Robert White Wants To Be Your New Warrior On The Hill

Today on CityCast DC, I'm talking with DC Councilmember Robert White. He's one of the candidates running for the job of DC's non-boating congressional delegate. During our conversation, we got into how he'd work with a hostile Congress, why he doesn't support youth curfews in D.C. And just how he'd be different from the retiring delegate, his old boss, Eleanor Holmes Norton. Stick around. Today is Monday, May 11th. I'm Michael Schaefer. Here's what D.C. is talking about. All right, before we get into it, it's the last, last, last day of our spring membership campaign. I'm here with my city cast colleague, producer, Julia Karen. Hey, Julia. What's up, Mike? Not much. Tell us how close we are to our goal of new members. Very. We had a goal of something like 160 new members. We are very, very close. We are very, very close. I think we're like 10, 20 away. It is crazy to like get that dopamine hit in Slack of like the pinging of like people joining over and over and over and over again. It is, I know you've talked about this. You look forward to it. I look forward to it. And it also shows people care about local media in D.C. It's really heartening to see. I want to thank everybody who joined up. There's a lot of you. I have to read the names at the end of each episode. And it's tiring, man. The names this week, it's crazy. It's crazy. I imagine you're getting a workout just like reading them over and over and over again. Must be a lot. All right. So the deal is with Citigast. You know, we're changing a lot about CityCast. We still have this podcast that you know and love, I hope. No, I mean, I hope you love it. I know we have it. Yeah, we're not going anywhere. The podcast is not going anywhere. But, you know, look, my background is as a reporter and an editor, and we're building a team of reporters and editors here, which is something we never used to have. And the idea is this is supposed to help fill the gap that has been created in DC Media.

Membership helps us afford to do that. And once we get this rolling, your membership is also going to get you access to a lot of the reporting that you wouldn't be able to get if you weren't a member. Yeah, like Kayla Cody Semerman, who I think you all know as Kayla from CityCast DC from The Daily Send before Mike took it over, she's launching her own newsletter. It's called Obsessed. It's going to be hitting inboxes this week, which is bananas because she's going to be covering food and drink and culture and all of the cool stuff that like makes DC go when I want to go out. Like I can tell you, even if I weren't working here, that is the kind of newsletter that I want to subscribe to because I want to know what's in, guys. I want to know what to be obsessed with, and I hope you do too. So yeah, this is what CityCast, D.C. looks like when the community shows up. We hope you will show up too. Thank you so much to those who have joined. If you want me to read your name, like a rock star. Do so now. All you got to do is go to membership.citycast.fm and sign up. It's 10 bucks a month, 100 bucks for the year. And you get what I'm told is a really cool tote bag. And the reason I'm only told that is that these jerks haven't given me one yet. I'm sorry. It's not part of my job description, but you can have mine. You can have mine. I will donate my DC deserves local news toad to you, Michael Schaefer. That is what I will do. Additionally, can I just say like we've gotten a ton of lovely notes? from people, like, I see these, and I, like, kind of tear up. Like, we got this one from Cindy F who said, I support Citicast DC because being informed locally ensures I can make DC the best city it can be. We also want DC to be the best city. We do. Right. And as a reporter, I can tell you, sometimes the way we do that is by holding power to account and reporting things that doesn't want us to report. But sometimes the way we do that also is by doing really cool service journalism that tells you how to get the best of your city. Yeah, David L. Hit the nail on the head man. He told us, I want to support local DC media. The journalism city cast conducts is fact-driven and not sensationalist. Mike, that's got to be music to your ears. The podcast has been invaluable to my understanding of the city, and I want to keep this media org to keep on hiring and maintaining staff and produce investigations and things to do in DC guides. I mean, come on. There's your pitch. David, do the pitch for us. I mean, David, I like a little sensationalism. Just a little bit. Only a small amount to go with your, you know, investigative impact binding. Exactly. Well, thank you all for listening. And now let's get into that interview. Robert White, welcome. Thanks so much. I'm glad to be with you. So you're running for delegate for the last, like. Three years or something, I kept hearing rumors you were going to run for mayor again. What changed? Why this job? It's sort of been a pattern in my career for me to take a path that was not the one I intended. I was planning to run for mayor. But last year, especially by late last summer, it became clear that D.C.'s home rule is under real threat. Like, we might wake up one day and no longer have a council or mayor. And as somebody who loves this city, I had to come to terms with

