President Trump expressed his opposition to DC statehood in an interview with the New York Post. His chief objection: “you know it’s a 100 percent Democrat, basically.”
The president added: “Why don’t you just take two senators and put them in there? No, it’s not gonna happen. And it how many House seats is it? Like four, three or four? Whatever it is. You’d have three or four more congressmen and two more senators, every single day of every single year. And it would never change. No, the Republicans would never do that.”
The population of the District of Columbia is 705,749, according to the US Census Bureau. Under current apportionment, that would yield a state the size of the District one member of the House of Representatives, the same number as Wyoming (578,759 residents), Vermont (623,989), or Alaska (731,545).
President Trump lives in Washington, DC, and owns a hotel here.
Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. He was previously with the Poynter Institute, TBD.com, and Washington City Paper. He lives in Del Ray.
