The Republican-led House of Representatives on Thursday approved two measures that would overturn a pair of bills passed by the D.C. Council, one that allows non-citizens to vote in local elections starting in 2024 and another that revises and modernizes the city’s century-old criminal code.

The votes on the disapproval resolutions — the first time since 2015 the House has advanced such measures, and only the second time in three decades — came largely along party lines, though dozens of Democrats broke ranks and voted in favor. On the resolution targeting the non-citizen voting bill, the vote was 260-162, with more than 40 Democrats joining Republicans. On the resolution aimed at the revised criminal code, the vote was 250-173, with 31 Democrats joining the Republican majority.

No one representing D.C.’s 700,000 residents voted on either resolution, as the city only has a single non-voting delegate to Congress.

The disapproval resolutions, which would have to be approved by the Senate and signed by President Joe Biden to take effect, mark an early start to what many D.C. officials and advocates worry will be aggressive efforts by House Republicans to interfere in local affairs. And they stand in stark contrast to how D.C. was treated during Democratic control of the chamber, when on two occasions lawmakers passed bills granting the city statehood.

During debate that started Wednesday night and stretched into Thursday morning, Republicans argued that they were merely acting to tamp down on “radical” actions by the “out-of-control” D.C. Council.

“Our nation’s capital city is in crisis. Crime is rampant. Students in D.C. public schools suffered historic learning loss because Democrats kept schools closed. Buildings are sitting empty while federal workers continue working from home. But the D.C. Council has prioritized a bill to allow non-citizens, including illegal immigrants and foreign employees at embassies openly hostile to the United States to vote in local elections,” said Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-New York).

On the other side of the aisle, though, Democrats countered that Republican resolutions were political theatrics and violated the oft-stated GOP argument that the federal government should not intervene in local affairs.

“They want us to become the Supercouncil for the District of Columbia and begin to micromanage the bills that are being passed locally by representatives of [700,000] people. With no national agenda, with no plans for getting onboard with American progress, what do they have? They’re going to bring us a whole series of these disapproval resolutions for the people of Washington, D.C. They can just move to D.C. and run for D.C. Council if that’s their interest. But no, they just want to lord over the people of Washington,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland).

The non-citizen voting bill was passed by the council late last year, with lawmakers arguing that non-citizens, even those who are undocumented, should have a say in who makes the decisions that can impact them. But House Republicans said the bill would empower foreign diplomats and agents from adversary nations like Russia and China to wreak havoc in local elections, and that it would dilute the right to vote currently enjoyed by U.S. citizens.

“Giving this right to illegal aliens as if our government is The Oprah Winfrey Show. ‘You get a vote, you get a vote, you get a vote!'” said Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado). “It makes a mockery of the constitutional republic.”

But Raskin, who represents a portion of Maryland where a number of towns allow legal permanent residents to vote in local elections, said the issues at stake should involve non-citizens, whether they are documented or not.

“When we’re talking about local non-citizen voting, who’s going to vote in school board or town council elections? That should be decided locally. And my colleagues are the ones determined not to make the District of Columbia a state should be the first ones to say if it’s just a local government, let them decide who’s going to vote on matters of garbage collection and who their teachers are going to be,” he said.

Raskin also noted that a number of states throughout U.S. history had allowed non-citizens to vote, including Colorado and New York.

On Thursday morning, Republicans turned their attention to the revised criminal code, a sweeping 450-page bill more than a decade in the making overhauling the city’s criminal laws, many of which date back to 1901, when Congress first wrote them. D.C. lawmakers, advocacy groups, and Attorney General Brian Schwalb have described the overhaul as necessary, overdue, and deeply thought through.

But Republicans decried it as a soft-on-crime legislative package that would only make crime worse in D.C., a city that doubles as the nation’s capital and is visited by millions of Americans every year.

“There’s a crime crisis in America’s capital city,” said Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky). “The radical D.C. Council has chosen to prioritize legislation that would turn this crisis into a catastrophe. These changes embolden criminals to run rampant.”

Comer noted that the bill had been vetoed by Mayor Muriel Bowser, though this week she proposed changes to some of the penalties for violent offenses she said had been reduced; she also noted that Congress should not interfere in the city’s affairs.

“Today many residents are worried about taking their kids to school or going to the grocery store. But rather than fix the problem, the D.C. Council wants to go even easier on criminals. Criminals would be treated like victims and victims like they don’t matter,” said Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy.

Raskin countered that the penalties for carjacking in the revised criminal code are actually higher than in some of the states represented by Republicans arguing in favor of the disapproval resolutions; Kentucky, he noted, has no existing carjacking law and has lower penalties for armed robbery. He also argued that crime rates are higher in many Republican states, and that Bakersfield, California — a city in McCarthy’s district — posted a worse rate than D.C. And he noted that the disapproval resolution’s chief sponsor, Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Georgia), had compared the Jan. 6 insurrection — which hundreds of D.C. police officers help put down — as a “normal tourist visit.”

“The Republican leadership believes that D.C. residents, the majority of which are Black or brown, are either unworthy or incapable of governing themselves,” said D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who called both disapproval resolutions “undemocratic” and “paternalistic.”

In closing, Raskin said that should the disapproval resolution of the criminal code become law, it would leave D.C. with only the existing code — which prosecutors and public defenders alike have criticized as being confusing, out of date, and ineffective.

“If we were to pass this disapproval resolution … I wonder what my colleagues think we do at that point,” Raskin said. “Would we rewrite the law? Would we conduct hearings? They don’t even want to have a hearing on their disapproval resolution. Local matters are decided locally.”

With the disapproval resolutions having cleared the House, they next head to the Senate, where they likely face stiffer odds because Democrats control that chamber. The White House also issued a statement this week opposing the two disapproval resolutions, though it stopped short of saying President Biden would veto them if they did clear the Senate.

Speaking during the House votes, Bowser again reiterated her opposition to congressional interference in local affairs.

“We have a Congress, especially a House of Representatives, who is very aggressive towards the District … and I’m being polite when I say that. Some of their comments are, frankly, just bizarre,” she said. “We know that the Congress especially the Republicans will attack largely social issues, and they’ll do things or they will try to do things in the District that they can’t do at home, to score points and so I think that’s what you’re seeing in this debate today. I haven’t been able to follow it closely. It’s the same, you know, the same play.”