I lived in the DC area for 20 years (1999-2019) and commuted daily on the Metro for many of those years. The things you say are true, but they were also true 15-20 years ago when the Metro was leaps and bounds better than it is today. They were true in the 1970s when the Metro was first built. So it can't be the whole story. There's much more to it. It's not just that the Metro is bad, it's that it keeps getting worse and worse.
There's decades of deferred maintenance. This is probably due to funding problems because of what you're talking about, but the Metro is in a hole that it might not be able to dig itself out of unless someone takes it seriously and commits a lot of money and effort.
The WMATA is incompetent. I don't know how else to put it. Like, why are you even running 6-car trains at all during rush hour? The system is treated like a jobs program to give make-work jobs for people who would otherwise be unemployed. I'm sure some of the workers are dedicated and care, but many don't seem to. Try asking a station attendant to use the bathroom that's supposed to be publicly available and watch the annoyance that you have dared to inconvenience them.
The collision in 2009 caused them to switch to manual braking and they just...never switched back. Whatever problem there was with the automatic braking system, they decided to just give up on it instead of fixing it. It's minor, but it slows things down.
It's not like public transit in DC is impossible. It used to work, if not perfectly, much much better than it does today.
DC needs to be a state. It's unconscionable that it isn't and the rights of 680,000+ US citizens are ignored because it isn't politically expedient to give them the representation they're due. That would help a lot. DC could control its own budget and negotiate on equal footing with MD and VA.
> Whatever problem there was with the automatic braking system, they decided to just give up on it instead of fixing it. It's minor, but it slows things down.
This is just not true. Partial control was restored years ago [0], and my understanding is they still want this capability on other lines. But WMATA has probably been busy addressing numerous other NTSB complaints that impact the ability to provide basic service (see the 7000 series recall), so smooth braking just isn’t that important.
One of my friends in DC was just complaining the other day about how the conductor wasn't able to manually stop the train properly and caused a delay (that led to a missed connection).
Clearly it's still not back 100%, even 12 years later. I mean, if they cared about fixing it, they'd fix it by now. Any halfway competent system should be able to figure out something like that after more than a decade.
Alternatively, give back all of the residential parts back to Maryland (like Arlington was given back to VA). For a long time this wasn't politically feasible because DC was rough and MD would not have wanted it, but by now the tax base has to be high enough for it to be a net positive for MD. Of course, the democrats will lose 3 "safe" electoral votes but you could amend the constitution to give them over to Maryland and then take the extra three away over the course of 30 years, or something.
I hear this all the time from clueless rich DC residents who get wrapped up in all sorts of granfalloons. You don't think "Arlington" is its own place with its own identity separate from the rest of Virgina? Moreover, anacostia residents probably have more in common with residents of pg county than residents of palisades, who have more in common with bethesda residents than anacostia residents.
Well considering I volunteered on the border of anacostia and pg county, I think most of them don't really give a shit, eastern ave is just another street in the neighborhood.
And yeah, is bet they would bear more resentment towards someone who lives in the Palisades than someone on the other side of eastern avenue.
Moreover, last I checked 10 years ago a good chunk of anacostia is transitioning into middle-income/federal employee Hispanic neighborhood and that process is bleeding over into pg county, because the boundaries don't really matter all that much.
Edit: southern Ave, not eastern ave; it's been a long time.
If the residents of Arlington want to form their own state and secede from Virginia, I'll support them. As it stands, they already have representation in Congress.
> Moreover, anacostia residents probably have more in common with residents of pg county than residents of palisades, who have more in common with bethesda residents than anacostia residents.
Sure, and residents of Manhattan probably have more in common with people in northern New Jersey than they do with people in Buffalo, but New York still gets to be a state. So what?
My point is: There's no shared identity among DC residents, the most of whom don't even really live there all that long, due to political cycles/fluid flight to the suburbs of MD and VA. Your statement is pure nonsense.
The most sensible solution is to give DC back to Maryland (which is where it came from) and thereby give the residents representation, which is your end goal. If you want some other end goal, it has to be weighed against the other absurdities of making DC a state.
Uhh, yeah there is, if you move beyond happy hour with the other transplants whose dads got them internships in their representative's office and talk to people who actually grew up there.
And who cares how long people live there? If I move to VA for 2 years I still get to vote for a representative if there's an election while I'm there. Why should we have a void area in the country where like "ah ah aha, gotcha! you stepped in the your-vote-doesn't-count zone, so your vote doesn't count! Too bad!" This is the government that impacts our lives not some children's board game.
