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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good Monday morning, everyone. On today's program, Ask The Mayor tryouts month continuous with Brooklyn Borough president, Eric Adams. He and Andrew Yang keep coming in as the top two in the polls in that crowded field, Yang followed by Adams. We have Eric Adams today and Andrew Yang on Wednesday to take your calls Ask The Mayor tryouts.

We'll have Senator Mazie Hirono later in the show today, the very influential Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, and Armed Services Committee, and more. So much of the action or maybe I should say inaction is in the Senate where bills go to die with the filibuster rule. We'll see what she thinks about that and as a member of the Judiciary Committee, expanding the Supreme Court, and the anti-Asian hate bill that only one Republican voted against. It's one of the Republicans who want to run for president, maybe no coincidence, we'll talk about that.

One Republican senator considering the White House run in 2024 peaked the anger of one of the newly elected House members from New York last week. The issue was the bill that the House just passed that would make Washington, D.C. a state. Here's what Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas said about that.

Senator Tom Cotton: Wyoming is smaller than Washington by population, but it has three times as many workers in mining, logging, and construction, and 10 times as many workers in manufacturing. In other words, Wyoming is a well-rounded working-class state. A new state of Washington would not be.

Brian Lehrer: It was that last point, that Wyoming is a well-rounded working-class state, do you hear that phrase, and D.C. is not, that freshmen congressman Mondaire Jones of Westchester and Rockland took strong issue with.

Congressman Mondaire Jones: I have had enough of my colleague's racist insinuations that somehow the people of Washington, D.C. are incapable or even unworthy of our democracy. One Senate Republican said that D.C. wouldn't be a ‘well-rounded working-class state’. I had no idea there were so many syllables in the word white.

Brian Lehrer: Congressman Mondaire Jones. He later agreed to withdraw that remark based on the House decorum tradition of not labeling other members of Congress like that, but he still insisted Senator Cotton's position was based on fear that his party's white supremacist politics will no longer play. We'll talk about D.C. statehood now and the Washington, D.C. Admission Act that did pass the House last week with the sponsor of the bill, D.C.'s non-voting member of the House of Representatives Eleanor Holmes Norton.

For some of you not familiar with her career, Eleanor Holmes Norton had already been a prominent civil rights attorney, Fortune 500 company board member, and chair of the Federal Government's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under President Jimmy Carter when she was elected by the people of D.C. She is in her 15th term in that seat, so coming on 30 years of representing the people of D.C. without getting a vote on legislation that affects them. We'll talk about D.C. statehood and touch on a few other issues if we have time. Congresswoman, an honor to have you on today. Welcome back to WNYC.

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton: Thank you so much. Good to be with you.

Brian Lehrer: D.C. statehood has always been an issue in theory, and Democrats have often had majority control of the House. Why was it just last week that the House passed an actual bill?

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton: Well, in point of fact, Democrats haven't had majority of the House since I've been in the Congress. Virtually never have we had majority. Now that we have the majority, the first thing I did was to get statehood for the District of Columbia. When I first came to Congress, we did have majority, but many of those were Southern Democrats, and we couldn't get the D.C. statehood bill passed that year because the--

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Brian Lehrer: Washington, D.C.-- Oh, go ahead. You wanted to finish your thought on that? Go ahead.

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton: Yes. The reason, those Southern Democrats were more conservative Democrats and statehood was a point to far for them, but go ahead.

Brian Lehrer: I was just going to ask, since Washington, D.C. is a city of I think about 700,000 people, correct me if I'm wrong, that would make it one of the smallest states by population, and Republicans see it as merely a power grab to get two more Democratic senators in an overwhelmingly Democratic city. What makes this one city legitimately a state?

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton: Well, it's larger than two states that are already states of the Union, and size is of course never been an element in granting statehood. We look to see whether or not a state can support itself, and frankly, there's never been a criterion for becoming a state. We're not going to allow them to force criteria on the District of Columbia for the first time.

Brian Lehrer: What did you think of the exchange between Senator Cotton and Congressman Mondaire Jones there? Do you also accuse opponents of D.C. statehood of being racist?

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton: I really don't, only because for most of its 220 years, the district has been a majority white city. Only in the few decades after the 1970s was the district Chocolate City as they called it. Right now, it's a majority white city again, so I'm not sure race is the reason. If this were, when we had a majority white here for most of its 220 years existence, [unintelligible 00:06:04].

Brian Lehrer: Now it's I think almost 50% African-American but not quite, so not a majority.

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton: Yes, that's right. It would have a larger African-American population than any state, that is certainly true.

Brian Lehrer: By percentage, yes. I read an op-ed opposed to the idea in the hill that says, "If you want voting representation for the people of the city in Congress, have the state become part of Maryland again like it was originally in colonial times. It would be Maryland's bigger city and therefore have lots of clout over who the senators from there it wouldn't be seen as this partisan thing that looks to Republicans like replacing underrepresentation with over-representation to get Democrats in there.” Your reaction to that?

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton: First thing you should do is ask Maryland. Maryland ceded the land in perpetuity. As I speak, the majority leader, Steny Hoyer is also a leader for D.C. statehood. In fact, every representative and every senator from Maryland supports D.C.'s statehood except the one Republican Representative. [chuckles] I'm afraid Maryland is not an alternative. In fact, the people, the residents of the District of Columbia by almost 90% have voted to become their own state.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we have time for one or two phone calls in this relatively short segment with Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting representative from Washington, D.C. A D.C. statehood bill did pass the House last week and is now in the Senate. 646-435-7280. Curious if there's anybody from D.C. who wants to talk about how you think this affects your life or the quality of life, anybody living in the district without a voting representative in Congress. 646-435-7280 for Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton. Congresswoman, how do you think it most affects the people of the district concretely to not have that vote?

