Should the District of Columbia be allowed to spend over $1 billion furthering a radical leftist agenda harming those who live, work, and visit our nation’s capital? The answer is clearly “no.”
As part of restoring any additional funding to D.C.’s local government, the House of Representatives should take at least seven actions to help set our nation’s capital on the path to constitutionally sound good government.
These actions should include:
1. Prohibiting noncitizens—especially illegal aliens and foreign embassy staff—from voting in D.C.’s elections.
2. Banning the use of ranked choice voting in D.C.
3. Requiring that D.C. cannot spend money providing services—other than immediate life-saving care—to illegal aliens.
4. Requiring that money for public safety be spent on training, retaining, and hiring sworn law enforcement officers rather than social workers or other pet projects.
5. Transferring primary prosecutorial authority from the D.C. Attorney General to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia for prosecuting juvenile offenders and allowing authorities the option of prosecuting all juveniles as adults where appropriate.
6. Making clear that the federal government does not waive sovereign immunity and that the District of Columbia cannot bring lawsuits against the federal government or other federal entities.
7. And abolishing the Judicial Nominating Commission and allowing the President to directly nominate judges to D.C.’s local courts instead of using the ill-advised constitutionally questionable system currently in place.
There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s start at the beginning. In early March, Congress passed, and the president signed into law, a continuing resolution to keep the federal government funded through the end of September. But due to a wrinkle in the continuing resolution, the District would have to revert back to its spending levels for the previous fiscal year, which local officials claim would require them to implement draconian cuts totaling over $1 billion.
The cuts may not amount to that much, and it’s fair to argue that very real questions need to be asked about why, if those numbers are accurate, the District’s budget grew by over $1 billion in a single year.
But local leaders have put forward a parade of horribles that might happen if they are not allowed to spend this billion dollars. As a result, the Senate, without much debate or discussion, passed a standalone clean bill restoring this funding. And the House is set to take up a companion bill shortly.
Setting aside the irony that local leaders are suddenly opposed to defunding the police (after having spent the past several years proudly doing just that) and simply taking their arguments at face value, it’s clear that several commonsense changes need to be made as part of any agreement.
Here is a brief explanation of why Congress should require each of these actions:
1. Prohibiting noncitizens—especially illegal aliens and foreign embassy staff—from voting in D.C.’s elections.
In the fall of 2022, D.C.’s local city council passed a bill that would allow any adult who has lived in the District for 30 days to vote in the District’s elections. The language of the bill is so broad that it allows not only illegal aliens, but also foreign embassy staff to vote in the local elections of our nation’s capital.
The Wall Street Journal said the law “reads like a bad parody of progressive decadence” and asks readers “to imagine American diplomatic personnel showing up to cast ballots for the mayor of Beijing or Moscow.” As the Wall Street Journal also made clear, those on the left readily admit these facts.
The Washington Post said, “There’s nothing in the measure to prevent employees at embassies of governments that are openly hostile to the United States from casting ballots.” And a writer at New Republic said, “A Russian diplomat could live their entire life in Moscow or St. Petersburg, take a job as a cultural attaché at Russia’s D.C. Embassy in August . . ., move into their new apartment that September, and cast a ballot in D.C.’s local elections that November.” It’s absurd—and dangerous.
The House passed a measure disapproving this radical measure when it first came out, but the then-Democratically controlled Senate and White House failed to take action, so the measure took effect. Congress should now take action to require that only U.S. citizens can vote in the elections in our nation’s capital city.
2. Banning the use of ranked choice voting in D.C.
In November 2024, voters in our nation’s capital passed Initiative 83. This ballot measure, among other actions, would require that the District to use ranked choice voting in its local elections starting in 2026.
Ranked choice voting is a controversial and confusing system of voting that requires those at the ballot box to rank their choices in order of preference. In practice, it often results in more voters being disenfranchised and allows fringe candidates to win over those the majority of voters actually prefer. It’s also been a disaster to implement with recent experiences in New York City providing a cautionary tale. Even the Democratic Party of Washington, D.C. opposed this measure. And Congress should stop it from being implemented.
3. Requiring that D.C. cannot spend money providing services—other than immediate life-saving care—to illegal aliens.
As part of its explanation for why its budget has ballooned so much, District leaders provided a general overview of broad categories of spending. One of these categories is Human Services. But Mayor Muriel Bowser, as part of the city’s Department of Human Services, established an Office of Migrant Services, which, among other spending, has been identified as a driver of the cost increase.
It’s unclear exactly how much the District is spending on, or has spent on, Migrant Services and exactly to whom this money is going. Congress should call for an accounting, stop such further spending, and make clear that any illegal alien cannot receive funding or services—other than immediate life-saving care.
4. Requiring that money for public safety be spent on training, retaining, and hiring sworn law enforcement officers rather than social workers or other pet projects.
Local District leaders have proudly worked to defund the police over the past several years. One D.C. council member even proclaimed that his efforts had resulted in the largest reduction in the police force he had ever seen. The D.C. police chief at the time said it would take decades to rebuild the force. But because of the surging violent crime in the District and the changing political landscape, local leaders have backed off some of their most radical previous comments—at least publicly.
