The House voted Thursday to make Washington, D.C., the 51st U.S. state. The new state would be called “Washington, Douglass Commonwealth,” after abolitionist Frederick Douglass, and would exclude federal buildings and monuments. The measure would give over 700,000 D.C. residents one representative in the House and two senators. The Biden administration has backed the bid for statehood, but it faces a stiff battle in the evenly divided Senate, where it would need 60 votes to pass.
