Unlike, Puerto Rico and DC, Greenland has abundant natural resources, such as the Helm of Füulkrag, the Blade of Skuulgrimm, and the Amulet of Blørnsgaard.
I think the Amulet of Blørnsgaard was taken by the Nazis, as depicted in Indiana Jones and the Igloo of Thør. It is currently sitting in a vault in Copenhagen.
Everybody needs to stop about DC. It’s too clearly a “my team would have a guaranteed two extra senate seats so therefore the only moral thing to do is give them statehood”. DC was specifically created to NOT be a state, to be a neutral capital of the nation.
Puerto Rico would be awesome though. Greenland too. Hell let’s ask each Canadian province to vote whether they want to join up. Seven new Canadian states! Unless there are more than seven Canadian provinces, in which case there would be more. Or less. Or maybe they’re not called provinces. Still: Montreal is sick, and I love the potential present in huge tracks of land populated mostly by moose and moose-adjacent people, and I just bought an insanely expensive coat for my wife for Christmas called “Canada Goose” or something so don’t tell me that Manitoba isn’t filled with billionaires making money off of the solid-gold winter coat trade
I asked for principled arguments and right away got the naked partisan one. The federal buildings can still be federally administered without denying representation to nearly 700,000 people.
And those 700,000 people can be afforded representation in a way that doesn't also give 2 free Senate seats to one party for the foreseeable future. There's no principled argument why those things need to be treated as a package deal, yet here we are.
There is a principled argument: The people who live in the two places in question -- DC and Maryland -- don't want it. You can't just merge two polities against their will.
Why would you say that only the residents of DC and Maryland are the only people that get a say? All Americans get to decide (through their representatives in Congress) what is admitted as a state. It's a negotiation.
While it's true that Washington and Maryland may not want to merge, it's also true that most other Americans don't want an independent state of DC, just like they don't want the state of Jefferson or five Californias. Someone has to change their mind and it seems like a reasonable compromise is to merge DC with its suburbs instead of creating a unique city-state. Therefore efforts should focus on changing the minds of holdouts in DC and Maryland(like the commentor is attempting), rather than all other Americans(like you are attempting). Maybe retrocession should include some sort of other benefits(e.g. the city of Washington, MD receives some federal funding otherwise provided by the state, DC students get integrated into Fairfax public schools, Old Bay Seasoning gets a college bowl game, etc) to incentivize polities refusing to accept the simplest deal to give DC residents representation by redrawing the state lines of Maryland and/or Virginia. But just insisting on the creation of a new state with 70 square miles has been unproductive for more than a century.
But they don't want it because they consider it a worse deal, practically speaking, than just making DC a state. That's not a principled argument any more than the GOP objecting that DC statehood would be politically bad for them!
My idea for this (probably deeply impractical) is that we make DC a state but in the process we use DC’s original boundaries, meaning that we include Arlington County and Alexandria Virginia. Do that, and suddenly Virginia swings back to being a full swing state, in fact a slightly red-leaning one. This way, DC gets representation, without its power being diluted in the way that would happen if they were added to Maryland. Arlington has to deal with being in a new state, but they now have a lot more power within that state than they ever will within Virginia. Democrats get two guaranteed senate seats in DC, so no net loss if they lose Virginia, and the possibility of netting one or two senate seats if they do well in what’s left of Virginia. Republicans have an advantage at the presidential level going for Virginia’s now-12 electoral votes. Everyone gets something they can take home.
I am, of course, aware this will never ever happen.
I don't think that will happen because if the statehood people acknowledge that their borders could change as part of statehood, they have no principled argument against retrocession. Without that, there's no reason to change the status quo that the status quo would accept.
Setting aside that retrocession would provide them with two Senators, the more serious answer is that where the principled objection to DC's current status is the lack of voting representation in Congress, there is no principled reason for *or* against statehood vis-a-vis retrocession, and everyone's positioning between the two is pretty transparently based on what they perceive the practical effects would be.
The people of the Dakotas deserve to have 8 states, Northwest North Dakota, Northeast North Dakota, Southwest North Dakota, Southeast North Dakota, Northwest South Dakota, Northeast South Dakota, Southwest South Dakota, and Southeast South Dakota.
Nobody can provide an argument for why this shouldn't happen other than naked partisanship!
Just do with the populated areas of DC what we did with Alexandria, Virginia: Add their territory to the adjoining state, in this case, Maryland. The Democrats don't get the free Senate seats, but they will get more House seats. The people get to vote in congressional elections without giving an overwhelming advantage to just one political party. That is how a proper political compromise would work.
You complain about partisan arguments but the only reason democrats support making DC and the PR states is partisan. They believe that they will get an electoral advantage. Whereas no one is looking at Greenland from an electoral perspective but from a national security and natural resources perspective. Heck, Greenland would likely lean for democrats.
One perspective is looking out for the good of a certain party, the other for the good of the nation.
700,000 people have taxation without representation. Who cares what it was "created" for, they can be given representation in congress because they are american citizens who pay taxes.