> If the residents of Arlington want to form their own state and secede from Virginia, I'll support them.
This idea doesn't get enough application. NYC should be its own state. LA should be its own state. Most big cities should be their own states. They are not similar to the area around them.
It gets far too much application. We literally put down a rebellion and rewrote the Constitution over this. It didn't work before and it won't work now.
There has never been a time in all of human history where cities cordoned themselves off politically from the rural areas they rely on that did not end in rebellion, bloodshed, and/or collapse.
If you want rural America to rise up in rebellion again, I mean, I guess go for it. But there's a specific reason the vast majority of state capitals are in comparatively rural areas: to prevent exactly the kind of division you're advocating for. This was a hard-won lesson in the aftermath of Shay's Rebellion.
> There has never been a time in all of human history where cities cordoned themselves off politically from the rural areas they rely on that did not end in rebellion, bloodshed, and/or collapse.
I guess you could call this true, but only in the sense that there has never been any system of any kind that didn't end in rebellion, bloodshed, and/or collapse.
The normal pattern historically is that the city's hinterlands are subject to the city's rule. You never see the hinterlands ruling the city.
> There has never been a time in all of human history where cities cordoned themselves off politically from the rural areas they rely on that did not end in rebellion, bloodshed, and/or collapse.
Totally incorrect. Berlin and Hamburg are states right now.
According to the Wikipedia page ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion ), Shays' Rebellion was prompted by taxes being set at a level well beyond farmers' ability to pay. This is an incredibly common motive for revolt.
But it escapes me how torstenvl thinks it's related to cities constituting their own governmental units.
I just reviewed that Wikipedia page, and it seems accurate to my account. May I suggest you re-read it? It had nothing to do with the level of taxes, but with the insistence on following the urban mercantile paradigm, and, when farmers couldn't, forcibly taking their land from them.
"The economy during the American Revolutionary War was largely subsistence agriculture.... Some residents in these areas had few assets beyond their land, and they bartered.... In contrast, there was a market economy in the more economically developed coastal areas of Massachusetts Bay.... The state government was dominated by this merchant class.... European business partners ... insisted that they pay for goods with hard currency, despite the country-wide shortage of such currency. Merchants began to demand the same from... those operating in the market towns in the state's interior.... The rural farming population was generally unable to meet the demands... and some began to lose their land and other possessions when they were unable to fulfill their debt and tax obligations."
> I just reviewed that Wikipedia page, and it seems accurate to my account. May I suggest you re-read it?
You didn't actually give an account. But the quote you pulled describes farmers being taxed at a level they are incapable of paying. It appears that you would like to use that to support the claim "it had nothing to do with the level of taxes", somehow. You'd need to explain how.
I did, and in explicit detail. You're misreading the text, which is about a qualitative issue, not a quantitative one. It has nothing to do with level of taxation but with enforcing an urban mercantile paradigm of taxation, one that was literally impossible to meet and for which failure to meet it resulted in execution by starvation.
Being taxed a certain amount of silver is just as much of an issue of levels as being taxed a certain amount of wheat. Assessed taxes were much more expensive than the farmers were able to pay. It doesn't matter what currency the taxes are assessed in. What matters is that the amount is too high.
Compare what the farmers said their problem was:
> A farmer identified as "Plough Jogger" summarized the situation at a meeting convened by aggrieved commoners:
>> I have been greatly abused, have been obliged to do more than my part in the war, been loaded with class rates, town rates, province rates, Continental rates, and all rates ... been pulled and hauled by sheriffs, constables, and collectors, and had my cattle sold for less than they were worth ... The great men are going to get all we have and I think it is time for us to rise and put a stop to it, and have no more courts, nor sheriffs, nor collectors nor lawyers.
The only people who say this are Democrats who want another (presumably) safe democratic state in DC. My city doesn’t share the same “identity” as the city next to me, but nobody’s clamoring to break up the state.
I hadn't heard the annexation argument before, I suppose the fairest way would be to have an election in DC and people would vote on whether they wanted to be an independent state or part of Maryland, and whichever was chosen would be the way to go.
I personally would expect they would want to be their own state, but who knows? If on the other hand people feel the choose their own state is very likely and Maryland unlikely it would probably save money to just go with become their own state.
so then I guess that should shut down the Maryland suggestion. No idea why it would be brought up as a possible solution for democratic representation when it goes against the wishes of the people seeking representation.
