The Home Rule Act of 1973, which gives the District of Columbia the right to govern itself (albeit with Congressional oversight), faces severe danger with the election of Donald Trump and the MAGA right’s trifecta control of the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives. This is in addition to their majority in the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Communist Party of Washington, D.C. has not forgotten the Trump era from January 2017 to January 2021 that culminated in violent crackdowns on Black Lives Matter protests and a violent attempted coup d’etat to install Trump as a fascist dictator on January 6, 2021. We are also very much aware of the threats the MAGA-backed Heritage Foundation has in store for the working class of this city in Project 2025 and Project Esther.

In line with the Congressional Republican threats to D.C.’s home rule during the student-led Gaza solidarity encampments at George Washington University, Trump and Project 2025 promise to clamp down on student protests and “set that movement back 25 or 30 years.” Furthermore, Trump has signaled his intention to federalize the local Metropolitan Police Department and deploy the National Guard to handle public safety issues in the District. We know that these inroads will be particularly used to crush resistance to his rule and to harass members of our community. MAGA Republicans have also indicated plans to use D.C. as a testing ground for policy they would like to implement nationally. Their goals include removing the D.C. Office of Racial Equity, administering voter I.D. for elections, allowing for concealed carry in D.C., the prohibition of abortion rights, the deportation of immigrants, and removing Black Lives Matter street designations.

The paternal view of Congress toward D.C. residents is not new. In 1801, after the passage of the Organic Act, Congress Member James Asherton Bayard of Delaware said D.C. residents “are children over whom it is not our wish to [sic] tyrannize, but with whom we would foster and nurture.” It should not be lost on anyone that Bayard was speaking of a distinctly Black, immigrant, southern, working-class city and its citizens. In a similar vein in 1976, the Washingtonian featured an article in retort to the impending D.C. Voting Rights Amendment titled, “Can Whites Survive in D.C.?” The article featured an interview with a 26-year-old teacher who said, “When home rule comes and we don’t have Congress to protect us [whites], I would want to leave the District entirely.”

Since the start of the 118th Congress, these types of attacks on D.C. have been happening with a Republican-controlled House of Representatives, and a Democratic-controlled Senate and White House. Fortunately, the majority of these laws have been blocked or not brought to the floor, though in 2023 President Joe Biden signed a bill repealing D.C.’s Revised Criminal Code Act. Incoming Vice President JD Vance was the Senator that led the charge to nullify the D.C. Council’s attempt to reform the criminal code.

This past July, the Republican Senator Mike Lee from Utah introduced a bill to repeal D.C.’s home rule. Derisively named the “BOWSER” Act, it would effectively make the city governed by federally appointed officials, though it omits any proposal or plan on how Congress would run the local government. We do not know if this would take the form of the Federal Control Board, which ruled D.C. from 1995–2001 or if it would spell a return to pre-Home Rule Act D.C. which lasted for roughly 100 years, from the end of Reconstruction until 1973.

MAGA Republicans are on a tear to eliminate democratic rights around the country, but D.C. is where they will have the most wonton, colonial-like power due to our lack of statehood. Our city agencies and elected officials will become merely symbolic once our local democracy is fully repealed. If the stripping of home rule becomes a reality, this will be the second time in U.S. history that D.C. residents will no longer have an all-elected local government, will no longer be able to vote in federal elections, and will be fully relegated to second-class citizenship.

Many of these MAGA right policy objectives — accompanied by rhetorical attacks against the D.C. government for being a “far-left experiment,” for being focused on “DEI” (Diversity Equity and Inclusion), or for being not tough on crime — may start to become a reality come 2025.

Following this election, the D.C. Council may to some degree succumb to pressures to preserve home rule by not passing progressive legislation that could lead to retaliation by Republicans. This will make success much more difficult as we lobby and fight for a people’s budget, for taking a stand against war and racism, for passing police accountability laws, for expansion of political and labor rights, and more.

The Communist Party of Washington, D.C. views these coming attacks on our democracy as fascist in nature and as testing the ground for a nationwide dictatorship.

The threats to close down federal institutions like the Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Food and Drug Administration are of extremely grave concern. These agencies do vital work serving and protecting us all. In addition, the majority of the employees at these agencies live in and around D.C. Not only would the closure of these agencies cause undeserved suffering for tens of thousands of workers and their families, it would also result in a mass unemployment crisis in the District of Columbia and surrounding area.

We call on all progressive and democratic forces in the district and the Greater Washington area to build a united front against fascism and to defend even the limited democracy that we have in D.C. and in our country.

We call on the D.C. community to:

1. Protect our basic constitutional rights.
2. Lobby and participate in actions to protect D.C. home rule.
3. Protect our local progressive legislation, including voting rights, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, immigrant rights, and workers’ rights.
4. Protect our local educators from fascist censorship.
5. Protect the basic rights of our D.C. residents to live and work. The child poverty rate in the District of Columbia is 23%, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 2022 KIDS COUNT Data Book. Then, the average unemployment rate for Black workers in D.C. was 9.6%. Compare this to the DC Fiscal Policy Institute’s figure of 1.4% unemployment among D.C.’s white workers. This 7 to 1 ratio is the worst in the country. These serious problems affecting the Black community so severely must be addressed.
6. Organize our communities to build sanctuaries, and a united front to fight against the fascist direction of our country.

Images: Hands Off D.C.! by Harriet’s Dreams (X); D.C. statehood is racial justice by DC Communist Party (X)

Comments