They can be given that representation if they were to say leave the district and go somewhere else. The "NTWOR" from the revolution doesn't really apply in this case. And before you go off or something about "the people who live and work there" just know that "dissolve the residential parts of DC and return them all to Maryland" is a completely acceptable option to me, as well as "lets fire, eliminate or move their headquarters to other states". This isn't complicated and it isn't like the only two choices on option are "status quo" or "statehood". We have lots of other choices that don't involve handing Democrats two free votes in the Senate. If the federal government has problems hiring IRS officials because they don't want to live in Maryland, more than half of the country will smile in delight.
13 colonies stretched along the eastern seaboard of a continent separated from England by an ocean having no representation is not the same situation at all. This is not an injustice. This is the same as complaints about fair representation in the Senate. If you want the thrill of your senate vote being worth 7x mine it is very easy to move to North Dakota. If you’re dying for a congressperson move across the bridge, convince Maryland to annex you, whatever you like. This doesn’t require statehood.
We already debated this issue starting in 1776 and ending several years later with the surrender of the English. It was in all the papers. Or as I read it better described once.
"Tssukan-san says that these Dutchlands - the Netherlands - were vassals of the Spanish king up until a few years ago. Is this True?"
"Yes"
"Therefore the Netherlands - your allies - are in a state of Rebellion against their rightful king?"
"They're fighting against the Spaniard, yes. But - "
"Isnt that rebellion, Yes or No?"
"Yes but there are mitigating circumstances. Serious miti - "
"There are no 'mitigating circumstances' when it comes to rebellion against a sovereign lord."
"Unless you win"
Toronaga looked intently at him. Then laughed uproariously. He said something to Hiro-Matsu through his laughter and Hiro-matsu nodded.
"Yes Mister Foreigner with the impossible name, yes. You named the one mitigating factor." Another chuckle, then the humor vanished as suddenly as it begun. "Will you win?"
James Clavell, Ch 11, Shogun.
This is an issue of apples. The line for oranges forms somewhere over there.
If what you care about is the plight of those poor, unrepresented Washingtonians having to settle for the highest per capita incomes in the country, you can just retrocede the residential parts of the city to Maryland.
The fact that Dems are anathema to that proposal gives away the game.
OK but the federal government won't allow DC to become a separate state right now either. If we're positing a change to the political status quo regardless, seems kind of arbitrary to treat the naked self-interest of Baltimore machine politicians as sacrosanct while blithely dismissing the naked self-interest of flyover state senators.
As a resident Washingtonian, I would just like to say I'd much rather focus on the taxation than the representation. DC statehood would not actually affect my day-to-day life since it would just increase democrats' ability to federalize ever-more issues, so I'd happily take an exemption from federal taxes instead.
I think if Washingtonians were offered exemption from federal taxation in exchange for no statehood, we just might take that. Notably, this deal has not been offered.
And Maryland/Virginia Dems in particular don't actually want to give DC full statehood! Every time it comes up, their support for the idea is contingent on some "solution" for the fact that DC would be able to start taxing people who commute into the city for work (i.e., a sovereign taxing power enjoyed by every other state in the nation).
This appears to be the go-to talking point. The problem is that neither the people being “given” nor the people “getting” (nor the federal government) want that.
Anyone who pretends like the DC statehood issue is a binary choice between "Status Quo" and "Statehood", is making a partisan argument in the sheep's clothing and I will never pretend otherwise.
(don't say "give it to Maryland" -- neither DC nor Maryland want that)
That is why this is the perfect solution.
Honestly, I don't know enough about the economics of Washington DC to see how it would work. Could DC be a state knowing they can get no property tax from the federal government? I think DC is too small to be a state on its own. You would need to pull in both Maryland and Virginia suburbs to make it economically viable. And I'm betting no one wants that either.
I'm not omitting jack. Making DC a state is a partisan solution to a problem with numerous other partisan solutions. If the people who live in the one constitutionally disenfranchised jurisdiction in the country want to vote for a state government there are lots of other ways to give that to them. Making DC a part of Hawaii is just one of them. If DC isn't going to be DC then it doesn't need to exist.
More likely, though, [Trump] just wants [Greenland] because it would be cool. And as much as he makes the national security arguments … well, we’ve all studied this guy’s brain for a decade now. We think we know why he’s really interested in it.
It’s because Greenland looks really, really big on the Mercator projection.
Greenland is not small. We would never disrespect Greenland by calling it small. But it’s not as big as it looks, flattened out, on the Mercator projection. It is not roughly the same size as Africa. It is my belief, however, that Trump does not know this and believes that it is the size of Africa, which makes him fixated on it enough to threaten war—trade war or shooting war—with a NATO ally over its control.
DC does not have the responsibilities of statehood with none of the benefits. DC is ground zero for the federal gravy train, meaning its benefits are vastly, disproportionately inflated compared to other US territories and states. The reason you pay the highest per-capita in federal taxes is not because you are unfairly taxed; it’s because you are unfairly compensated by virtue of proximity to an unaccountable federal bureaucracy and contracting system that hands out sinecures and patronages like door prizes.
As someone with a security clearance, the only reason I haven’t given up my senate vote yet is because I love my state. The existence of dumb reasons against DC statehood don’t negate the founders’ good reasons against it, reasons that are more true today than they were when congress was fleeing violence in Philadelphia.
