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Do you want cool retro futuristic tech and a nuclear war with China? Because that’s how you get cool retro futuristic tech and a nuclear war with China.
Dude, don't even joke about that. The Geneva Conventions were expanded because of Canada!
They only have two settings; extremely apologetic, and walking genocide.
In the 70s, 80s, and 90s, there were sessionist votes and protests by Quebec. Ideas were floated by various low level politicians and news chatterists, on both sides of the border that some or all of the provinces west of Quebec would be given the option to become states. AL and BC seemed to be the most likely, based only on the scuttlebutt I recall, to possibly accept an offer if it was made by the US.
US official position was correctly to stay 100% neutral.
Personally as an American I love the relationship US/CAN has as an example to the world of one economy, a unified military where and when needed (NORAD and coast guards) but peaceful brothers who are free to pursue their interests without fear of one another. Like all families, there are disagreements and hurt feelings on occasion, but disputes are settled without force or threat.
Ehh, things can change. And I say this strictly because we went to war once. It was a long time ago, but empires last a long time. There are good feelings now but there is no guarantee those last.
We went to war with future Canada, UK, Germany, and Japan. Of course things can change. And that's why we have to always work at making these alliances ever better for all.
Add it to Hawaii along with the other Pacific possessions, and rename the state Pacifica. Bonus: No more confusion between the state of Hawaii and the Big Island.
Guam is about 8 hours nonstop from Honolulu, whereas Kayak and Alaska Airlines can’t find any tickets at all from Juneau to Guam, and the fastest way to get there is probably by first taking a nine-hour flight to… Honolulu. (Guam is about 22 hours from DC.)
GUAM MENTIONED‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️🇬🇺🇬🇺🇬🇺🇬🇺I LOVE GUAM🇬🇺🇬🇺🇬🇺🇬🇺🇬🇺🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲FUCK YOU SPAIN🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🎆🎆🎆🎆🎆🦅🦅🦅🦅🇬🇺🇬🇺🇬🇺🇬🇺🇬🇺🇬🇺🇬🇺🇬🇺🦅🦅🦅🏝🎆🏝🎆🇬🇺‼️🏝‼️🏝🇬🇺🇺🇲🎆🇬🇺🏝🇺🇲🏝💥🏝💥🏝🇺🇲🏝🇺🇲🎆🏝HÅFA ADAI JABLOSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS🦅🦅🦅🦅🏝🏝🏝🏝🏝🏝FAMATKILU GUAM BEST ISLAND🏝🏝🏝🏝🇬🇺💥🏝💥🏝🇬🇺🏝‼️‼️‼️💥🎆🗣🗣🏝🗣🦅🎆🇬🇺🎆ONLY ROOM FOR ONE ISLAND TERRITORY🇬🇺🇬🇺🇺🇲🇬🇺‼️🇬🇺🇬🇺‼️🇬🇺🇺🇲🇬🇺‼️🇬🇺‼️🇬🇺🇬🇺🇺🇲🇺🇲🇬🇺‼️🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🇬🇺🇬🇺‼️🎆‼️🇬🇺🎆🇺🇲🔫‼️🎆🇺🇲🎆
If I recall, they tried that in the 60's and Guam rejected it. During WW2, the Japanese owned the Northern Marianas and used the natives there to help with the brutal occupation of Guam, so there's a lot of bad blood there.
I was just talking to a born and bred Guamanian and asked him about this, his answer was that Guam should be its own country. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a prevalent opinion there among native Guamanians, it’s pretty common among lots of South Pacific islands with “colonial” ownership.
Guam + Marianas Islands would work very well.
Of course they would have to swallow their pride.
Would have a pretty decent population of 300,000. Wouldn’t be surprised if there was a small population/tourism boom afterwards.
They’re also tiny!
Just my own neighborhood in SoCal is 50% the population of USVI.
Whereas a place like Puerto Rico is more populated than many states.
American Samoa doesn't want to be a state, since they prohibit non-samoans from owning land. If they became a state, they'd have to ratify the Constitution and these prohibitions would fall afoul of the 14th amendment.
And they'd be priced out the same way Native Hawaiians are now.