No, the people don't get to vote on which solution gives them representation. Because if you could just "vote to be a state" why does that stop at DC? Why not the three houses next to mine and me vote to be a state? Congress has to approve it because becoming a state incurs an externality on the other states - dilution of voting power.
To give your idea credence, though: probably it would be fair to let arbitrary groups of people vote for statehood without congressional approval if, hypothetically, there were a flat user fee to be a state, say, $50 billion/yr. Can't pay it? Sorry you get demoted to territory, your senators are booted, and your representatives become delegates, unless you merge with another state.
New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.
So it seems unlikely that you would be able to become a state by voting on it yourself.
The Northwest ordinance sets the minimum population size of a state to be 6000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Ordinance therefore I doubt your household has the requisite number of people living in it, even if you combine with the households of two or three of your neighbors, to succeed.
>Congress has to approve it because becoming a state incurs an externality on the other states
I did not say that they should become a state automatically when they voted for it, but rather that they should not be forced to become a part of Maryland if that is against their wishes. The obviously still need to follow the process required to become a state.
>To give your idea credence,
My idea should be quite easy to understand, and it was not the one you outlined here.
The difference is that in 1990, the system was still in kind of new shape.
Generally speaking, the lifecycle for a transit system's components look like 40-50 years. That puts the expiry date of the first DC Metro lines at 2016 and beyond, which roughly lines up with when things started falling apart.
Basically, the entire system has always run on fumes. That only recently stopped cutting it.
> The things you say are true, but they were also true 15-20 years ago when the Metro was leaps and bounds better than it is today. They were true in the 1970s when the Metro was first built. So it can't be the whole story. There's much more to it. It's not just that the Metro is bad, it's that it keeps getting worse and worse.
> It's not like public transit in DC is impossible. It used to work, if not perfectly, much much better than it does today.
> DC needs to be a state. It's unconscionable that it isn't and the rights of 680,000+ US citizens are ignored because it isn't politically expedient to give them the representation they're due. That would help a lot.
Wasn't DC also not a state for the last 20 years, and in the 70s?
So ... do any of you follow politics? One of the two major parties has given up on governing the country, and has not done so for ten years. This 'grand' old party seems to be toying with the idea of giving up on Democracy next. And we are confused as to why the DC Metro system cannot be fixed??
Here's a tip: Fix that party, and you will find that suddenly the DC Metro has money to fix the automatic braking system.
For how expensive the US is. No they don't have enough. (And yes, on top of it they are likely not the best in the mass transit game. As it's simply not a priority in the US anywhere else either.)
> ...ramming through a purely partisan agenda via reconciliation and changing the rules when they don’t like the outcome of the game.
You can say this regardless of which party you consider to be the "other" party, except that one party started it a long time ago. Because obstructionism has been the name of the game for so long, these tactics have become necessary in order to get anything done. It's a perfectly rational response to how the rules of the game have changed, IMO.
> DC needs to be a state. It's unconscionable that it isn't and the rights of 680,000+ US citizens are ignored because it isn't politically expedient to give them the representation they're due.
I hope this doesn't sound like a lecture, but whenever a question about fundamental rights emerges, it's often useful to turn to the Constitution and Federalist Papers to understand the rationale and intent behind the system that was created. While it's certainly possible to disagree and change things over time, there's usually a valid historical reasoning behind why things were made the way they were that is lost.
As far as I understand the history (I'm open to fact-checking as I'm not a historian and never lived in DC) Washington D.C. was intentionally never supposed to be a state so that no single state would have extra power and influence over the operation of the central government. This makes a lot of sense when you think of this in terms of bureaucracy and power creep that the Founders were trying to avoid. If Washington D.C. was a state from the beginning, its interests and issues would inevitably begin to take precedence over those of other states because the Capitol would be on land it controlled. The Capitol was intended to be completely neutral ground when it came to favoring any state over any other.
Now you might ask, were the people of that area supposed to have no representation at all? Not exactly. As far as I understand the intent, Washington D.C. was actually never supposed to have a large permanent residential population. DC was intended for whatever government buildings that needed to exist and that's basically it. I'm not 100% sure how that changed and what historical factors led to DC growing into a larger city, but that seems to be a key mistake.
The question now becomes what do you do with these people to ensure that they're represented? I think most people are on the same page here with wanting all Americans represented, but is making them a state the right solution? I'd argue no and I'd like to give a slightly different reason why.