the fact that I wasn't comfortable running for mayor when our home rule was under threat. And I was pretty certain that my former boss and mentor, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, was not going to run again. And frankly, it was time for new energy in that seat. Whether it's defending home rule or just trying to get good things out of the budget like any other member of Congress, a lot is going to depend on something that's not in your control, which is whether the Democrats or the Republicans have a majority. And if it's the Republicans, you know, that's been a very difficult relationship. I'm curious if you have stuff in your personal background or your professional background where you have had to work with people who don't see eye to eye with you or maybe even have it in for you. Yeah, all the time, unfortunately. But I'll say this. One, there is a level of control that we have on whether or not Democrats win the majority. I'm not going to lay down on this and hope for the best. When we win in June, I'm going to spend my time and energy between June and November mobilizing D.C. residents by the thousands to go into swing districts and swing states so that when I get sworn in as our delegate in January of next year, We are ready to go with a Democratic majority, at least in the House, hopefully in the Senate as well. If I have a career of any length in Congress, there will be times when there are Republican majorities. And when I worked for Congresswoman Norton, almost the entire time I was with her, we had Republican majorities. But we got a lot done. And I learned how to get things done in a Republican Congress. First of all, you build alliances. And some of them. are regional. I know the members, especially the members of the House from the entire region. Some of them are racial. I've been endorsed by the Congressional Black Caucus. Some of them are ideological. I've been endorsed by the Progressive Caucus, but some of them have oriented differently. We got the wharf done. That was one of my projects under Congresswoman Norton. We got that done in a Republican Congress. It required the federal government to transfer multiple pieces of land to D.C. But we knew where their interests were. We found out who we knew in common, who to send to each office, and we got things done. So there's a blueprint for that. Tell me, how would you go about building those relationships? Like in the event, there's a Republican majority now or sometime. down the line. You know, one, I should ask you, among either Republicans currently on the Hill or people who kind of have their ear, do you have relationships with any of them to speak of? And secondly, what would you do to build those? I do, whether it's some lobbyists or former members of Congress that are Republicans of folks that I talk to, get advice from, sit down for lunch with. And one of the things, and I'm not going to say who it is, because I don't want them to get in trouble with their party, but I've had lunch at the Republican club. And one of the things that a former Republican member of Congress said to me is Robert.

D.C. has to do a better job of building relationships. And I took it seriously. And so I went and met with some of the owners of the wizards and the caps. And I said, hey, if I become D.C.'s delegate. I need your partnership because I need to make sure I'm bringing members of Congress and their spouses and kids to games, to concerts, to build those enduring relationships. That's something that we have to do. But sometimes people just have business interest. So I'll tell you, developers tend to contribute more to Republicans and Democrats. So when I have an economic development project in D.C. I'm working on. I'm going to talk to Republicans through their donors. So your old boss, Eleanor Holmes Norton, famously known as DC's Warrior on the Hill, and in her prime, she was really effective at defending DC's interests, even in the face of a pretty hostile majority. You were up close. What do you think made her so effective? Well, Congresswoman Norton was always strategic and hyper-local in terms of her focus. Strategic in the sense that if you came for DC's home rule, didn't matter what party, you were going to catch the same fury. But she didn't take it too far and she didn't make it personal. So some of the same members she would tussle with. on respecting D.C.'s autonomy. If there was a land transfer that we had to work on, she could go to those members and say, look, we need your help and partnership on that. And that's a part of the strategy I want to take from her. But there is a wall that you hit when you are so hyper-local. You have to get to know members of Congress from other areas better. You have to travel to their districts. And she wanted to stay here in D.C. for reasons I respect. But I want to make this a more national seat. I want to have a more national profile for DC so that we're building those relationships. And frankly, so people from other parts of the country know what's happening to DC, our disenfranchisement, how Congress and the White House are coming down on us. So this isn't a time to build on top of the legacy that she's built. I mean, and she now, and you, if you got this job, would be dealing with a very different kind of Republican caucus than even she dealt with under Newt Gingrich, which at the time everybody thought was a huge disaster. So I get the traveling and the national impact. What else does a warrior on the hill look like in 2007? Look, in 2007, I want to see our delegate on the national news talking about issues that impact D.C. and issues that impact the country so that we're building that base. In 2027, our warrior on the hill needs to be leading the charge for D.C. residents to go into the district of members of Congress that vote against us so that there is some consequence to stepping on D.C. Right now, there is no consequence, and it's happening.

