Press Releases
August 4, 2020
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) thanked 100 national and local groups for sending a letter calling on Congress to retroactively fix the treatment of the District of Columbia as a territory rather than a state for fiscal relief in the CARES Act, which deprived the District of $755 million, in the next coronavirus relief bill. The letter, led by DC Vote, was signed by leading national civil rights, labor, environmental and democracy reform groups, as well as by local D.C. groups.
August 4, 2020
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said she was able to include in the House’s Water Resources Development Act of 2020 (WRDA), the major water infrastructure bill, which the House passed last week, a provision that would help accelerate the cleanup of harmful sediments in and around the federal navigational channel in the Anacostia River. The provision changes the parameters in terms of depth and coordinates of the federal navigation channel.
August 4, 2020
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) announced that she introduced today the District of Columbia Courts Improvement Act of 2020, which would make several important changes to improve the operations of the local D.C. Courts.
August 3, 2020
WASHINGTON, D.C. —Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton’s (D-DC) amendment to prohibit the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) from collecting so-called “subsistence fees” in fiscal year 2021 from individuals in halfway houses or on home confinement passed the House yesterday. Her amendment was added to the fiscal year 2021 Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill, which passed the House last week.
August 3, 2020
Washington, D.C. —Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today expressed profound gratitude to President Barack Obama for including District of Columbia statehood among the marching orders he outlined in his moving eulogy of Congressman John Lewis.
July 28, 2020
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today said that the Republican-led Senate’s fifth coronavirus response bill, released yesterday, must be rejected because it fails to address the needs of the residents of the nation’s capital and of the nation as a whole.
July 28, 2020
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today applauded House passage yesterday of the Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys Act, which builds on her D.C. Commission on Black Men and Boys, established almost 20 years ago. The bill, which Norton cosponsored, now heads to the president’s desk.
July 24, 2020
WASHINGTON, D.C. —Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) announced today that her amendment to provide $1 million for law school clinical programs to provide legal assistance to veterans, including filing and appealing claims for Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) benefits, passed the House of Representatives yesterday. Norton’s amendment is now part of the House-passed fiscal year 2021 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill. Norton, who taught law as a tenured professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, cited the 400,000 veterans waiting for claims to be processed as the reason she offered her amendment.
Norton on Her Memories of John Lewis as a Colleague in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
July 24, 2020
Washington, D.C. - The office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) released excerpts today of Norton’s remarks on the House floor about her memories of Representative John Lewis as a colleague in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
July 23, 2020
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today held a press conference with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Senator Tom Carper (D-DE), and Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) to preemptively advocate for equal treatment of the District of Columbia in the next coronavirus response bill.
The CARES Act, passed in March, treated D.C. as a territory for fiscal relief – instead of as a state, as is usually the case for funding purposes – at the insistence of Senate Republicans and the White House, depriving the District of $755 million in fiscal relief to which it was entitled.