Many federal buildings are in states (including many in northern VA, as the commenter below me points out), and this is just paternalism: “You’ve got a pretty good deal, I’d like it if I were you.” The residents of DC were actually the only ones NOT involved in the creation of this “gravy train” because we’re the only ones who don’t have congressional representation.
Right, that's the obvious alternative to DC statehood: adjacent-state annexation, which has historical precedent and would not piss off senate Republicans.
I haven't looked at the figures - you are saying that DC residents earn more than residents of other major American metropolitan areas, where the highly educated and their well paying jobs tend to congregate?
Right. DC and the DC metro area as a whole do not have the Silicon Valley tech sector or the NYC tri-state/Wall Street financial sector. Their industries are government and defense in particular, so my argument is that proximity to federal power and money is DC's unique leverage versus other large metropolitan areas full of well-educated knowledge workers, and this is pretty much exactly what was predicted when DC was initially established as an independent district governed by congress. This is not really a great argument against DC statehood, more a point against why most Americans from other parts of the country should feel sorry for DC's lack of direct representation in the congress.
I think people in Guam (idk the demonym) vote against it because they have discriminatory land ownership laws - people who aren’t native descendants can’t own land if I recall correctly.
Who are the people arguing Greenland should be a state? Is anyone? For this piece to work, you should really have someone (Trump? Some random guy on twitter?) actually arguing for it. And no, the “Greenland would demand statehood so that’s implicitly what Trump is talking about” argument is extremely flimsy. Territories exist.
I feel like I covered this in the “Greenland would want to be a state” paragraph — if you’re talking about Greenland becoming part of the US, you’re talking about statehood. They’re currently full voting members of Denmark; they’re not going to settle for being a non-voting territory. Anyone who thinks you can add Greenland without making them a state hasn’t thought this through.
They've already been subject to American policy for the better part of a century. We literally built a military base in Greenland without Greenlandic or Danish knowledge. In some ways, they've been a non-voting territory of the United States since the end of German occupation.
Personally, I think the likely outcome is that Greenland will continue on its path to independence from Denmark. By 2030, it will be fully "independent" country with no defense except multiple American military bases, an economy based around resource extraction by American companies and a transportation hub that almost exclusively serves Americans. Most stores will accept dollars, even if they have some sort of theoretical different currency. The Dakota oil boom a decade ago caused about 18,000 Americans to move to North Dakota in a single year A similar event could cause 1/3 of Greenland's population to be American born leading to English becoming even more common.
If a relationship is formalized, they could sign something like the Compacts of Free Association like those signed by various small Pacific islands. But my guess is that the US will not feel obligated to enter in any sort of agreement, especially since domestic political discourse (such as this conversation) actually makes it politically advantageous to keep the exploitation of the territory informal and therefore unrestrained.
You’re 100% certain of this? What if we offered every man, woman, and child in Greenland $100,00 cash (costing $6b)? No? What about $1 million each? Maybe the answer is still no, but on what basis have you decided that is the one line in this crazy story that will never be crossed?
There are reasons they might object to being a territory, sure, but you could make all the same argument about why Puerto Rico or Guam would never accept it, and yet there they are, defiantly existing.
Puerto Rico voted 57-43 in favor of statehood this November, so that's how I know they'll "accept" it (it's more like they're asking for it).
Your math is off by a factor of a thousand: Giving everyone in Greenland $100,000 would cost close to $6 trillion, i.e. about the entire annual federal budget. Probably why that hasn't been proposed.
Jeff, none of that is right. First of all, you should read Coleman Hughes on why that referendum is meaningless. But even if Greenland would prefer statehood, that doesn't mean it's impossible they would accept less if it's part of a deal. You don't get to referee how history plays out by treating one preference like it's sacrosanct. Use some imagination. A deal like this would be literally unprecedented.
And no, my math isn't wrong, yours is. 60,000 people times 100,000 is 6 billion.
I was getting here to make just this point. Alternatively, how about we make Greenland just like Micronesia, give up on Puerto Rico and force them to be an independent country whether they like it or not, and give all of DC Except the government buildings back to Virginia, shrinking DC down to just a few square blocks.
The plan you’re describing is very much like DC statehood (the new state would not include the places where the important federal buildings are), and the problem with the “give it to Maryland” plan is that Maryland doesn’t want us.
As a resident of Missouri, between the two options of "give democrats two free Senate votes" or "make Maryland swallow a bucket of suck", I know the only one I'm supporting. Besides. If the part we are discussing is so dysfunctional no one would want it in their state, why should it be it's own state.
For what it's worth, Maryland's antipathy towards retrocession is less about the DC's dysfunction (they're host to Baltimore, after all) and more about the generally dilutive effects a second urban voting center would have on traditional power bases in state politics.
Which, when you think about it, sounds a lot like the practical GOP objections to statehood, just at much smaller scale!
Give it to Idaho for all I care. DC was never meant to be a state. Maybe we can give it to the other fifty in a rotating annual basis. I would view that as more likely to pass through Congress than the "Lets Give Democrats two more votes in the Senate for nothing" plan will be to get past Republicans.
Fun Fact: We bought the (now) US Virgin Islands from Denmark back in 1917 for $25 million. In gold. (At today's prices that much gold would be > $3.2 billion. I'm sure that Jacobin guy can confirm my math.)
