Welcome everyone to court side, a discussion of legal issues.

Our discussion began with Donald Trump and his multiple assaults on the Constitution, on women,

other things like that.

But we are now in version of 2.0 of Courtside.

We don't have to talk about him anymore, and it's so refreshing.

So, sorry I missed last week, as some of you know, I'm serving a special prosecutor in the Derek

Chauvin case. I'm not commenting on it. I said I wasn't going to comment on it from the start,

so don't read anything into it except that that's just standard rules. So today, I want to talk about

an issue that's near and dear to my heart, which is a D.C. statehood. And I started thinking about

this about 20 years ago when I read an article by a law professor then called Jamie Raskin.

Now, of course, you know him in Congress. But I read some of his work. And when I was

at the Justice Department and the Obama administration,

I wrote in an opinion my views that that D.C. statehood could be accomplished through legislation.

And my detractors leaked that to the media, but I'm darn proud of these views. And I want to tell you why. So like, you know, and having said that, I don't want you to think that D.C.

statehood is like all sunshine and roses. I mean, if we did get D.C. statehood, D.C. residents would have to

learn to live year-round with Matt Gates, the congressman from Florida. He'll probably move the minute that he hears that

D.C. is the youngest state. So I want to explain why it's the right thing to do and indeed the

democratic thing to do. And so, you know, the founders, when you go back to 1787, they obviously

didn't intend right at the founding

for DC to be a state, but neither did they intend Alaska or Hawaii to be a state or to have

700,000 residents in the District of Columbia or in the District of Columbia to have a port

for flying machines named after Ronald Reagan of all things. So DC is not your great, great, great, great, grandfather's capital anymore.

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