Still, one of the top public safety priorities for the District needs to be re-funding the police department. Congress needs to make clear that money allocated for public safety needs to go towards funding more sworn law enforcement officers for the District rather than to non-sworn personnel—like social workers—which some on the left have advocated for instead of sworn police officers.
5. Transferring primary prosecutorial authority from the D.C. Attorney General to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia for prosecuting juvenile offenders and allowing authorities the option of prosecuting all juveniles as adults where appropriate.
Primary prosecutorial authority for almost all crimes in the District of Columbia rests the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. But as I have explained elsewhere:
The other prosecuting agency in the District is the city attorney, called the Attorney General for the District of Columbia. This office focuses on civil litigation, has limited prosecutorial authority within the District for certain minor offenses, and has primary responsibility for handling offenses involving juveniles. The Attorney General for the District of Columbia has plenary authority for prosecuting those under 15 years old who are accused of committing a crime within the District—even serious offenses such as rape, robbery, and murder.
For those juveniles 15 years old or older who are accused for committing a crime and who meet certain specified condition, the Attorney General for the District of Columbia may (but is not required) to file a motion to have the juvenile’s case transferred in order to prosecute that individual as an adult.
That does not happen often enough under the current D.C. Attorney General who has said that he doesn’t “think kids should be treated as adults . . . Kids are kids.” But, of course, juveniles are not act as “kids” while committing historically high rates of murder, armed robbery, theft while armed, and carjackings.
Sadly, the current D.C. Attorney General’s approach has actually created perverse incentives where gangs recruit juveniles to commit their most violent crimes because the gang leaders know that these juveniles will likely receive, relatively speaking, a slap on the wrist.
6. Making clear that the federal government does not waive sovereign immunity and that the District of Columbia cannot bring lawsuits against the federal government or other federal entities.
Rather than focusing his limited resources on prosecuting juvenile crime and protecting those who live, work, and visit the District, the current attorney general has instead engaged in a series of politically motived lawsuits against the federal government to grandstand for his constituents. As a matter of first principles, it’s, at best, unclear that he can take these actions since these lawsuits are essentially the federal government versus the federal government. There’s a very real argument that the District lacks what is legally known as standing.
Rather than wasting the District’s time and resources, courts’ time and resources, and the Justice Department’s time and resources on such suits, Congress should make clear that the District cannot do this. Congress can simply state that it does not waive sovereign immunity to suits brought by the District of Columbia or any of its officials notwithstanding any other law to the contrary. It can also express its view that these suits don’t make sense because they fundamentally pit the federal government against the federal government.
7. And abolishing the Judicial Nominating Commission and allowing the President to directly nominate judges to D.C.’s local courts instead of using the ill-advised constitutionally questionable system currently in place.
Finally, and maybe most importantly, Congress needs to change the way D.C.’s local judges are selected. Many people don’t realize that the judges on D.C.’s “local” courts are appointed in a constitutionally suspect manner that often results in vacancies remaining open for far too long. Unlike Article III federal judges who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, D.C.’s local judges must first be selected by D.C.’s Judicial Nominating Commission.
While the president gets to appoint one member to the Judicial Nominating Commission, D.C.’s mayor gets to appoint two members. The D.C. Bar gets to appoint two members. And D.C.’s local city council gets to appoint one member. Additionally, the Chief Judge of the “federal” District Court for the District of Columbia gets to appoint one member who must be a sitting “federal” judge. Judge Tanya Chutkan currently serves in that role. (Other judges have raised concerns that it violates Judicial ethics rules for a sitting judge to serve on the Judicial Nominating Commission ).
More problematically, the Judicial Nominating Commission is designed to limit the President’s ability to select judges for D.C.’s courts.
Here’s how it works: The Judicial Nominating Commission must recommend three names for each vacancy that occurs and send those names to the president. Purportedly the president is then limited to nominating one of those three individuals to the bench. While this system limits the options of Presidents of both parties, it can be particularly problematic where the majority of Judicial Nominating Commission members do not share the same judicial philosophy of the current President.
On top of that, Judge Chutkan, who currently serves on the Judicial Nominating Commission, herself presided over one of the criminal cases Special Counsel Jack Smith brought against President Trump and is currently hearing active litigation against some of his actions as President. And now she gets to tell him who he can select to be a judge?
But it gets worse. Under the current system, if the President refuses to select within sixty days one of the three names the Judicial Nominating Commission sent to him, the Judicial Nominating Commission itself can select someone, nominate that person, and put forward that individual’s name for the Senate to confirm. This matters because there are currently two vacancies on D.C.’s highest appellate court, and there are currently twelve vacancies on D.C.’s trial court.
Though larger reforms to D.C.’s courts need to be made, Congress should start by abolishing this convoluted constitutionally questionable system for appointing and instead give the President the power to nominate and appoint someone after Senate confirmation—just like any other federal judge.
Congress should consider these commonsense comprises when approving additional funds for the District to spend. They should consider them because what happens in the District matters to the entire country. Americans come to the District to conduct the business of our nation. That’s why the framers of our Constitution gave Congress plenary control over our nation’s capital, and Congress should responsibly use it to enact these reforms.