happening more and more. And so this is a time for us to change that. Being the delegate in 2027 means that you seize on this historic moment for DC statehood. DC statehood ties into an important national conversation of redistricting. The redistricting battles are about control of Congress or for some, the preservation of democracy. and people across the country are tuned into this. They need to understand that D.C. becoming a state would mean two Democratic senators. That is a bigger shift in power than any of these redistricting battles. And so it should be strategically at the top of the agenda for every Democrat and, frankly, most independents across the nation. So look, with Congresswoman Norton, as everyone, I think, has acknowledged, she's lost a step. And in the last year, D.C. had this terrible experience of having a potential enormous hole in the budget thanks to a quote-unquote accident in the Republican side drafting legislation. What would you have been able to do differently that might have avoided that? So one, have your finger on the pulse to understand what's happening. I'm not convinced that it was an accident. But in that moment, I saw last March, a council, a mayor, and residents who were generally paralyzed in a moment because something happened that we didn't expect. And I had to stop on my way to work one morning to meet with my council colleagues and with the mayor to figure out what we do. And I thought about what Congresswoman Norton did when I worked for her. and Congress came at home rule. What she did was convened our top leaders at the Capitol, the delegate, the mayor, and the council chair so that we were speaking with one voice and capturing the narrative. And that was the strategy I pitched to the council, the mayor, and the congresswoman. And in fact, that was the biggest press conference I had ever seen in my nearly decade on the DC Council. And we did capture the narrative. We didn't allow them to say this wasn't D.C.'s money. This was federal appropriations. We captured the narrative. We made sure of the country. and the region understood what was happening. And so I knew what to do because I have been in those positions before. Right now, given who's in the White House, what's happening in federal politics, we need somebody in that seat who knows that seat and what to do in those moments of distress. I mean, the other thing about that budget measure was... People were saying at least that, you know, a more effective DC delegate would have had the place wired, would have known what was going on inside the Republican caucus, even if they didn't like her. Is there stuff in your background where you've had to sort of...

develop that kind of intel network so you can get ahead of things that could be a disaster? I mean, both in my experience on the council, but certainly when I worked for the congresswoman of Congresswoman Norton, I had to have ears everywhere and build relationships with the Republican delegation, the Republican staff to make sure I knew what was happening before it happened. So this is a place where I have a lot of experience, but I also want to make sure people understand we're in a different. time, right? When you look at what happened at the US Institutes of Peace, when you look at what happened in Venezuela, when you look at what happened in Iran, this is an administration. That gives no notice. They kind of shoot from the hip and figure it all out later. This is a different way of governing. And my belief is that folks are going to have had their fill of this knee-jerk governing by the end of the next two years. So my hope is that we're going to return to some level of sensibility and we'll be able to, with good relationships, know what's coming down the pike because it'll be thought through. So listen, speaking of Intel networks, I want to ask you about the opposition research doc that your opponent put out on you. You said she should drop out of the race because it was so unseemly. You know, UPO research happens all the time in politics. I assume you do it too. What was different in this case? Well, a few things were different. My opponent put on her website and doubled down on it. Yeah, I intended to do it. Photos of my home, my address. I have young kids. And this is a time. Again, we are in very unsettling time where people are going to lawmakers' homes. harming them and their spouses. I mean, it happened to Nancy Pelosi's husband. It happened in Minnesota. I mean, this is tragic. That's something you just don't do. But beyond that, it went way past me. It published things meant to embarrass my brother, embarrass my dad, had nothing to do with the race whatsoever, just to sort of tear down my family. That, to me, was beyond the pale. And we need folks who are ready for the fight that we are in in this time. But understand that even in war, there are lines that you don't cross. And frankly, family is one of them. So, you know, my hope is that we'll talk about the issues. But I thought that showed a character of leadership that is not what D.C. needs in Congress right now. Listen, even beyond character, it's an interesting race that you're in because there is like a fairly clear ideological divide between you and your principal opponent, Pinto. How do you see that difference? And why is it important that someone vote for, I mean, I think it's, if I may characterize you, you are much more progressive, you're part of the sort of progressive block and counsel. Why should people support that rather than someone more to the center?

