I`ve asked for the deployment of the guard as long as we need the guard to deal with the humanitarian crisis that we expect to escalate.

We have a growing humanitarian crisis that we expect that the federal government expects is going to only worsen.

I think the whole point of what we've been talking about is the Governors, the chief, and the mayor here know best for our states.

It's true that calling the D.C. National Guard is kind of a misnomer. It's really the President's Guard.

Nobody should die in our hospitals attached to a ventilator and have to say goodbye to their families when there is a safe and effective vaccine.

I think the Federal Government getting income in people's hands.

We are seeing our vaccinations go up at the same time and our message to residents is to use layered mitigation strategies, but the first one being a safe and effective vaccine.

Our way through this pandemic, and even in this winter surge, is for everybody to get vaccinated, to test themselves, to isolate if they`re feeling sick, and that is the way we`re going to get through this virus.

We need to focus our testing resources for people who need a test and we know that vaccine works and we want all of our 37,000 employees to be fully vaccinated plus getting a booster.

the COVID restrictions were for everybody, and I do not have to tell you that we faced a 100-year pandemic.

Its intent was to expand democracy to D.C. residents, and now it is being held up as a barrier.

It is a glaring contradiction of our democracy that residents of the Nation's Capital... do not have a vote or a voice in this chamber.

I am asking this U.S. Senate usher in a new age of fairness and equality for D.C. residents.

We saw early on in the pandemic that our African Americans residents were not only being affected with COVID-19 but dying from COVID-19 in vastly greater numbers than their white counterparts.

Senators, we ask you to right the wrong that occurred some 220 years ago when the residents of the District of Columbia were stripped of their full congressional representation, and we ask you to do it now.

I appeal to this Senate to end the ongoing systemic injustice faced by the growing population in D.C. and vote for statehood in the 117th Congress.

We will not quit until we achieve full democracy, and our two Senators are seated here with you.

We know the time to correct that wrong is now.

Absolutely no, Senator. We know, as we have already discussed, that ending 'taxation without representation' was a principle that led to the independence of our Nation.

It is absolutely unfair, Mr. Chairman, and you laid it out perfectly.

I condemn both equally.

Your inaction could doom yet another generation of Washingtonians to being locked out of their constitutional power and human rights.

Maybe that shouldn’t settle the issue.

Well, you know, Joy, the people of Washington, D.C. voted on statehood. They didn’t vote to secede from the Union. They didn’t vote to shirk their taxes. They just voted to say that we need equal representation and full autonomy. We need…

Seven hundred and twelve thousand tax-paying Americans don`t have a representative, a voting representative in Congress and no senators. And that is in our view a civil rights and voting rights issue that should be undertaken with HR-1.