Further fun facts: the US Virgin Islands is not a state. You probably knew that. Google gives differing estimates for its population, but the Census Bureau says it was 87,146 in 2020. Google puts the population of Greenland at 56,865.
Maybe we could combine them into a single state? Name it Usedtobedenmark?
"During 1916, the two sides agreed to a sale price of $25,000,000, and the United States accepted a Danish demand for a declaration stating that they would "not object to the Danish Government extending their political and economic interests to the whole of Greenland".[12][18] Although it had a claim on northern Greenland based on explorations by Charles Francis Hall[19] and Robert Peary, the United States decided that the purchase was more important, especially because of the nearby Panama Canal.[20] Historian Bo Lidegaard questions the utility of such a declaration, as the country had never disputed Danish sovereignty"
Greenland! Panama! It's all coming back together again!
The answer is extremely obvious. The United States has 50 states, which is a very nice number. 50 is half of a hundred, it's even, it's 5 tens, and it fits perfectly into neat little rows on the American flag. 51, 52 or 53 on the other hand, these are not only weird numbers, they wouldn't easily fit onto the American flag. At least with four new states, 54 total we could fill in the four offset rows on our current flag, making 9 perfect rows, but unless we're getting Alberta too or something, I don't think that's going to happen. I personally think 55 would be even better, but that's wishful thinking.
This problem could be solved by re-unifying West Virginia and Virginia into one state, and merging the Dakotas into a single state. Everything is on the table!
Annex/add 11 provinces of Canada, 32 states of Mexico, and the 7 countries of Central American, and we're up to an even 100 states of America, with only a teeny tiny land border remaining. We have room for Puerto Rico, the Phillipines, and whomever seems appropriate by condensing a few states with more cows that people, or a few fly-speck new england shouldn't be states. Done and done.
DC was specifically made to not be a state. They have plenty of representation, the entire congress essentially lives there for parts of the year. Maybe let the residents claim Maryland?
Puerto Rican should be a state. Although I don't think they want to be.
We do not have plenty of representation — we have no voting House member, and no senators. I think people in the 50 states would be surprised to learn that their reps actually represent DC just because they live here part of the year.
I don't see the problem with the 23rd amendment, and I don't see why it would make the state's existing 3 electors go away. The amendment just gives DC the number of electors a state would have and says nothing about statehood; the only problem is that DC can't have more electors than the least-populous state, which could be a problem if its population were to grow significantly.
Detaching a small area of DC around federal buildings and making that the new-DC would be worse: the new state would be like a regular state, and new-DC would still have 3 electors. Suddenly, the area around current DC would have 6 electors.
The cleanest solution would be to repeal the 23rd amendment. But that ain't gonna happen. Come to think of it, none of this is going to happen.
So this is a crazy thing. But I have been in favor of an open statehood project for years. Put up applications and let countries vote to join. They’d have to follow the constitution and clean up their courts. But I’m in favor of it. If the people want it and vote for it.
The benefits would be enormous to a majority of countries. (Military, funding, courts, civil rights, a major sports team).
But only if they want it.
Puerto Rico sadly drags its feet out of a sense of national pride I think. Personally I’d throw the gauntlet down. Put a ring on it or move on PR. But that’s up to them.
As for DC. Man that’s a hornets nest. Could it be a state? Sure. I’d just cede the land back to Maryland and Virginia and have the few blocks around the capital be Vatican City.
While we are at it I think it’s time to also split up Texas and California. Too big. Too many votes. And portions of those states have nothing culturally to do with each other. One west coast state also controls a majority of pacific shipping since they own most of the coast. Let them compete for it and we’d all be better off.
Unlike, Puerto Rico and DC, Greenland has abundant natural resources, such as the Helm of Füulkrag, the Blade of Skuulgrimm, and the Amulet of Blørnsgaard.
I think the Amulet of Blørnsgaard was taken by the Nazis, as depicted in Indiana Jones and the Igloo of Thør. It is currently sitting in a vault in Copenhagen.
Everybody needs to stop about DC. It’s too clearly a “my team would have a guaranteed two extra senate seats so therefore the only moral thing to do is give them statehood”. DC was specifically created to NOT be a state, to be a neutral capital of the nation.
Puerto Rico would be awesome though. Greenland too. Hell let’s ask each Canadian province to vote whether they want to join up. Seven new Canadian states! Unless there are more than seven Canadian provinces, in which case there would be more. Or less. Or maybe they’re not called provinces. Still: Montreal is sick, and I love the potential present in huge tracks of land populated mostly by moose and moose-adjacent people, and I just bought an insanely expensive coat for my wife for Christmas called “Canada Goose” or something so don’t tell me that Manitoba isn’t filled with billionaires making money off of the solid-gold winter coat trade
I asked for principled arguments and right away got the naked partisan one. The federal buildings can still be federally administered without denying representation to nearly 700,000 people.
And those 700,000 people can be afforded representation in a way that doesn't also give 2 free Senate seats to one party for the foreseeable future. There's no principled argument why those things need to be treated as a package deal, yet here we are.
There is a principled argument: The people who live in the two places in question -- DC and Maryland -- don't want it. You can't just merge two polities against their will.
Why would you say that only the residents of DC and Maryland are the only people that get a say? All Americans get to decide (through their representatives in Congress) what is admitted as a state. It's a negotiation.