A lot of the commenters here are thinking in terms of balance when it comes down to Black/White or Democratic/Republican when it comes to adding states, but I'd argue that the key division in the nation that needs to be balanced is Urban/Rural. A lot of the ways that people in this country think differently come down to whether they're more Urban or Rural-minded. How people think about self-responsibility and living with neighbors comes down to this divide: you can easily see this viewpoint encapsulated when it comes to gun rights and education and how the Urban/Rural divide works there. One big issue with DC that I see (as far as I understand the area) is that it's so small that there's no substantial rural influence possible. Even the bluest of blue states that are dominated by urban politics like New York have some kind of rural areas and constituencies that they have to pay attention to and who hold some influence and mindshare in a state legislature. As far as I understand the area, Washington D.C. can never have any kind of rural influence just due to the density and size. I think adding a state without even a theoretical influence of one factor possible is very questionable and likely going to be incredibly divisive.
DC shouldn't be a state, it would give that "state" too much power and also make politicians there outsized politically powerful and we have enough of that already with states like rhode island, wyoming, and the dakotas
That's not how this works. We create a government and decide what rights citizens have. We did that, wrote a whole constitution about it. Then we make sure every citizen has those rights.
If there are imbalances in the design of the government, that's a separate problem that we fix on its own. Depriving some subset of citizens of their rights is not the answer.
DC residents should get one-person-one-vote, like most things. We should get rid of 1700s planter superuser backdoors like the disproportional Senate and electoral college.
Then we should rebrand away from the slaver-drafted constitution to the Free States of America, a fourth founding after the original, post-Civil War and Civil Rights Movement. That would match what we actually have, a multiethnic democracy welcoming global talent.
Giving residents of Wyoming 70× the Senate voting power of any Californian is a joke.
It was a deal sweetener. The federation flourished, renegotiate the terrible deal. States are artificial units. One person, one vote.
The intent of a bunch of folks who kept people chained up in barns is irrelevant, the intent of the 1700s circumstances is irrelevant. We're heading to 30% of Americans controlling 68% of Senate in '40, minority rule by rural white folks. This veneration of the parchment as a religious text is just an excuse to not use our brains to solve present-day problems.
There’s this whole other part of Congress called the House of Representatives that is proportional to population.
Land ownership has nothing to do with anything. Everyone gets to vote for their Senators (except people in DC). We did away with the requirement to own land a long time ago.
If California broke up into 200 states, would they need 2 Senators each to protect themselves from being steamrolled? If so, then why don't Californians already need 200 Senators?
Not everything is racially motivated. Eventually speculation like yours crosses a boundary from legitimate social concern to conspiracy and seeing racist boogeymen in every shadow.
I generally agree that not everything is racially motivated, but it's pretty well documented that this is, or at least was, historically.
Dream City[1] is a good book about the history of DC. Part of the reason there is such a large Black population is that a lot of freed slaves moved there after the Civil War. In later years, Congress, which is effectively charged with governing the District, and of course included representatives and Senators from former Confederate states, definitely considered that when deciding whether DC should be able to manage its own affairs. DC wasn't granted Home Rule and its own city government until 1973.
Wow thanks! I did some quick googling and it seems there is something to it historically. Though how much of a role (if any) racial division currently plays as opposed to economic and other political motivation is unclear. I'm not inclined to read heavily politicized novels by a single author, typically they're too partisan and don't present things without bias, but I am open to learning more from less bias sources and it does seem that at least in DC's earlier years it as a factor.
I don't know if you googled Dream City and came up with something else, but it's not a novel. It's a nonfiction history book written by two DC journalists.
Nowadays, opposition to DC statehood tends to come from Republicans, who are motivated purely by electoral considerations, and who know that DC, now being a largely Black city, will vote Democrat. (Not considered: adjusting the Republican platform to be more appealing to Black voters. I digress.)
But when it was originally decided that DC would not be a state, this had nothing to do with race. First of all, DC's demographics were different at the time; second, enslaved people couldn't vote anyway; and third, the founders were concerned that a national elite would form in DC that would tyrannize the rest of the country, so the point was to weaken that (hypothetical) faction.
So it's ahistorical to blame DC's original non-statehood on racism -- it was a reasonably principled choice -- but the current reality (going back at least to, say, the '20s -- sometime post-Civil-War) does contain a lot of racial motivation.
Ironically, the current situation is the inverse of what the Founders worried about: They thought a powerful elite would settle in DC and rule the rest of the country in an unrepresentative way. Instead, the people who live in DC are largely from an underclass in need of representation. So DC statehood now makes sense. But they couldn't have known that when they were setting things up.