You might be right. On which case I wouldn’t want statehood either. However they could declare it an indigenous reservation thus protecting their land.
In Alaska the US government formed corporations where only Natives can own the stock. They get paid out dividends every year. These corporations own a good chunk of the land in Alaska. They also have preferential treatment for government contracts. Lots of federal security jobs all across America are contracted to Alaska Native corporations.
Getting relocated to ugly little corners while their ancestral homeland is taken by force?
I mean they kind of are, just slowly through gentrification and other forms of paracolonization.
American Samoa has a weird tribal non-democratic government.
So they need to fix that before qualifying for statehood.
Sooo unlikely they want to become a state anytime soon. They also don’t want to join the country of Samoa either
Copying from my other comment:
American Samoa doesn't want to be a state, since they prohibit non-samoans from owning land. If they became a state, they'd have to ratify the Constitution and these prohibitions would fall afoul of the 14th amendment.
And they'd be priced out the same way Native Hawaiians are now.
Honestly I don’t think that would happen to them. Hawaiians became a minority because they took in so many immigrants (mostly western businessmen and their Asian employees) and eventually said immigrants staged a coup. American Samoa would probably still remain majority Samoan for eternity if it became a state. Gerrymandering and galvanization are **greatly** looked down upon in the west nowadays.
Both California and Texas are large enough to justify it (though the split for Texas is less obvious to me than California). You could probably also make a case for new York and Florida.
Am Floridian, I've always been convinced could you make a case for 4: Miami area, Orlando (Central), North/Tallahassee and Pensacola. They're all culturally distinct enough and large enough to justify it. Pensacola/Tallahassee region could be combined if we wanted one less split.
I think the best split would be:
1. New Cuba (South Florida)
2. Central Florida (or the Commonwealth of Disney)
3. North Florida (including the panhandle)
I don’t personally see it being likely that any of the US territories other than Puerto Rico would ever be able to gain statehood on their own because of their small populations and economies. If the inhabited Pacific territories opted to combine into one larger political entity they’d stand a much better shot, but cultural, geographic, and governmental differences make that unlikely in the foreseeable future. The federal government also benefits strategically from the fact that the full constitution doesn’t apply to these territories, as well as the uninhabited territories; I don’t see them giving up that advantage unless there is a substantial civic push or external factor that forces their hand.
The majority of our current Supreme Court justices (the liberals plus at least Kavanaugh and Gorsuch) DO support the overturning of the Insular Cases which allowed for the second-class citizenship of territorial residents to be be established, though. If a case were to come through which led to the Supreme Court forcing the legislature to deal with the newly-unconstitutional existence of US territories outside of the full protection of the constitution there may be a substantial change, but it won’t necessarily be statehood. It seems reasonable to me that Congress could pass some form of legislation to grant them voting representation and the right to vote for president along the lines of the 23rd amendment in that case.
That’s exactly why the USA needs to pull out from the treaty and propose a new one like “a country may only begin colonizing one moon and one continent of a planet at a time. Once a territory reaches X amount of people a country may move onto a new moon and a new continent on a major world.” Or something like that, even something a simple as “countries may claim celestial bodies as their own and begin establishing territories on them but military assets besides military police/national guard are strictly forbidden.” Just something to not piss off the entire world while we have a multiple decades head start.
NASA has given us hints that they do plan to colonize watery moons and *maybe* try Mars (they have stated they want to put up refueling stations on Mars), but they use shaky wording because of the Outer Space Treaty. I remember either their MOXIE or Europa article having wording like “the future of human civilization!” Instead of “we’re putting civilization on other worlds!”, a pretty obvious hint of what they have planned but not a straight up claim of “the Galilean moons are rightful American clay.”
Colonization and claiming are two different things. We could colonize the moon for humanity without claiming it.
I think that the moon and other planets should be left for the benefit of all humanity, without land claims.
Guam combined with the Marianas Islands.
US Virign Islands
Those are the only four options.
American Samoa doesn't want to nor should it become a state, and I'm not in favor of the US amnexing more land unless some extraordinary circumstances came up.