While it's true that Washington and Maryland may not want to merge, it's also true that most other Americans don't want an independent state of DC, just like they don't want the state of Jefferson or five Californias. Someone has to change their mind and it seems like a reasonable compromise is to merge DC with its suburbs instead of creating a unique city-state. Therefore efforts should focus on changing the minds of holdouts in DC and Maryland(like the commentor is attempting), rather than all other Americans(like you are attempting). Maybe retrocession should include some sort of other benefits(e.g. the city of Washington, MD receives some federal funding otherwise provided by the state, DC students get integrated into Fairfax public schools, Old Bay Seasoning gets a college bowl game, etc) to incentivize polities refusing to accept the simplest deal to give DC residents representation by redrawing the state lines of Maryland and/or Virginia. But just insisting on the creation of a new state with 70 square miles has been unproductive for more than a century.
But they don't want it because they consider it a worse deal, practically speaking, than just making DC a state. That's not a principled argument any more than the GOP objecting that DC statehood would be politically bad for them!
My idea for this (probably deeply impractical) is that we make DC a state but in the process we use DC’s original boundaries, meaning that we include Arlington County and Alexandria Virginia. Do that, and suddenly Virginia swings back to being a full swing state, in fact a slightly red-leaning one. This way, DC gets representation, without its power being diluted in the way that would happen if they were added to Maryland. Arlington has to deal with being in a new state, but they now have a lot more power within that state than they ever will within Virginia. Democrats get two guaranteed senate seats in DC, so no net loss if they lose Virginia, and the possibility of netting one or two senate seats if they do well in what’s left of Virginia. Republicans have an advantage at the presidential level going for Virginia’s now-12 electoral votes. Everyone gets something they can take home.
I am, of course, aware this will never ever happen.
Probably the best suggestion (and best comment) that will not get any attention other than this one comment.
I don't think that will happen because if the statehood people acknowledge that their borders could change as part of statehood, they have no principled argument against retrocession. Without that, there's no reason to change the status quo that the status quo would accept.
Is there any principled reason why those people should have less right to two senators than those in Wyoming?
Setting aside that retrocession would provide them with two Senators, the more serious answer is that where the principled objection to DC's current status is the lack of voting representation in Congress, there is no principled reason for *or* against statehood vis-a-vis retrocession, and everyone's positioning between the two is pretty transparently based on what they perceive the practical effects would be.
Yes. They would likely swing democratic. Oh wait, you said principled. Never mind.
Fairness is a core American value.
The people of the Dakotas deserve to have 8 states, Northwest North Dakota, Northeast North Dakota, Southwest North Dakota, Southeast North Dakota, Northwest South Dakota, Northeast South Dakota, Southwest South Dakota, and Southeast South Dakota.
Nobody can provide an argument for why this shouldn't happen other than naked partisanship!
Just do with the populated areas of DC what we did with Alexandria, Virginia: Add their territory to the adjoining state, in this case, Maryland. The Democrats don't get the free Senate seats, but they will get more House seats. The people get to vote in congressional elections without giving an overwhelming advantage to just one political party. That is how a proper political compromise would work.
You complain about partisan arguments but the only reason democrats support making DC and the PR states is partisan. They believe that they will get an electoral advantage. Whereas no one is looking at Greenland from an electoral perspective but from a national security and natural resources perspective. Heck, Greenland would likely lean for democrats.
One perspective is looking out for the good of a certain party, the other for the good of the nation.
PR as a state would be so incredible. It could become the Hawaii of the East Coast. Lets hope it happens one day!
700,000 people have taxation without representation. Who cares what it was "created" for, they can be given representation in congress because they are american citizens who pay taxes.
They can be given that representation if they were to say leave the district and go somewhere else. The "NTWOR" from the revolution doesn't really apply in this case. And before you go off or something about "the people who live and work there" just know that "dissolve the residential parts of DC and return them all to Maryland" is a completely acceptable option to me, as well as "lets fire, eliminate or move their headquarters to other states". This isn't complicated and it isn't like the only two choices on option are "status quo" or "statehood". We have lots of other choices that don't involve handing Democrats two free votes in the Senate. If the federal government has problems hiring IRS officials because they don't want to live in Maryland, more than half of the country will smile in delight.
The American colonists could have also gotten representation by moving to England.
13 colonies stretched along the eastern seaboard of a continent separated from England by an ocean having no representation is not the same situation at all. This is not an injustice. This is the same as complaints about fair representation in the Senate. If you want the thrill of your senate vote being worth 7x mine it is very easy to move to North Dakota. If you’re dying for a congressperson move across the bridge, convince Maryland to annex you, whatever you like. This doesn’t require statehood.
We already debated this issue starting in 1776 and ending several years later with the surrender of the English. It was in all the papers. Or as I read it better described once.
"Tssukan-san says that these Dutchlands - the Netherlands - were vassals of the Spanish king up until a few years ago. Is this True?"
"Yes"
"Therefore the Netherlands - your allies - are in a state of Rebellion against their rightful king?"
"They're fighting against the Spaniard, yes. But - "
"Isnt that rebellion, Yes or No?"
"Yes but there are mitigating circumstances. Serious miti - "
"There are no 'mitigating circumstances' when it comes to rebellion against a sovereign lord."
