A House committee on Monday night advanced two disapproval resolutions seeking to repeal a pair of bills passed by the D.C. Council, sending the measures to the full House for a vote later this week. At the same time, the White House said that it opposes the two resolutions — but did not explicitly say it would veto them.

The disapproval resolutions — a mechanism Congress has to nullify laws passed by D.C. lawmakers — target two bills passed by the council last year, one that would allow non-citizens to vote in local elections starting in 2024 and another that overhauls the city’s century-old criminal code. And they represent the first of what could be a series of attacks on the Democratic-led city under the new Republican majority in the House.

Republicans take aim at D.C. bills

Speaking during an hour-long debate in the House Rules Committee, Republicans said the bill to allow non-citizens to vote — which includes undocumented immigrants — would dilute the value of the right to vote and allow agents from foreign embassies to sow “chaos and disorder” by voting in local elections.

“Voting is a core tenet of what it means to be a citizen of this great country. And this so-called voting rights law actually dilutes the rights of the American citizens and devalues what citizenship actually means,” said Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-New York). “The bottom line is allowing non-citizens here legally or illegally to vote in our domestic elections is a violation of our sovereignty and the sovereign rights of Americans.”

And they criticized the overhaul of the criminal code as being soft on crime and potentially endangering the millions of Americans who visit the city annually. “I’ve had many constituents and people who live in D.C. raise the issue about the safety and crime,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas). “It’s not an unimportant issue, I think, for the vast majority of Americans who want their capital city to be safe.”

Republicans also said that Mayor Muriel Bowser had either not supported or vocally opposed the two bills, further trying to paint the city’s local lawmakers as “radical” and grossly out of touch. (Bowser has said she objects to the congressional interference, though.) “It is shocking that even the progressive Democrat mayor of D.C. does not support the actions of the out-of-control D.C. Council,” said Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky).

Democrats decry House’s “micromanaging” of D.C.

Democrats only lightly touched on the specifics of the two bills, noting that they had passed through the full legislative process in the council — a process the House itself is not following by moving the disapproval resolutions before holding any official hearings on them.

On the voting bill, Democrats noted that non-citizens in various states had gained the right to vote at points throughout American history, and that currently some jurisdictions (including some towns in the Maryland suburbs) allow non-citizens to participate in local elections.

On the revised criminal code, Democrats argued that some of the new criminal penalties that Republicans criticized as being too lenient are in fact more severe than comparable laws in states represented by those very Republicans. Additionally, they pointed out, the revised code does not go into effect until Oct. 2025, and will thus have little impact on current crime rates in the city.

More broadly, though, Democratic members of the committee said that the two disapproval resolutions were at best political stunts and at worst blatant federal interference in the city’s local affairs, the type of interference they said Republicans would vehemently oppose if it happened anywhere else.

“Do we really want to sit as a super state legislature micromanaging the laws of this jurisdiction? We owe the people of Washington, D.C. a lot more than our contempt and derision. We owe them statehood, but they certainly don’t deserve more political tyranny and gratuitous insults,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland). “I just think it’s a matter of basic democratic civic respect. We should allow them to have their laws.”

Dems, White House urge preserving local autonomy

That was the same point echoed by the White House, which said in a statement that it opposes the two Republican resolutions.

“For far too long, the more than 700,000 residents of Washington, D.C. have been deprived of full representation in the U.S. Congress. This taxation without representation and denial of self-governance is an affront to the democratic values on which our Nation was founded,” it said in a Statement of Administration Policy. “While we work towards making Washington, D.C. the 51st state of our Union, Congress should respect the District of Columbia’s autonomy to govern its own local affairs.”

Still, Republicans on the committee said Congress is fully within its right to exercise its power over D.C. “This is our constitutional prerogative,” said Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky).

“Our nation’s capital is in crisis,” said Comer. “But the D.C. Council has chosen to prioritize legislation that will make things worse. If the D.C. Council wants to continue to skirt its responsibility to the people, they will have to answer to this Congress.”

But in a brief exchange with Comer, Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-New Mexico) said that Congress shouldn’t use the power it has over D.C. just because it has it.

“We’ve exercised that role and very limited instances because one thing is when you have the ability, the other question is should you?” she said. “I would assume that Lexington would know best how to address issues regarding crime and policing the same way Santa Fe would know best about its local needs. Would you agree on that of the importance of local control?”

“I would say yes,” responded Comer.

Setting that admission aside, Republicans proceeded to send the disapproval resolutions to the full House for a vote later this week. Should they be approved there, the Democrat-led Senate will have to take them up. While some local activists worry that even a few defections among Democrats in the chamber could allow the resolutions to pass, they say that Biden could veto them. From Monday’s statement, though, it wasn’t clear whether the administration has any intention of doing so.

It’s been more than three decades since any D.C. law has been repealed by Congress, which more often uses the budget to tell D.C. when and how it can or cannot spend money on specific programs or initiatives.