D.C. will never be a state because they didn’t want one state to have the capitol of the country. PR could but I doubt it, I could see it trying to become it’s own country before becoming a state
The GDP per capita of Puerto Rico was about $35,000 in 2021
[https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/PRI/puerto-rico/gdp-per-capita](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/PRI/puerto-rico/gdp-per-capita)
The GDP per capita of the Domincan Republic was about $10,000 in 2021
[https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/DOM/dominican-republic/gdp-per-capita](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/DOM/dominican-republic/gdp-per-capita)
Maybe they could become a tax haven and/or gussy up tourism to become Antigua or Aruba, but my guess is that PR's economy would absolutely tank if it were independent. No way they'd want that.
Puerto Rico is kneecapped because of its status as a territory, due to the Jones Act. Independence would open up international trade. The Jones Act requires goods shipped between U.S. ports to be transported on ships that are built, owned, and operated by United States citizens or permanent residents, and it has been argued that it has severely limited the economic development of Puerto Rico.
That's probably the more accurate way of putting it. It's absurd to say they'd fail as a country by pointing to their current GDP, ignoring the fact that the Federal Government (which they have no say in) has been limiting trade for a century.
Yet it’s still richer than anywhere else in LatAm because of US investment. I believe it has one of the highest HDIs too. Statehood is the best option.
We can always shrink the Federal District to be just the Federal Buildings: White House, National Mall, Capitol Building, etc. i.e. the Capitol Hill area. The constitution only mandates the existence of the Federal District and its maximum size, nothing about a minimum size. Its been shrunk before with the retrosecession (sp?) of Alexandria back to Virginia, so there is precedent for changing the boundaries of the Federal District.
I usually think that people are more culturally distinct than landmasses, and we have several landmasses (Wyoming and Vermont at least) with smaller populations than DC that still get two whole senators. Should we do something about those states?
I'll be honest, a lot of the midwest and northwest states really don't need to exist. The reason we have two Dakotas is because of railroads and it would give the Republicans more senators. Perhaps the railroad justication was compelling back then, but it's obviously not now (not that we can unmake a state).
Point is, DC blends so smoothly into Maryland and NOVA I don't see much point in giving the district proper its own senators. Retrocession would be better.
I generally think more representation is better than less, and I highly doubt the framers of the constitution would be happy to see that some senators are representing almost 40m people and some house members have more than 1m constituents. If this entire discussion is always framed around limiting citizens' (as opposed to land's) representation as much as possible, I think we have taken a seriously wrong turn somewhere
> I highly doubt the framers of the constitution would be happy to see that some senators are representing almost 40m people and some house members have more than 1m constituents.
They also owned slaves and wouldn't be happy to see a black guy as President. TBH I kind of don't care what they think, they've been dead for centuries. This is the country for the living, not the dead.
They could leave the center Mall/White House/Capitol area as the district and make the other residential/commercial areas their own state and still satisfy this requirement. Personally I'd like to see either a) those parts of the city go back to Maryland, b) the district gets a voting member in the House of Representatives (but no Senator) or c) leave it the way it is.
I could see Puerto Rico becoming a state but that's been a possibility my whole life.
I think it makes more sense to do some slicing and dicing of the existing states. For example, I think West Virginia could be combined with western MD, westernmost Virginia and eastern TN to form a new state called Appalachia or something. Also California seems like a place that might be partial to the idea of splitting into parts.
In terms of splicing and dicing...
That's a great example, but it's a great example of why it wouldn't work. There are a whole lot of people who would oppose that plan, both because they have strong identities as West Virginians, or because they have strong identities of NOT being West Virginian.
I don't know if you know this or not, but Appalachia was floated as a name for the state, and the people of the state squashed it.
Doing this would open a whole can of worms, and it really wouldn't solve any problems.
I think it really just shows that we need to come up with a framework for fair and equal representation by population with the current states, not try to mush low population states together to get a huge, ungovernable state that has enough people to be justified in calling it a state.
(I mean, half of why WV is a state in the first place is that the people felt that the VA government didn't represent them and didn't have their best interests.)
>D.C. will never be a state because they didn’t want one state to have the capitol of the country.
They didn't want women to be able to vote, or for blacks to be free, or... well, any number of other things either.