"Unless you win"
Toronaga looked intently at him. Then laughed uproariously. He said something to Hiro-Matsu through his laughter and Hiro-matsu nodded.
"Yes Mister Foreigner with the impossible name, yes. You named the one mitigating factor." Another chuckle, then the humor vanished as suddenly as it begun. "Will you win?"
James Clavell, Ch 11, Shogun.
This is an issue of apples. The line for oranges forms somewhere over there.
If what you care about is the plight of those poor, unrepresented Washingtonians having to settle for the highest per capita incomes in the country, you can just retrocede the residential parts of the city to Maryland.
The fact that Dems are anathema to that proposal gives away the game.
You cannot reprocess parts of the city to Maryland because Maryland doesn’t want it and the federal government wouldn’t allow it.
OK but the federal government won't allow DC to become a separate state right now either. If we're positing a change to the political status quo regardless, seems kind of arbitrary to treat the naked self-interest of Baltimore machine politicians as sacrosanct while blithely dismissing the naked self-interest of flyover state senators.
As a resident Washingtonian, I would just like to say I'd much rather focus on the taxation than the representation. DC statehood would not actually affect my day-to-day life since it would just increase democrats' ability to federalize ever-more issues, so I'd happily take an exemption from federal taxes instead.
I think if Washingtonians were offered exemption from federal taxation in exchange for no statehood, we just might take that. Notably, this deal has not been offered.
DC was specifically created to NOT be a state, to be a neutral capital of the nation.
That misunderstanding could be corrected and aster the Civil Rights Acts, the issue of it being a Slave/non-Slave state is no longer relevant.
And Maryland/Virginia Dems in particular don't actually want to give DC full statehood! Every time it comes up, their support for the idea is contingent on some "solution" for the fact that DC would be able to start taxing people who commute into the city for work (i.e., a sovereign taxing power enjoyed by every other state in the nation).
If DC wants statehood, Give it back to Maryland.
This appears to be the go-to talking point. The problem is that neither the people being “given” nor the people “getting” (nor the federal government) want that.
Anyone who pretends like the DC statehood issue is a binary choice between "Status Quo" and "Statehood", is making a partisan argument in the sheep's clothing and I will never pretend otherwise.
If this choice is not binary, then please propose a workable solution.
(don't say "give it to Maryland" -- neither DC nor Maryland want that)
I don’t want to eat vegetable. Doesn’t mean they aren’t good for me.
(don't say "give it to Maryland" -- neither DC nor Maryland want that)
That is why this is the perfect solution.
Honestly, I don't know enough about the economics of Washington DC to see how it would work. Could DC be a state knowing they can get no property tax from the federal government? I think DC is too small to be a state on its own. You would need to pull in both Maryland and Virginia suburbs to make it economically viable. And I'm betting no one wants that either.
You seem to be omitting the fact that pushing a solution that voters in both polities reject is also nakedly partisan.
I'm not omitting jack. Making DC a state is a partisan solution to a problem with numerous other partisan solutions. If the people who live in the one constitutionally disenfranchised jurisdiction in the country want to vote for a state government there are lots of other ways to give that to them. Making DC a part of Hawaii is just one of them. If DC isn't going to be DC then it doesn't need to exist.
From Jim Newell
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/01/trump-greenland-why-don-jr-denmark.html
More likely, though, [Trump] just wants [Greenland] because it would be cool. And as much as he makes the national security arguments … well, we’ve all studied this guy’s brain for a decade now. We think we know why he’s really interested in it.
It’s because Greenland looks really, really big on the Mercator projection.
Greenland is not small. We would never disrespect Greenland by calling it small. But it’s not as big as it looks, flattened out, on the Mercator projection. It is not roughly the same size as Africa. It is my belief, however, that Trump does not know this and believes that it is the size of Africa, which makes him fixated on it enough to threaten war—trade war or shooting war—with a NATO ally over its control.
D.C. should be a State because of two words" "Bad" and "Brains".
This is the correct argument.
DC does not have the responsibilities of statehood with none of the benefits. DC is ground zero for the federal gravy train, meaning its benefits are vastly, disproportionately inflated compared to other US territories and states. The reason you pay the highest per-capita in federal taxes is not because you are unfairly taxed; it’s because you are unfairly compensated by virtue of proximity to an unaccountable federal bureaucracy and contracting system that hands out sinecures and patronages like door prizes.
As someone with a security clearance, the only reason I haven’t given up my senate vote yet is because I love my state. The existence of dumb reasons against DC statehood don’t negate the founders’ good reasons against it, reasons that are more true today than they were when congress was fleeing violence in Philadelphia.
Many federal buildings are in states (including many in northern VA, as the commenter below me points out), and this is just paternalism: “You’ve got a pretty good deal, I’d like it if I were you.” The residents of DC were actually the only ones NOT involved in the creation of this “gravy train” because we’re the only ones who don’t have congressional representation.
"DC is ground zero for the federal gravy train"
The Pentagon is in Arlington, and Northern Virginia residents don't even have to forego congressional representation to get their turn at the trough.
Most of the defense contractors are outside of the city too.
Right, that's the obvious alternative to DC statehood: adjacent-state annexation, which has historical precedent and would not piss off senate Republicans.