Look at what's happening right now in our city and in our country. In D.C., we are occupied by federal agents and federal law enforcement who refuse to follow our laws. And we've seen travesties. At the same time, this is happening. And most of D.C. is saying, we don't want to be occupied. This is not going to make a safer. It's not healthy. My principal opponent. Even yesterday, in talking about youth gatherings, spoke about them as literally, her words, riots and that we need to pass a bill to address the violence. But the vast majority of these kids are not engaging in that. In fact, they say they go to the places where the police are so they can have somewhere to spend time with their friends that is safe. And that was me growing up here. I went to Go-Go's and people got hurt at Go-Go's. People got shot at Go-Go's. I didn't go for the violence. I did everything I could do to stay away. But that was where we gathered. And so you have to have someone who is grounded in the direction that we want to take our city, grounded in the direction that we want to take our country. I think it's hard to do that if you don't understand very well, the people in this city. The history of, yeah. Can I push back on that for a second? Because you did a. tweet after the White House correspondent dinner shooting, which is sort of kind of a good joke, but about maybe we should have a curfew for them too. And apologize for that because it was heat of the moment and so on. But I do want to know, like, there's a lot of other people who might look at the teen curfews and say, you know what, like I'm not comfortable when there's a thousand teenagers around because some percentage of them, probably a small percentage, are going to be knuckleheads. I'm going to do dumb stuff. And I want to give the cops the authority to say, move on. You can't be here anymore. And the majority of the council agrees with that. You're one of the five who doesn't. And I just, I hear what you're saying about you were a youth in the city. I was too. But. I think there's a lot of people who wanted to be represented who kind of wish that there was a tool to stop teen takeovers. Right. So here's where, you know, governing and I'm a policy guy, like policies matter, right? The young people are going to these places for a reason. the vast majority of them are not going to cause trouble. And whether they're going to something or running away from something, right? What we are treating is the symptom as opposed to the underlying issue. So what we have done with this curfew is we have not held ourselves as a government accountable. We said we did something and we're going to move on. People want government to actually solve.

problems. The drop, if you look at when I grew up, assumably, when you grew up in D.C., I've seen data on this, the significant drop in movie theaters, skate rinks, youth clubs, I mean, there is virtually nothing for them to do. So we have built a city that's not for them. They have figured out what to do. And then we've said, You can't do that either. We're going to impose a curfew. So whether folks don't feel safe at home, if they don't have somewhere to go with their friends, we've avoided solving any of those problems. And we've just done a thing. I just think a lot of people would say, yeah, I know, sneezing is a symptom of a cold, but you still want to carry a Kleenex around. Right, but you carry a Kleenex and you treat the cold. So I'm not saying we can't have a curfew. What I am saying is a curfew by itself is not a solution. But when you pass that bill, then you let the government off the hook. I want to keep the government on the hook to find a real solution. Carry the clean nets, but treat the cold too. So, you know, this issue, one of the reasons this issue has become so impassioned and angry is because it's not just a DC issue anymore. We've got the Trump appointed U.S. attorney, the Congress, the president himself, making statements on it. It, you know... I always joke that city councils that anywhere else in the country have the freedom to be knuckleheads if they want. But in D.C., it's like you have to be better than that because it is all at risk. One of the things in your platform, a lot of it is built on fighting back against this sort of incursion by Capital W. Washington into, like, hometown, D.C. How do you... Other than just saying, like, if you were the mayor, like, I won't cooperate with ICE, how do you do that from your perch that eases the mayor's job at figuring out how to manage ICE, for instance? What I do as the delegate... is build the coalition of folks who are with us. So when the federal takeover started in D.C., we very quickly got into a group with other cities like L.A. and Chicago and New York and others joined. That becomes our coalition. The good thing about those coalitions is that they have senators. We don't. And so we got to continue to build those relationships. In fact, I was on Capitol Hill all the time talking with exactly. those members of Congress to talk about how we can work together. D.C. is more vulnerable than the rest of the nation. That means that we need allies across the country. When D.C. says we're actually good with the federal incursion. That does not give our allies any room to come in and support us. So we need a delegate who will be the quarterback who will really help to guide the mayor and the council.