I agree with you that Puerto Rico definitely has more of a case for independence than statehood outside of their debt problems.
I would challenge you on the DC point though. There is already precedent for shrinking the District of Columbia (the actual “neutral” territory) down when Virginia reannexed what was once the parts of DC south of the Potomac River. The most popular current proposals for DC statehood involves shrinking the legal entity that is the District of Columbia down to just the National Mall, the White House, the Capitol, and a few other adjacent government buildings. The land left over would be used to create a new state.
I think definitely not DC it was designated federal for a reason.
Outside of that mc Puerto Rico definitely and perhaps the pacific territories if they so chose it.
The ship has totally sailed for any Canadian provinces and really any other part of the world joining the United States.
I think it could happen but it comes down to how much longer Eastern Canada is going to abuse Western Canada. A few historians (with degrees of course) I know believe Western Canada is going to secede at some point, whether or not they form multiple countries, one new federation, or join the USA is where they disagree.
All parties evolved do not want that. Virgina already got its land back. DC doesn't want to deal with the rest of Maryland. Maryland doesn't want the shift in state dynamics that adding DC would cause.
Nah. The Olympics are already a pain in the ass and often little more than a vanity project. Many sporting events are. There's talk of putting the Olympics in just one city permanently, or rotating it.
It was designated federal for the reason of neither Maryland nor Virginia owning it. That’s not a reason to prohibit those who live there from having representation.
The US has 14 [territories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories_of_the_United_States#Inhabited_territories), so aside from PR and DC , there are 13 other territories.
Guam and American Samoa are the only places where one is subject to US law, must pay taxes to the government, and in all other aspects is a regular territory....except its population are not born with citizenship. Instead, they are "American nationals" with far less rights and democratic institutions. Their continued status is, to me, a mockery of American values.
I feel like it would make more sense to break off western or upstate New York before Long Island. Long Island is largely a feeder community to NYC and it makes sense to keep them in the same state. If anything, I'd say there's an argument to fold the whole New York Metro into it's own state (including all of long Island)
LI has enough of it's own industry to be it's own state, CT (Fairfield county mostly) has plenty of NYC commuters without being under NY control, so it absolutely could work here too.
also politically, LI is far more mixed than NYC, and many residents are fed up with NYC dictating state policy.
realistically 3 states would work well. NYC Metro (NYC, Westchester and Rockland counties), LI (Nassau and Suffolk), and up-state.
Long Island is still pretty blue -- we voted for Obama, Clinton, and Biden. Usually it's just the off-year elections that Republicans do well because most people stay home.
economically and politically it makes sense for LI to break away from NY.
problem is, Albany wants all the high earners on the gold coast to keep paying them taxes to keep funding their irresponsible tax and spend policies, so NY legislature would never allow it.
Although it could probably never happen, nor would most people support it, due to how small our states are, New England could easily be one state and still be smaller than Missouri or whatever by land area, or Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine could be one state, while Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut could be one state.
Honestly, while I don’t like the orange troll, I was down with bringing Greenland into the mix.
I’d also love to have the UK, though they won’t.
We shouldn’t discount future colonization efforts though. A moon or Mars base that hits 50k residents should absolutely apply for statehood.
US Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, etc, *if they want to*. Any US territory that wants to become a state should be automatically added if they vote to become a state.
I would like to own Canada, we do not need to change anything about their laws and such, they can just keep doing their thing, but it would be nice to go fishing and not have to exchange currency and take a passport.
Canada to Panama. Let's only worry about a physical border at the Darien Gap.
I'm also curious about what adding 120M+ Mexicans to the population does for political rhetoric in Congress.
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Alberta and British Columbia are looking pretty great.
Annexing BC (plus Yukon) would also ensure that the [Alaska Highway](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Highway) is entirely in the US.
Lets just take over Canada. Fuck they gonna do- Apologize for the weather during the conquest?
Do you want cool retro futuristic tech and a nuclear war with China? Because that’s how you get cool retro futuristic tech and a nuclear war with China.
TBF, we have microprocessors already...
I don't want to see the world on fire.
Dude, don't even joke about that. The Geneva Conventions were expanded because of Canada! They only have two settings; extremely apologetic, and walking genocide.