I haven't looked at the figures - you are saying that DC residents earn more than residents of other major American metropolitan areas, where the highly educated and their well paying jobs tend to congregate?
Right. DC and the DC metro area as a whole do not have the Silicon Valley tech sector or the NYC tri-state/Wall Street financial sector. Their industries are government and defense in particular, so my argument is that proximity to federal power and money is DC's unique leverage versus other large metropolitan areas full of well-educated knowledge workers, and this is pretty much exactly what was predicted when DC was initially established as an independent district governed by congress. This is not really a great argument against DC statehood, more a point against why most Americans from other parts of the country should feel sorry for DC's lack of direct representation in the congress.
Guam also has a higher population than Greenland. Don't they deserve to be part of the convo?
Good point — if you bring Greenland in, hard to deny Guam.
(FWIW I don’t think Greenland is happening)
I think people in Guam (idk the demonym) vote against it because they have discriminatory land ownership laws - people who aren’t native descendants can’t own land if I recall correctly.
That is American Samoa.
You’re right! I was confused
Great piece. Small typo: I think you mean “anti-Danish sentiment” not “anti-Dutch.”
Changed, thank you!
But they’re delicious!?!
Who are the people arguing Greenland should be a state? Is anyone? For this piece to work, you should really have someone (Trump? Some random guy on twitter?) actually arguing for it. And no, the “Greenland would demand statehood so that’s implicitly what Trump is talking about” argument is extremely flimsy. Territories exist.
I feel like I covered this in the “Greenland would want to be a state” paragraph — if you’re talking about Greenland becoming part of the US, you’re talking about statehood. They’re currently full voting members of Denmark; they’re not going to settle for being a non-voting territory. Anyone who thinks you can add Greenland without making them a state hasn’t thought this through.
They've already been subject to American policy for the better part of a century. We literally built a military base in Greenland without Greenlandic or Danish knowledge. In some ways, they've been a non-voting territory of the United States since the end of German occupation.
Personally, I think the likely outcome is that Greenland will continue on its path to independence from Denmark. By 2030, it will be fully "independent" country with no defense except multiple American military bases, an economy based around resource extraction by American companies and a transportation hub that almost exclusively serves Americans. Most stores will accept dollars, even if they have some sort of theoretical different currency. The Dakota oil boom a decade ago caused about 18,000 Americans to move to North Dakota in a single year A similar event could cause 1/3 of Greenland's population to be American born leading to English becoming even more common.
If a relationship is formalized, they could sign something like the Compacts of Free Association like those signed by various small Pacific islands. But my guess is that the US will not feel obligated to enter in any sort of agreement, especially since domestic political discourse (such as this conversation) actually makes it politically advantageous to keep the exploitation of the territory informal and therefore unrestrained.
You’re 100% certain of this? What if we offered every man, woman, and child in Greenland $100,00 cash (costing $6b)? No? What about $1 million each? Maybe the answer is still no, but on what basis have you decided that is the one line in this crazy story that will never be crossed?
There are reasons they might object to being a territory, sure, but you could make all the same argument about why Puerto Rico or Guam would never accept it, and yet there they are, defiantly existing.
Puerto Rico voted 57-43 in favor of statehood this November, so that's how I know they'll "accept" it (it's more like they're asking for it).
Your math is off by a factor of a thousand: Giving everyone in Greenland $100,000 would cost close to $6 trillion, i.e. about the entire annual federal budget. Probably why that hasn't been proposed.
Jeff, none of that is right. First of all, you should read Coleman Hughes on why that referendum is meaningless. But even if Greenland would prefer statehood, that doesn't mean it's impossible they would accept less if it's part of a deal. You don't get to referee how history plays out by treating one preference like it's sacrosanct. Use some imagination. A deal like this would be literally unprecedented.
And no, my math isn't wrong, yours is. 60,000 people times 100,000 is 6 billion.
Jeff, I think you need to check your math again. This guy was right the first time.
I was getting here to make just this point. Alternatively, how about we make Greenland just like Micronesia, give up on Puerto Rico and force them to be an independent country whether they like it or not, and give all of DC Except the government buildings back to Virginia, shrinking DC down to just a few square blocks.
No more new states.
The plan you’re describing is very much like DC statehood (the new state would not include the places where the important federal buildings are), and the problem with the “give it to Maryland” plan is that Maryland doesn’t want us.
As a resident of Missouri, between the two options of "give democrats two free Senate votes" or "make Maryland swallow a bucket of suck", I know the only one I'm supporting. Besides. If the part we are discussing is so dysfunctional no one would want it in their state, why should it be it's own state.
This is not a binary choice.
How do we "make" Maryland take DC? Please describe that process.
Though I appreciate that you're admitting that you simply want to disenfranchise nearly 700,000 people for purely partisan reasons.
For what it's worth, Maryland's antipathy towards retrocession is less about the DC's dysfunction (they're host to Baltimore, after all) and more about the generally dilutive effects a second urban voting center would have on traditional power bases in state politics.
Which, when you think about it, sounds a lot like the practical GOP objections to statehood, just at much smaller scale!
You mean Maryland. The Virginia part of DC (mostly now Arlington and Alexandria) was given back to Virginia in 1846.
