Thread by @ezralevin

Manchin does *not* oppose DC statehood, but rather he thinks a constitutional amendment is needed. That's a common misconception - statehood can indeed be granted through legislation, and we look forward updating his staff after their deep dive into this. washingtonpost.com/local/dc-polit…

To be clear, it would have been easy for Manchin to say "nope, I'm opposed to DC statehood." He didn't. He raised a process concern based on a false assumption. Up to us to correct the assumption.

No state has EVER been admitted by constitutional amendment - not even WV, which was admitted through a questionable process in the middle of the Civil War.

So where does this argument come from? Well, the Koch Brothers helped. A little history:

In 1993, Dems had a trifecta and Bill Clinton supported D.C. statehood. The Koch-funded Heritage Foundation went to work. They released a report by R. Hewitt Pate which you can still read. Pate isn't a household name, but I'll come back to him. thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/1993/pdf/hl461…

Now, Heritage was co-founded by an architect of the modern Republican Party, Paul Weyrich. Weyrich's quote from 1980 is always ringing in my head:

https://twitter.com/ezralevin/status/1374718629703467010?s=20

Jane Mayer in "Dark Money" and Nancy MacLean in "Democracy in Chains" covered in depth the purpose of Heritage and related Koch-funded operations. It's simple: the people don't like a hard-right reactionary agenda, so the people must be silenced.

You can't go around advocating for deregulating Chevron and giving rich donors tax cuts and then hold free and fair elections - the people will vote you out! They'll block your agenda! So you suppress votes - particularly from brown and Black voters who won't support your agenda.

And so of course Heritage didn't want a majority-Black D.C. state in 1993. And of course they don't want one now - they're still banging the same drum with bogus arguments about a constitutional amendment. heritage.org/the-constituti…

So what happened to R. Hewitt Pate - the author of that 1993 Heritage report arguing against D.C. statehood? Oh, he's cheering from the sidelines, a Vice President of Chevron now. And now you know the rest of the story.