Washington’s locally elected government is under attack from President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans. But the capital city’s self-proclaimed “warrior on the Hill” is nowhere to be seen on the front lines.
Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s nonvoting House delegate, issued a written statement Monday after Trump seized control of the city’s police force and moved to send in National Guard troops, calling it “counterproductive,” a “historic assault on D.C. home rule” and “more evidence of the urgent need to pass my D.C. statehood bill.”
But Norton — who has represented the city in the House since 1991 — has not been seen in public or otherwise interacted with the media since, even as other elected Democrats stepped forward to defend Washington’s autonomy against Trump’s aggressive new actions.
Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser held an hourlong news conference Monday afternoon in which she was flanked by city public safety officials, but not Norton. Her name was also missing from a joint statement released by members of Congress representing Washington’s suburbs that slammed the police takeover as a “soft launch of authoritarianism.” Several of those lawmakers have since given interviews to POLITICO and other outlets.
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