It's the US, it's safe to assume that anomalies concerning political power are due to maintaining the racial hierarchy. Just because it's ugly and interferes with the American myth of equality doesn't mean it's not true.
"One reader wrote to the Washington Evening Star, saying: “If you get rid of the 90,000 negroes residing in this city I am in favor of suffrage. As long as they are here I am opposed to it,” according to the report."[1]
No, it's not safe to assume. It's ridiculous to assume that there's even some intrinsic "racial hierarchy" to begin with. Some demographics do better on average than others, much like how Asian-Americans have a higher average household income than White-Americans, but despite what twitter says that's largely not due to any deeply rooted systemic issue. I don't think a single readers letter to some local news organization is really any proof of your claim.
> It's ridiculous to assume that there's even some intrinsic "racial hierarchy" to begin with
Yea, it is ridiculous to assume that there is an intrinsic racial hierarchy. That doesn't mean that that US doesn't have one though. If you need evidence, just look at incarceration rates, police shooting rates, property ownership rates, intergenerational wealth, representation in government, hiring disparities, educational disparities, medical treatment disparities, etc. There are clear disparities that break down along racial lines, and from the numbers it looks like african americans and native americans are at the bottom.
> despite what twitter says that's largely not due to any deeply rooted systemic issue
Who needs to consult twitter to know about the US's history of racial oppression targeted at black people, and its lingering intergenerational effects?
And then you can get into things like urban renewal of the fifties, sixties, and seventies. Frequently the "renewed" areas were thriving black neighborhoods. And then the US, as a country, ignores that these things happened.
It's really comforting to imagine that today's problems aren't a result of things in the past that our ancestors (or even just parents) were complicit in, but that isn't the world we live in.
Current economic consequences of historic oppression are, while unfortunate, not indicative of current, on-going oppression.
It's also quite misleading to throw out statistics like incarceration rates, police shootings, etc and assume it's automatically because of racism and not instead indicative of the violent culture that become pervasive in many black urban communities. I have no doubt that part of it does stem from racial prejudice, but let's not pretend like that's the only or even a major contributor to those statistics.
As for the other disparities, those are largely a result of poverty/low-income, not racism. I hear "well that's still pretty much racism since black americans are the poorest demographic" and that's not true. It's not the same because it isn't racism. It's unfortunate that historic events have made black americans the poorest demographic, but poor white, asian, hispanic, etc families have very much the same issues. Check those same numbers but control for income and see for yourself how it isn't racism but is classism.
Instead of harping on about the imagined ingrained racism in america let's face the real issue, which is cyclical poverty. The black community is the most effected by this due to relatively recent oppression, but they aren't the sole suffering demographic.
Was what happened in the past awful? Yes. Are some people still suffering today as a result? Yes. Does that mean that america still has ongoing systemic racism? No. When controlling for income, we all have very near equal opportunity to succeed or fail.
So these policies existed up until the 1980s, but the sentiment driving them has somehow gone away? Classism is an over-cited reason used to remove the issue of race from the discussion. Jim Crow applied to all blacks, regardless of class. Housing covenants denied the sale to blacks regardless of class.
Okay what laws are there in 2022 that are harmful to black americans in any given economic bracket that are not also harmful to other demographics in the same economic bracket?
You keep bringing up how black americans were oppressed but can't seem to articulate what systemic racism still exists today. The only semblance of oppression left is the economic consequences of the past, which I've already spoken on.
Just cause one group does better than another is not proof that systemic issues don't exist for another group. In the article they cite multiple sources of anti-black resentment being the cause of D.C. not receiving statehood, I only cited the letter because it was small and to the point.
It was a part of the cause, I've already ceded that point to another commenter. I did research and yes, many decades ago there were racial prejudices involved. There's nothing to indicate that that's still the primary motivator to keep DC a district and stating such is baseless speculation.
It's funny how the two major regions of the US that clearly deserve statehood (DC and Puerto Rico) but have been denied that right for decades, seem to be areas with lots of poor non-whites.
Racism is not the only factor in play here (political balance of power is a huge factor), but to deny that racism has played a significant role in creating this situation is ridiculous.
I place that racism squarely in the laps of both parties since they both deserve that blame.
On what ground do you claim that DC and PR clearly deserve statehood? I think to take an incredibly complex economic, social, and political decision and assume its outcome is influenced in any significant capacity by the demographic makeup of those regions is ridiculous.
