Growing the U.S. to 52 States

If you are curious what a field of 52 stars on the U.S. flag would look like, see above.

Last summer, In Historic Vote, The House Approved Statehood for the District of Columbia. The bill of course died with Mitch McConnell, “The Grim Reaper” of the Senate graveyard of legislation.

This asshole is no longer in charge of the Senate, and there’s a new sheriff in town.

Democratic Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, joined by a group of more than three dozen fellow Democrats, introduced a bill today to make Washington, D.C., the 51st state, continuing the years-long campaign to grant statehood to the nation’s capital. Senate Democrats introduce bill to make D.C. the 51st state:

While the D.C. statehood movement enjoys widespread support from Democrats, who control the White House and both houses of Congress, Republican lawmakers generally oppose the effort – the District has a minority-majority population who tend to vote Democratic – and the district is unlikely to become a state unless Democrats take the controversial step of eliminating the legislative filibuster in the Senate.

Note: According to 2017 Census Bureau data, the population of the District of Columbia, was 47.1% Black or African American, 45.1% White (36.8% non-Hispanic White), 11% Hispanic, 4.3% Asian, 0.6% American Indian or Alaska Native, and 0.1% Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander.

Carper introduced the companion bill to House legislation to make D.C. a state on Tuesday. The House passed a D.C. statehood bill last year by a vote of 232 to 180. The bill has 38 cosponsors in the Senate, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. President Biden said that he would support D.C. statehood during the presidential campaign.

“This isn’t a Republican or Democratic issue; it’s an American issue because the lack of fair representation for D.C. residents is clearly inconsistent with the values on which this country was founded,” Carper said in a statement. “It is therefore incumbent upon all of us who enjoy the right and the privilege of full voting rights and representation to take up the cause of our fellow citizens in the District of Columbia.”

The legislation would provide voting representation for the city’s roughly 692,000 residents, a population larger than the states of Wyoming and Vermont. It would also cordon off the White House, Capitol and National Mall to remain under federal control as the seat of the U.S. government.

The argument over D.C. statehood gained more urgency after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, when it took hours for National Guard mobilization to be approved to address the crisis. Unlike other National Guard units, the D.C. National Guard does not fall under local control, and can only be mobilized by the White House. Lawmakers have questioned why it took so long for the National Guard to spring into action on January 6. If Washington, D.C., had been given local control of its National Guard, then the Guard may have been deployed earlier in the day after the Capitol was assaulted. The National Guard is expected to remain mobilized in the city through the end of March.

But despite widespread Democratic support for D.C. statehood, most Republicans oppose admitting the district as a state. The district is heavily Democratic, with a diverse population that is 46% Black. Republicans believe that admitting Washington would automatically give Democrats two new senators, and further tilt the balance of the Senate towards the Democrats.

“OMG! We can’t have black people voting! Look what happened in Georgia. We must disenfranchise black voters and deny them any right to representation.”

Democrats currently hold the narrowest possible majority in the Senate, with only 50 seats and Vice President Kamala Harris casting any tie-breaking vote. As most legislation currently requires 60 votes to end debate and receive a full vote on the Senate floor, a bill to make D.C. a state would likely be unable to reach that threshold.

Advocates for D.C. statehood argue that the Democratic majority needs to eliminate the filibuster, the procedure that allows senators to block legislation requiring 60 votes to end debate. If only a simple majority was required to end debate, this argument goes, then the Senate could approve D.C. statehood with only 51 votes.

Stasha Rhodes, the campaign director for 51 for 51, which supports ending the filibuster to pass D.C. statehood, said in a statement Wednesday that the Senate bill provides “a chance to win the most urgent civil rights fight of our lifetimes: giving a vote in Congress to over 700,000 people who have been denied one.”

“The people of D.C. have worked over 200 years for representation and we urge the Senate to act swiftly — D.C. deserves a vote during COVID relief negotiations, the impeachment trial, and every other fight to come. The only way to guarantee that democracy truly prevails is by passing this legislation with 51 votes in the Senate,” Rhodes said.

However, at least two Democrats — Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema — have expressed opposition to ending the filibuster. There would need to be a simple majority vote to eliminate the filibuster, meaning that all 50 Democratic senators would have to be on board. Manchin in particular has been vocal in his opposition to eliminating the filibuster, a position that was affirmed by a spokesperson in a statement to CBS News.

Are these two willing to step into the shoes of Dixiecrat segregationists who filibustered civil rights bills during the Jim Crow era?

“Senator Manchin’s position on the filibuster has not changed. He will not support eliminating the filibuster,” the spokesperson said. Manchin is not among the co-sponsors of the D.C. statehood bill introduced by Carper.

Unless all Democrats are willing to eliminate the filibuster, the bid for D.C. statehood is likely to be dead on arrival in the Senate, as it has been for the past several years.

Last November, the U.S. Territory of Puerto Rico voted in favor of a referendum to seek statehood. Puerto Rico wants statehood – but only Congress can make it the 51st state in the United States:

Puerto Ricans requested statehood on Nov. 3, 2020, with 52.3% of voters asking to change the island’s status from unincorporated territory to U.S. state.

This is the sixth time statehood has been on the ballot since Puerto Rico ratified its Constitution in 1952. Voters rejected the status change in 1967, 1993 and 1998.

The 2012 election results were unclear because some voters did not answer both parts of a two-part statehood question. In 2017statehood won decisively, albeit with very low turnout of around 23%.

Puerto Rico didn’t become the 51st state then, and it is unlikely to achieve statehood any time soon. Only Congress can add new states to the Union, via an Admission Act or House Resolutionthat requires approval by a simple majority in the House and Senate.

