Tom Cotton’s Argument Against DC Statehood Is the Same One Racists Have Always Used

Cotton hit some of the familiar notes, posing the constitutional question and warning that statehood would present a security risk because many federal agencies would be based outside the small district that would remain under federal jurisdiction. (This does not seem to be a problem for the literal Pentagon, which is in Virginia.) He brought out an oversized map to show that the new state, and the tiny federal district alongside it, would be oddly shaped.

The core of Cotton’s argument, though, was about the people who live there. Although he conceded that the District has more residents than both Wyoming and Vermont, he argued that its economy and political leanings disqualified it from full representation. Its citizens, he suggested, were incapable of governing themselves responsibly and, in any case, did not deserve a voice in Congress because they hold jobs he considered illegitimate. Democrats were “committing an act of historical vandalism as grotesque as those committed by Jacobin mobs roaming our streets,” Cotton said.