Give it to Idaho for all I care. DC was never meant to be a state. Maybe we can give it to the other fifty in a rotating annual basis. I would view that as more likely to pass through Congress than the "Lets Give Democrats two more votes in the Senate for nothing" plan will be to get past Republicans.
Fun Fact: We bought the (now) US Virgin Islands from Denmark back in 1917 for $25 million. In gold. (At today's prices that much gold would be > $3.2 billion. I'm sure that Jacobin guy can confirm my math.)
Further fun facts: the US Virgin Islands is not a state. You probably knew that. Google gives differing estimates for its population, but the Census Bureau says it was 87,146 in 2020. Google puts the population of Greenland at 56,865.
Maybe we could combine them into a single state? Name it Usedtobedenmark?
Even more fun fact, per Wikipedia:
"During 1916, the two sides agreed to a sale price of $25,000,000, and the United States accepted a Danish demand for a declaration stating that they would "not object to the Danish Government extending their political and economic interests to the whole of Greenland".[12][18] Although it had a claim on northern Greenland based on explorations by Charles Francis Hall[19] and Robert Peary, the United States decided that the purchase was more important, especially because of the nearby Panama Canal.[20] Historian Bo Lidegaard questions the utility of such a declaration, as the country had never disputed Danish sovereignty"
Greenland! Panama! It's all coming back together again!
The answer is extremely obvious. The United States has 50 states, which is a very nice number. 50 is half of a hundred, it's even, it's 5 tens, and it fits perfectly into neat little rows on the American flag. 51, 52 or 53 on the other hand, these are not only weird numbers, they wouldn't easily fit onto the American flag. At least with four new states, 54 total we could fill in the four offset rows on our current flag, making 9 perfect rows, but unless we're getting Alberta too or something, I don't think that's going to happen. I personally think 55 would be even better, but that's wishful thinking.
I actually covered the “awkward number of stars” question when I wrote about statehood a few years ago (https://imightbewrong.substack.com/p/the-case-for-dc-statehood-should). The situation is actually way better than people think:
51 states: 3 rows of 9, 3 rows of 8
52 states: 4 rows of 7, 4 rows of 6
53 states: 4 rows of 8, 3 rows of 7
This problem could be solved by re-unifying West Virginia and Virginia into one state, and merging the Dakotas into a single state. Everything is on the table!
All states should be exactly the same size and they should all be perfect squares: https://www.reddit.com/r/imaginarymaps/comments/efg854/map_of_the_usa_with_more_equallysized_states/
This is the longest our country has ever gone without admitting a new state. By a lot. I don’t think “50 is nice” is a good reason.
Annex/add 11 provinces of Canada, 32 states of Mexico, and the 7 countries of Central American, and we're up to an even 100 states of America, with only a teeny tiny land border remaining. We have room for Puerto Rico, the Phillipines, and whomever seems appropriate by condensing a few states with more cows that people, or a few fly-speck new england shouldn't be states. Done and done.
DC was specifically made to not be a state. They have plenty of representation, the entire congress essentially lives there for parts of the year. Maybe let the residents claim Maryland?
Puerto Rican should be a state. Although I don't think they want to be.
Samoa should also be in the conversation.
How about making Greenland a part of Maine.
We do not have plenty of representation — we have no voting House member, and no senators. I think people in the 50 states would be surprised to learn that their reps actually represent DC just because they live here part of the year.
DC hardly gets ignored, and I would be shocked if a city get more tax revenue spent on them than DC.
There's more to government that distribution of tax revenue.
I don't see the problem with the 23rd amendment, and I don't see why it would make the state's existing 3 electors go away. The amendment just gives DC the number of electors a state would have and says nothing about statehood; the only problem is that DC can't have more electors than the least-populous state, which could be a problem if its population were to grow significantly.
Detaching a small area of DC around federal buildings and making that the new-DC would be worse: the new state would be like a regular state, and new-DC would still have 3 electors. Suddenly, the area around current DC would have 6 electors.
The cleanest solution would be to repeal the 23rd amendment. But that ain't gonna happen. Come to think of it, none of this is going to happen.
Greenland doesn’t meet the constitutionally mandated 60,000 people necessary for statehood.
That's not a Constitutional requirement. It was a requirement of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.
So this is a crazy thing. But I have been in favor of an open statehood project for years. Put up applications and let countries vote to join. They’d have to follow the constitution and clean up their courts. But I’m in favor of it. If the people want it and vote for it.
The benefits would be enormous to a majority of countries. (Military, funding, courts, civil rights, a major sports team).
But only if they want it.
Puerto Rico sadly drags its feet out of a sense of national pride I think. Personally I’d throw the gauntlet down. Put a ring on it or move on PR. But that’s up to them.
As for DC. Man that’s a hornets nest. Could it be a state? Sure. I’d just cede the land back to Maryland and Virginia and have the few blocks around the capital be Vatican City.
While we are at it I think it’s time to also split up Texas and California. Too big. Too many votes. And portions of those states have nothing culturally to do with each other. One west coast state also controls a majority of pacific shipping since they own most of the coast. Let them compete for it and we’d all be better off.
Well, apparently we will know if Jeff ever succumbs to Audience Capture when he writes the article "Why DC Shouldn't Become a State, With Jokes".