Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said that the Washington, D.C. Admission Act is unconstitutional and told the Biden administration that in a letter earlier this week.
“Our Founding Fathers explicitly set aside a federal district to serve as the seat of government. It was never intended to operate as a state, and for good reason,” Paxton said in a news release. “If Washington D.C. unlawfully becomes a state, which is what many Democrats are proposing now, it will not join the others in equal standing. Rather, it will create a super-state that has privilege and primacy over all others, which it will most likely use to promote policies that harm Texas. I will use every legal tool available to stop hyper-partisans and elites in D.C. from undermining our nation’s 50 States and granting themselves unlawful authority.”
Paxton said in the letter that Congress lacks the authority to create a new state out of Washington, D.C., as well as it lacks the authority to reduce the size of the district. He wrote that those who reside in the district if it is given statehood will be more privileged than the rest of the nation.
"In other words, residents of the new State of Washington, Douglas Commonwealth become the most privileged residents of any State in the Union — yet another example of their status as an elite ruling class," Paxton wrote. "We reject all these troublesome results of providing statehood to the District of Columbia."
Paxton is joined by attorneys general of South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, South Dakota, Utah, Florida, Alabama, Missouri, Indiana, Arkansas, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Kentucky, Mississippi, West Virginia, Idaho, Kansas, Arizona, Oklahoma and North Dakota.
The House Oversight Committee looked at the D.C. statehood bill earlier this week and it will be brought to the House floor next week. During committee, it passed along party lines, 25 to 19. Republicans had brought forth several amendments, but none of them were accepted.
The bill has 215 co-sponsors and is extremely popular with Democrats.