And I believe that the delegate should be sitting down at least monthly, probably more frequently, with the mayor and the council chair to make sure we are all on the same page. All right, but what do you do when those Democratic allies, as a lot of Democratic strategists are doing, say to you like, come on, man, just like, let them have it on the curfew. You know, you can come back around and get a bill funding other activities later. Just like get the heat off now. You didn't do that. You've stood firm in the face of that pressure, some of it from Trump, but I'm sure some of it from a Democratic strategist who'd say, like, listen, just go with the flow on this one. So the agency that, if that were a strategy that might work, then that's a strategy to consider. But when that strategy will not work, don't do that strategy, right? Don't die on your knees. So I cannot think of the person who endeared themselves to Trump and didn't live to regret it. In D.C., there is no agency that went out of its way more to help and cooperate with the administration than MPD. And they are under attack more than any other agency in D.C. Right now, the chief left under fire was insulted by Republicans. So folks are saying, oh, we should just work with them and let them have what they want and they'll leave us alone. It has not happened. So, like, if we were dealing with a. a different person, different brand of people, you consider that as a strategy. But if these folks are going to roll over your city as quickly as you let them, then you've got to stop them with anything that you have. But look, the Congress under the Constitution, we may not like it this way, but it has oversight authority over D.C. And you could look at what's happened, you know, just this month with the MPD, where they have now moved to fire 13 senior officers, apparently, because they now believe that they were manipulating crime data to falsely make DC look safer. You know, I don't know if they were doing it for political reasons or just to get the boss off their back, but whatever it is, the effect is to a real corrosion and trust of the police force. And I think you could look at what's happened and say this probably wouldn't have come out if not for... members of Congress who probably didn't have D.C.'s best interests at heart being hard on them. If you got a situation where you're in the majority and you're able to do that kind of oversight of D.C., would you do it or would you, on principle, say, nope, that's a home rule issue. This is a city ought to be able to manage its own affairs like anyone else. Well, look, it is a home rule issue, but our delegate needs to be strategic. When Republicans have been...

