The American relationship to its territories – such as American Samoa, Puerto Rico, D.C., etc – is a bit fraught because they are infamously lacking in Federal representation, one of the foundation stones of the United States. The Democrats would like to make at least some of them States, as Steve Benen notes:
The Democratic-led House is expected to vote this week on the “Washington, D.C. Admission Act” (H.R. 51), which would welcome D.C. as the nation’s 51st state. The plan entails carving out a new federal district — limited to the National Mall, to the west of Capitol Hill — where there are no residents, while making the rest of D.C. a state.
But after some discussion with my Arts Editor, we more or less agreed that it doesn’t sit so well with us making D.C. into another State, even if lawmakers as diverse as Goldwater, Nixon, and Biden have been in favor of the transition. We’d rather see D.C. be made part of one of the local States and attain representation, as well as control of the National Guard, in that way. The lack of control inherent in the uneasy relationship between D.C. and the Federal government was a major issue during the January 6th insurrection.
But it occurred to me today that we could take an aggregate approach. This would consist of making all extant territories, not otherwise with Representation, into an ad hoc State, duly allocated its two Senators and however many Representatives in Congress as is appropriate. D.C. could either become a core member of this unnamed State, or it could become part of one of its neighboring States; Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and all the others could also have, at their option, be part of the ad hoc State, or become a State of their own.
That might be a good compromise for my competing dislikes of a city-state and of some American citizens lacking full representation at the Federal level.