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton: Well, the most important effect is that the district doesn't have two senators. You keep calling me a non-voting member, which leaves the impression that I don't vote on anything. The fact is I'm chair of a subcommittee right now, I do vote in committees. What I cannot do is vote on that final vote on the House floor and that of course is very important. That's the final vote on legislation. I can't even vote on the House floor on legislation affecting only the District of Columbia. The most important effect would be that the district would have two senators like every other part of the country.

Brian Lehrer: Let me pick phone call from Zack in Tampa, who has a question that combines D.C. statehood and the Puerto Rican statehood question that we've also been talking about. Zack, you're on WNYC with Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton. Thank you for calling in.

Zack: Good morning, Brian. Good morning, Congresswoman. I'll make my comments very brief. Yes, Tom Cotton is a virulent racist. I am not a member of Congress, and I'm a United States citizen, I can certainly say that. His posts on the New York Times and other publications are a testament to his virulence and his rabid racism.

Secondly, with respect to Congresswoman, I certainly agree with her assessment that it is certainly time for D.C. to become the 51st state, but also for the people of Puerto Rico, who have been suffering because of colonialist policies that have been imposed by the- -mainland. It is also time for those folks to either be made independent or be united in the greater union of our country and I'll take my comments off call. Thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. How do you compare for two statehood pushes Congressman?

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton: We'd certainly be glad to pair with Puerto Rico because though annoying, when states come into the union, are granted statehood, they come in in pairs and in fact, Puerto Rico does have a delegate and that delegate is Republican. However, Puerto Rico doesn't pay for all of the elements of statehood and would have to agree to do that. There hasn't been a division within Puerto Rico whether or not they want to in fact, become a full state. They are having discussions on that now. Their referenda have been divided, but we'd be glad to partner with them.

Brian Lehrer: Did the founders originally want D.C. to not be a state so members of Congress wouldn't self-deal to their own little jurisdiction where they, as powerful people would tend to be living at least part of the year, or how do you understand the origin of this?

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton: The founders did want to have a capital that was not attached to any state, but if you look at the constitution, there was nothing whatsoever in the constitution that says that the founders didn't want the district to have home rule or to become a state itself.

Brian Lehrer: Can I ask, I know you have just a few minutes left and I want to ask about one other issue before Congress and asks you to put it into a bigger picture context. In fact, let me start with the bigger picture. Since you go back to the Carter administration in the specific role of chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and before that as a civil rights lawyer, did you think in those days that we wouldn't have this much persistent inequality by now? In policing, obviously, that's front and center at this moment, but in income, and wealth, and housing segregation and the other big building blocks of what we call systemic racism, how would you assess progress in obstacles over the course of your lifetime and career?

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton: You mean on racism itself?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and on the state of persistent inequality if that's a fair phrase.

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton: I think that there has been substantial progress. There's no question that we weren't where we were when I chaired the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. When you see people getting in the streets on Black Lives Matter and taking down Confederate statues, you see less and less tolerance of racism our country and if we keep going this way, perhaps we'll get somewhere.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask about that specific issue then before Congress. Again, drawing on your background in this respect of George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, it looks like that might actually get a bipartisan compromised version through the Senate according to Senator Cory Booker speaking last week, who's in conversation as I'm sure with Congresswoman Karen Bass, democrat of California and Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. Do you have a read on whether that's possible or what the bottom line deal breakers should be in any compromised bill?

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton: Yes, there is some progress being made. They've set themselves for data May 25th by which to reach a compromise. The fact that we have a Republican senator working on a compromise bodes well for some kind of movement on Floyd Justice Policing Act. The notion of police itself and whether police can be sued, of course has been the holdup. Just on Sunday, Karen Bass didn't seem to want to move much on whether or not police should be sued. There has been a compromise proposed on that allowing the [inaudible 00:14:24] to be sued instead of individual police officers. I didn't hear her warm much to that. In any case, what deadline they've given themselves is May 25th and that's today. [chuckles] No, I'm sorry. That’s not today.

Brian Lehrer: I hadn’t heard before.

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton: This is just April 25th, May 25th is the date that--

Brian Lehrer: Yes, so one month, a consequential month of politics ad for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. Let me take one more call for you on D.C. statehood. Alan, in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. We've got 30 seconds for your call, 30 seconds for her answer. Alan, go.

Alan: I think we're taking the bait by going with the idea that we should have more states that have disproportion between the Senate representation and the population. Instead, we should be attacking the basic premise that all the existing states with tiny populations deserve to have two senators equal to New York, Texas or California. If we buy into their argument, we're just weakening our moral position.

Brian Lehrer: Alan, thank you very much. Of course, I'm going to say this for our listeners, I know you know, he's saying the bigger problem is this over-representation of white rural America in these small states that get two senators. Changing it to add D.C. into that category of a very small place with two senators doesn't change the structural problem. In fact, probably makes it harder to go out structurally if you get this.

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton: The framers made a decision. Every jurisdiction gets two senators no matter their composition and in return, they get the House of Representatives, which of course is proportional representation. That's in the constitution. There's no changing that now.

Brian Lehrer: D.C.'s representative, Eleanor Holmes Norton, thank you so much for coming on with us today. We really appreciate it.

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton: My pleasure.

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