Wow, I didn’t know just how stupid the whole DC voting rights thing had gotten.
DC was granted home rule in the early 70’s creating a mayor and council. Many Southern Dixiecrats in congress were opposed to it because they basically ran the place.
Here’s a good history of the fight for local control.
“1967 President Johnson restructured the DC government so the president, instead of Congress, appointed a Mayor-Commissioner and created elections for a city council and school board. The members of Congress in charge of DC were not pleased and refused to refer to Mayor-Commissioner Walter Washington as “mayor.” John McMillan, head of the House Appropriations Committee on DC, sent the African American mayor a truck of watermelons to “welcome” him”
Marco Rubio: Bought. Paid For. Beholden.
“A 2009 compromise proposed creating a new congressional district…”
Historically, the total number of U.S.Representatives increased with fair regularity, from 65 in the 1st congress, to 391 in the 1890s, and then the sacred 435 in 1913. The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 set that as the ultimate number as, no surprise, a bulwark for rural areas against the teeming masses in the cities – as if the Senate wasn’t disproportionate enough.
I wonder why no one seems interested in trashing that act.