Congress in the alloted time, President Joe Biden would still be able to veto the resolutions.

No such push to overturn a D.C. law has succeeded in at least three decades. A 2015 effort to overturn a D.C. bill banning discrimination based on reproductive decisions succeeded in the House but stalled in the Senate, while in 2017 a House committee approved a disapproval resolution of a bill legalizing physician-assisted suicide in D.C., but it again gained no traction in the Senate.

Still, House Republicans have other tools at their disposal to interfere in D.C.’s local affairs, primarily through the federal budget. It’s there that they can insert specific provisions known as “riders” that prohibit the city from spending money on certain things. Existing riders ban D.C. from spending any money paying for abortions or to legalize the sale of recreational marijuana, and there’s already a pair of bills in the House and Senate that would similarly prohibit the city from implementing the bill to allow non-citizens to vote.

D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton has introduced a bill of her own that would eliminate the current 30-day congressional review period during which bills passed by D.C. lawmakers are subject to disapproval resolutions. She also said last month that she will fight any congressional effort to disapprove of bills passed by the council.

“Local D.C. laws are matters for the duly-elected D.C. Council and mayor, not members of Congress representing far-away districts,” she said.