What is complex about it? That sounds like an excuse for not making an actual argument. There are lots of excuses when it comes to not granting statehood but they are invariably self-serving. They pay taxes but their votes don't count. We had a revolution once where that was a major factor. Puerto Rico is near the median in terms of state population. For over two down decades it has been clear that a majority of Puerto Ricans do not want to remain a territory.
If you can't imagine how the induction of a new state is an overtly complex task then I'm not sure how reasonable of a discussion we can have. I don't have a strong opinion one way or another primarily because my field of expertise lies outside of politics, sociology, and economics. On the surface yeah, I'm 100% for taxation with proper representation. I'm not well educated enough on the issue to know what 2nd and 3rd order effects it may have though
You might have an argument about DC, but Puerto Rico has not been "denied" the right. There have been many plebiscites on the issue and the status quo has been maintained each time.
You mean the 5 plebiscites out of which only the first from over 60 years ago favored remaining a territory? Those plebiscites only provide wiggle room because of issues with which and how many options were presented.
The last one though, presented a straight yes or no on statehood and statehood won by a significant margin.
Officially, both political parties tend to say they support self determination for Puerto Rico, but still nothing has happened.
I think you're legitimately concerned, but I think your concerns are about as well grounded in reality as that of most conspiracy theorists. What proof (not tweets or opinion pieces) do you have to support your claim? "There are a lot of black people therefore any adverse action to the region is because of racism" is not proof. California's demographic makeup isn't predominantly white. Why are they a state?
It would be the only state with no agricultural interests, the only state with no ports, the only state where the majority of the residents work for the federal government... The last one alone is pretty scary and a bit of a conflict of interest.
> the only state where the majority of the residents work for the federal government... The last one alone is pretty scary and a bit of a conflict of interest.
You can quite literally say this about any group of people. I don't like landlords, I find it scary that landlords can vote and contribute to political campaigns. Imagine the awful and self-serving things that landlords would do if they ever turned the powers of our political machine to their own ends! I don't like resource industries, I find it scary that Texas and North Dakota get the vote. I don't like techies, California should lose a few seats in Congress, etc, etc, etc.
Oh, and your numbers aren't even right, there are 140,000 federal government employees in DC, and many of them commute in. That's not 'the majority' of the residents by any stretch of the imagination.
> It would be the only state with no agricultural interests,
Wasn't aware this was a requirement to be a state. Is it in the Constitution somewhere? We'll plant some corn on the Mall or something.
> the only state with no ports,
You clarify below you're talking about Ports of Entry, or state government buildings for managing goods coming into the state. So...DC will make some? Are these naturally occurring structures and if you don't have any in your area you're just screwed?
> the only state where the majority of the residents work for the federal government
Not even true. DC has 200,000 federal employees out of 680,000 residents. A little over a quarter. Not even close to a majority. Most federal employees work outside DC. Note that taking a job as a federal employee does not mean you should be deprived of Congressional representation.
If you want to make an argument about what a port is, picking land "points of entry" isn't a good argument.
Airports are a better yardstick.
A new Capitol State could easily establish both a port and points of entry if it so chose, the Potomac is somewhat in practice (and legally) a navigable river and there are US highways and interstates that go thru Washington DC.
Furthermore the WMAA would likely come under the control of the city.
Here is a list of usual definitions of the ordinary word port: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/port . If you mean some term of art which is opposed to the usual everyday meaning of the word, it's your responsibility to be explicit. Don't deflect from your poor communication.
There's decades of deferred maintenance. This is probably due to funding problems because of what you're talking about, but the Metro is in a hole that it might not be able to dig itself out of unless someone takes it seriously and commits a lot of money and effort.
The WMATA is incompetent. I don't know how else to put it. Like, why are you even running 6-car trains at all during rush hour? The system is treated like a jobs program to give make-work jobs for people who would otherwise be unemployed. I'm sure some of the workers are dedicated and care, but many don't seem to. Try asking a station attendant to use the bathroom that's supposed to be publicly available and watch the annoyance that you have dared to inconvenience them.
The collision in 2009 caused them to switch to manual braking and they just...never switched back. Whatever problem there was with the automatic braking system, they decided to just give up on it instead of fixing it. It's minor, but it slows things down.
It's not like public transit in DC is impossible. It used to work, if not perfectly, much much better than it does today.
DC needs to be a state. It's unconscionable that it isn't and the rights of 680,000+ US citizens are ignored because it isn't politically expedient to give them the representation they're due. That would help a lot. DC could control its own budget and negotiate on equal footing with MD and VA.