Territorial status

The United States wrested Puerto Rico from Spain in the 1898 Spanish-American War, along with Cuba, the Philippines and the Mariana Islands.

Shortly after, a series of Supreme Court rulings called the “Insular Cases” – made by the same court that found racial segregation constitutional in Plessy v. Ferguson – deemed most of America’s new territories to be inhabited by “alien races,” ungovernable by “Anglo-Saxon principles.”

These cases labeled America’s island territories as incorporated or unincorporated, each with a different set of rights. Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory. It is similar to U.S. states in many ways but its taxpaying residents lack voting representation in Congress, cannot vote for president and do not enjoy all the same constitutional rights as other Americans.

Without a vote in Congress, Puerto Rico’s needs are not well represented in Washington.

Puerto Rico’s legal status all but defines politics on the island.

Rather than offering clear left- or right-wing policies, Puerto Rico’s two main political parties are traditionally defined by their stance on statehood. The Popular Democratic Party generally favors keeping Puerto Rico a territory; the New Progressive Party is pro-statehood. Both have Democratic- and Republican-aligned members.

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Puerto Rican voters on the mainland usually vote Democratic, so most Republicans perceive statehood as a political threat, although Pew Research finds Puerto Ricans on the island are a socially conservative crowd. Only a few Republican officials, such as Florida’s Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, say they would support Puerto Rican statehood.

The Hill reports today, Puerto Rico officials hopeful of progress on statehood:

Top officials in Puerto Rico say they believe they can make progress toward statehood, after voters on the island approved a statehood referendum and now that Democrats control Congress and the White House.

In interviews, Gov. Pedro Pierluisi (D) and Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González-Colón (R) said they believed they can build bipartisan support for a statehood measure in the House this year, though both acknowledged the uphill fight such a bill would face in the Senate.

“It will have a substantial majority of support with votes from both sides of the aisle. Primarily Democrats, but there will be a significant number of Republicans supporting the bill. The time has come for Puerto Rico to become a state,” Pierluisi said in an interview. “The ball will go to the Senate’s court, where it will be a tougher fight.”

Pierluisi said he had spoken with members of the Biden administration about advocating for statehood. On the campaign trail, Biden himself said he would help Puerto Rico enroll in Medicaid programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Earned Income Tax Credit, programs that are not open to the American citizens living on the island.

A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

The question of status has been the fulcrum of Puerto Rican politics since the 1950s. But a 2016 Supreme Court decision effectively rendering the notion of commonwealth status moot added new urgency to the debate.

That decision shattered the coalition who opposed statehood into camps that today range from independence to a compact of free association, a deal similar to those struck by South Pacific nations that were formerly under federal control. That disruption has effectively meant that statehood is now the most popular status option.

González is working with Reps. Darren Soto (D-Fla.) and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), two members of the House Natural Resources Committee that has jurisdiction over Puerto Rico, to push for a hearing.

“You’ve got Republicans and Democrats supporting Puerto Rico to become a state, so yes, I truly believe that this is the time to make that happen,” she said. “It is time for Congress to hear us out and to allow the people from the island to get their American citizenship fulfilled and empowered.”

Committee chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) has yet to schedule a hearing, though a spokesman hinted that one is coming shortly.

“Chair Grijalva knows that resolving political status is a high priority for the people of Puerto Rico, and he plans to conduct a hearing on ways to resolve that status early in this Congress,” the spokesman, Adam Sarvana, said in an email.

The holdup is likely to come in the Senate, where Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has compared statehood to socialism — though the national Republican platform endorses statehood.

This asshole calls anything that isn’t right-wing radical extremism “socialism.” Fuck this fascist.

But Republicans are not the only ones standing in the way. Reps. Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who hold two New York City districts with substantial Puerto Rican populations, have introduced legislation that could make the island an independent nation.

“It is understandable that many of our friends in the Democratic Party have eyed making Puerto Rico a state as the answer” to Puerto Rico’s financial crises and the U.S. Navy testing bombs on the island of Vieques, Velázquez and Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a recent op-ed. “But this approach, often undertaken with the best of intentions, is misguided.”

González pointed to the statehood referendum, which passed in November with 52 percent of the vote, to refute a push for independence.

“They believe in independence, but that’s not what the people of Puerto Rico voted for,” González said in an interview. “They need to respect the voters of the island, and the voters of the island selected statehood. Why try to take that away from them?”

The referendum alone is not sufficient to guarantee Puerto Rico will become a state. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to admit states into the union, after both voters and representatives in Washington approve the state constitution.

“If Congress does what it has done in the past with territories, Congress will come up with a bill, an admission bill, that will propose statehood or offer statehood and then ask the people of Puerto Rico to ratify it, to vote once again to ensure that the people want it,” Pierluisi said. “You’re going to get an overwhelming majority in support of statehood because it’s going to be a totally different environment. They’re going to be voting on Congress’s offer on statehood.”

If a statehood resolution made it through the House, there are at least a few Republican senators who are on the record supporting statehood. González pointed to Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who represent thousands of Puerto Ricans who moved from the island to their state.

“The Florida delegation is always important for Puerto Rico,” González said.

Historically, to maintain a balance as new territories were admitted into the Union, slave states and free states were admitted, roughly speaking, in pairs: Mississippi and Indiana, Alabama and Illinois, Missouri and Maine, Arkansas and Michigan, and Florida and Iowa.

Arizona and New Mexico were added to the U.S. in 1912.

The last two states to be added to the U.S. were Alaska and Hawaii in 1959.

Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia should be added now to honor the request of its citizens.