talking about this issue for quite some time, and we should have caught it. You know, my colleague went against me as chair of the oversight committee, like when they're saying we're looking at these numbers, you better get in front of them and look at the numbers. So I think she dropped the ball in a pretty big way there. But as delegate, when you see these murmurings, you go to the council chair and to the mayor and say, look, pull this together. They are looking at this. I'll defend you up there. I'll defend you with everything I have, but you've got to do everything you can to get the house in order and keep things straight. That's part of your strategy there. You know, in Congress, everybody has delegations. Even the states that only have one member of the House, they still got two senators. You are a delegation of one up there. And so you have to work with the mayor, the council chair, the attorney general here in D.C., the D.C. Attorney General to make sure everybody's on the same page and working. But this is a place where, you know, as delegate, I would have taken those murmurs seriously, hopefully being a member of the Oversight Committee. and say, look, I know how this is going to play out. You got to get this in order right now. Look, besides protecting D.C. against encroachments, you will also be, you'll get to vote in committees if you get this job, you not be quite a fully equal member of Congress, but you'll be a member of Congress. Can you talk to me about some of the other places where you would push on policy that are not home rule issues? Yeah. So first is, I believe that our delegate, the right delegate, will... do more to impact and improve our economy and job growth in the near term than the mayor or the council. Here is why. The Wharf, Navy Yard, Walter Reed, Hilly, St. Elizabeth East are all former federal properties that now have a significant amount of housing, bring significant revenue to our city, created construction jobs, permanent jobs. And there's more of that that we can do. I've worked on that portfolio with Congresswoman Norton. I know that blueprint. We're going to continue that starting with LaFont Plaza. But also. we have an opportunity to use precedent to help us. That's another thing I pull from Congresswoman Norton. Brack, the base realignment program in the federal government, has a philosophy that when they close a base in a state or jurisdiction, because they lose so many federal jobs, they give them a pile of cash to help them restabilize their economy. In D.C. and our region, we have lost more federal employees in the short term than any base closure. And so we have a precedent for federal funding and under a Democratic economy.

tens of thousands than anybody who's ever ran for council, mayor, or attorney general, because I try to stay aligned with people. But I endorsed Janice Lewis George because when I look at where people are in this city, people are... losing faith that government or this system is ever going to work for them. And I see a direct through line with two relatively recent elections. One won't surprise people is Zohran Mamdani in New York. But the other that might surprise people is Donald Trump's re-election two years ago. Both of those elections were about people saying we are not going to vote for the person who tells us we're going to do the same thing as before, but somehow magically it's really going to work for you this time. They're looking for some. someone who is not afraid to shake things up and has a vision for the future. I believe that Janice Lewis George has a vision for the future, which is not to say anything against Kenya McDuffie, who's a friend and a guy have a lot of respect for, but I think his message is about the way things have been. And somehow we're going to keep doing things the way we've done them and somehow it's going to work. And I'm getting calls from people who are saying, Robert, I think I'm going to lose my home because of the PEPCO bill, right? And I'm feeling it too. In the Democratic Party. If we don't wrap our heads around the fact that the average person feels like they are sinking, then we're going to be in a lot of trouble. I was so disturbed in the last presidential election with the majority of voters making less than 100,000 and less than 50,000 voting for Donald Trump. That hasn't happened in decades. And that has to be a warning sign to folks that when the people who don't have much are voting for the Republican, we are in trouble. You know, you mentioned the Democratic Party. Who in the Democratic Party among your would-be colleagues on the Hill if you win? Do you particularly admire or think as somebody who's either style or votes are worth taking seriously? Well, there's a lot of them. Let me say this. So Senator Elizabeth Warren endorsed me. I'm a policy person at heart. I feel like we have a similar spirit, right? I actually want to solve problems. That's why I'm in government. That's why I got into government. And I see her as of that vein. But then there are folks like Congressman Frost from Florida. Young guy. not afraid to use his voice. And I've seen that. So I really admire that. But there are two people that I want to spend real time within my first two years. And there are people I don't think, well, one won't be in Congress anymore. And the other one won't be much longer, probably at least one more term. But that's Jim Clyburn and Steny Hoyer.

