Shadow senator sees energy, momentum for statehood, an unintended Trump legacy

10/1/2025

He is a United States senator.

Ankit Jain ran for election in 2024 and won — and he represents 702,000 people as one of two Washington, D.C. “shadow” senators.

But this senator can’t vote in the Senate — and he doesn’t get paid. Jain’s office isn’t on the capitol grounds but rather a half mile away in the John A. Wilson Building, the center of D.C. local government.

President Trump’s federalization of local law enforcement, a deployment of the National Guard and other officials that Jain describes as an “occupation” of his city, drives the long-running case for D.C. statehood — and likely will be the legacy of Trump’s power grab, albeit one the president did not intend, Jain said in a phone interview with Political Mercury.

“I think he is in a counterintuitive way,” Jain said. “This would not be possible if we were a state. In no other state could the president take control of the local police force. The only reason he can do it to us is because of our lack of statehood.”

Wyoming (577,000) and Vermont (643,000) are less populous than Washington, D.C. Alaska (733,000) is roughly the same population.

“What this is showing is just exactly that, what the impacts are on the ground of us not being a state,” Jain said. “I do think that the next time we have a Congress that is actually willing to support D.C. — and a better president — that this is just making it that much more likely that D.C. becomes a state. It only takes a bill to be passed out of Congress and signed by the president to make D.C. a state.”

The sight of tanks near Union Station, just blocks from the Capitol, a short walk from the Senate Office Buildings, jars Senator Jain each time he observes the military presence.

“You are just seeing these military troops in civilian parts of the city, and it feels like you are a little under occupation when you see that,” Jain said. “You see the tanks on the streets.

“What are we defending? The Uber pick-up lane outside of Union Station?” Jain said.

“It’s terrible and scary to see this happening,” Jain said. “You see them in the Metro station. I saw them at Metro Center the other day, and then you are just seeing all these social media clips of masked agents just taking people down with no explanation. You are always wondering where they are going to be. Are they going to be where I am next?”

Jain, 32, D.C.’s first citywide elected Asian American, and the first Indian American to serve as a D.C. shadow senator, said Latinos in the city are the most frightened demographic among his constituents now as Jain says federal officials cite all manner of reasons to pull Latinos over for immigration questions.

“It seems like what we are seeing mostly up until now is an immigration raid in D.C.,” Jain said. “That’s been the biggest impact. I feel really bad for the Latino community, which I know has been terrorized by this.”

Jain, who assists D.C. residents with interaction with federal agencies and voting members of Congress on many matters, said his constituents are afraid to leave their homes, and he added that reservations at restaurants are down, among other impacts on the local economy.

“It’s hard to see it and not be able to do a whole lot at the moment,” Jain said.

If Trump were trying to solve criminal-justice issues, the president would make sure the ranks of judges and prosecutors were filled in the district, Jain said.

“What the president is doing is not actually intended to solve any problems in D.C.,” Jain said. “It’s a show of force, an attempt to gain some headlines, and to use the crime problem as an excuse to take total control of D.C. and try to institute his far-right agenda on D.C. He’s using us as a test case about how the MAGA agenda can work in cities. It’s easy for him to do it to us. We are not a state.”

Defenders of the president’s D.C. troop deployment say crime is down — a lot — there. The Trump Justice Department also is investigating earlier crime data from the Metropolitan Police — data Trump officials say was skewed to paint a rosier picture of the nation’s capital.

“Meanwhile, they are sending these federal agents into touristy parts of the city like the National Mall and Dupont Circle and areas like that,” Jain said. “You don’t see officers deployed in any of the high-crime areas east of the river.”

“The president said it was the first time in living memory that D.C. had a week without murders,” Jain said. “That is a total lie. We’ve had multiple weeks without murders just this year.”

Paul Strauss is the other Shadow U.S. Senator for D.C. ♦

Douglas Burns of Carroll is fourth-generation journalist and founder of Mercury Boost, a marketing and public relations company.