These are folks who have been around long enough to have learned a lot of things. And so I get to bring new ideas. I get to bring a younger perspective. But I'd be foolish if I'm not learning from them how they built coalitions, where I'm making mistakes, how they got things done, how Jim Clyburn rose through the ranks as a black man. These are people I want to learn from. I am very much a lifelong learner. So I kind of nerd out and hear the people I'll be able to access and learn from. So you're a native Washingtonian like me. Does that matter in an election? It matters to people, but it also is shorthand for whether or not you know the city. I don't know the p.C way to say it. There's nobody else running in this primary. who knows all swaths of the city. Everybody's like, I know this important person, that important person. I guarantee all of them can get to Capitol Hill, but I'm probably the only one that could get to the shrimp boat, right? You cannot represent a city that you don't know. And there are a lot of people who feel so unseen in this city right now. And if you are negotiating on behalf of the district and you don't know half of the district, then those people are not being negotiated for. They're being negotiated against. That is why some of my less popular votes on the council. came out the way they did. There are just certain principles and people and communities. I'm not going to put on the back burner. Because as somebody in a seat of power, I recognize even more acutely than most that people who don't have power and don't have money often get left out of the conversations. But those are my folks. Those are communities I come from. And I think they deserve to and need to, more than most, have a voice in our congressional delegate. Well, look, a lot of people would also look at the census and say, man, this city has grown by like 150,000 people in the last 30 years. Do you worry that some of those other 150,000 people, the newbies, are going to take that and say, like, well, maybe he's not that concerned about us? I don't think anything I said was exclusionary. The key is several of us know the folks who have moved to the city, but not all of us know the people who have been here or struggle to be here, right? When I first bought my home, when I bought my first home, was when I worked with Congresswoman Norton, made like peanuts, right? It was not lost on me that I had now, I was a law school graduate, my wife was a law school graduate. We moved into a row home in Brightwood Park. pretty close to the house that my grandparents bought in 1963.

But we could have been considered gentrifiers, even though I grew up down the street because the only house we could afford was one that was falling apart, you know, and the majority of our neighbors were not college graduates. So, you know, as a young family, we're facing the same things that a lot of young families. When, you know, when we go to school, most of the people dropping the kids off are not Native Washingtonians, but most of the little kids walking into that school are. And so when I grew up in D.C., when you grew up in D.C., People didn't really come to D.C. to stay. It was the people who grew up here and the people who stopped over and they went back home or they went on their way somewhere else. People really want to stay in D.C. now and make it their home. I think that's beautiful. So last question. As you know, from working with Congresswoman Norton, her North Star was always statehood. What's yours? The North Star is statehood. I think it's a social justice issue, a democracy issue. There's a lot of other things we need to do. We need to stabilize our economy. We need to protect our budget and our laws. And so it's not like statehood or bust, but statehood is my North Star. And I believe that we have a window of opportunity that will close that allows us to make statehood a national conversation. And if we lose that opportunity, because we didn't have the right person in that state, seat with the right strategy. I think we will have lost a big opportunity. But wait, look where we are. You began this conversation by saying we could even lose a DC council and the mayor. So a lot of people might not look at that and see an opportunity. They might say, while these guys have been following the pipe dream of statehood, they didn't secure even the meager version we have now. Right. So we have to understand the reason even somebody as talented as Congresswoman Norton could not move statehood is because we couldn't answer the most critical question, which is why does statehood matter to anyone outside of D.C.? Now we can. It matters. I want D.C. to become a state because it's the right thing to do. Unfortunately, that's not going to be the argument to get us over the finish line. It will become a state because it is in the street. of the Democratic Party or the strategic interest of anyone who wants to protect democracy right now. And because the Republicans threw the rulebook in the fire by starting the redistricting battle, people across the country are now fully engaged in this battle. And D.C. can play a bigger role in shifting congressional power than any of these redistricting battles. But we have to take that case to the nation. And when we do, I think we'll find many more allies than we have. historically. Council Member Robert White, thank you so much for being here. Michael, thanks for having me. It's been exciting. Like I said, we're at the end of the membership campaign. Let me shout out our most recent new members. There's a lot of you. So bear with me here. Brian P., Judith P. Mary S. John B. Kate C. Matthew B. Gordon T. Zach M. Nina H. Anna L. Benjamin Netanyahu W. Joseph S. Maddie O. Elena K. Autumn T. Dana M. Dana H. Catherine L. K.W. Rachel P. Jill C. Debbie C. Holly B. Benjamin Netanyahu B. and Eduardo F. Thank you all so much.

Again, you can become part of this rock star role by going to membership.citycast.fm. And that is all for today here on CityCast DC. If you enjoyed the show, why not tell a friend, rate the show, leave us a review, and subscribe to our morning newsletter. We'll be back tomorrow morning with more news from around the city. Bye.