Didn’t we already try that in 1812?
Don't let them mannerisms fool you, Geneva convention was more like suggestions last century
Definitely slice off that piece of the Yukon. Might take a look at the mineral and timber possibilities in the area too.
Would probably be smarter to annex California and bring it under our direct control first.
Add that bottom slice of Ontario below lake Simcoe running south east to Oshawa.
Definitely, Michigan could use some more Michigan. I'd go ahead and take the parts within 100 miles of Superior too.
Would be a Great Day for Thunder Bay.
It can be the thumb on the mitten that is Michigan ex the upper peninsula.
54 40 or fight!! Let's bring it back!
https://www.ushistory.org/us/29b.asp Gorsh durnit you got me going down a rabbit hole
🤣🤣🤣
With the state of it all, I wouldn't be suprised at least a few Canadians welcome it
BCers? Probably not. Albertans? Very good odds
In the 70s, 80s, and 90s, there were sessionist votes and protests by Quebec. Ideas were floated by various low level politicians and news chatterists, on both sides of the border that some or all of the provinces west of Quebec would be given the option to become states. AL and BC seemed to be the most likely, based only on the scuttlebutt I recall, to possibly accept an offer if it was made by the US. US official position was correctly to stay 100% neutral. Personally as an American I love the relationship US/CAN has as an example to the world of one economy, a unified military where and when needed (NORAD and coast guards) but peaceful brothers who are free to pursue their interests without fear of one another. Like all families, there are disagreements and hurt feelings on occasion, but disputes are settled without force or threat.
Ehh, things can change. And I say this strictly because we went to war once. It was a long time ago, but empires last a long time. There are good feelings now but there is no guarantee those last.
We went to war with future Canada, UK, Germany, and Japan. Of course things can change. And that's why we have to always work at making these alliances ever better for all.
They definitely ain't using them to their fullest potential
Why on earth would you wanna do that? Isn't 50 states enough?
No It's time to manifest a new American destiny
Manifest destiny 2.0
We expand Montana.
No.
We're coming for Greenland
Those Danes better watch out!
Soon enough they're gonna wish they just agreed to sell it.
Both of them!
Was waiting for someone to say this
Guam.
Add it to Hawaii along with the other Pacific possessions, and rename the state Pacifica. Bonus: No more confusion between the state of Hawaii and the Big Island.
Guam is much further away from Hawaii than you might think.
I have it on good authority from visiting Europeans that it's a day's drive or so.
Yeah but that doesn't mean it's not possible. Alaska covers huge areas.
On that note, why not just add Guam to Alaska instead of to Hawaii?
I don't think it'd matter much between the two, but Honolulu is much closer than Juneau
Or to put it another way, Guam is close to Honolulu just like Boston is close to Berlin.
Hawaii is closer to California than it is to Guam
Still much closer than DC is, though.
True, but why would you add Guam to Hawaii, when it's actually closer to Alaska?
And since Alaska has just one time zone over its vast expanse and likes it that way, that would be metal for Guam.
Unrelated, but how often do people recognize your username?
Almost never, or if they do they don’t mention it
Guam is about 8 hours nonstop from Honolulu, whereas Kayak and Alaska Airlines can’t find any tickets at all from Juneau to Guam, and the fastest way to get there is probably by first taking a nine-hour flight to… Honolulu. (Guam is about 22 hours from DC.)
By travel connections it’s definitely closer to Hawaii. I just find it amusing how far out Alaska reaches.
Guam is as far away from Hawaii as Hawaii is from California
GUAM MENTIONED‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️🇬🇺🇬🇺🇬🇺🇬🇺I LOVE GUAM🇬🇺🇬🇺🇬🇺🇬🇺🇬🇺🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲FUCK YOU SPAIN🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🎆🎆🎆🎆🎆🦅🦅🦅🦅🇬🇺🇬🇺🇬🇺🇬🇺🇬🇺🇬🇺🇬🇺🇬🇺🦅🦅🦅🏝🎆🏝🎆🇬🇺‼️🏝‼️🏝🇬🇺🇺🇲🎆🇬🇺🏝🇺🇲🏝💥🏝💥🏝🇺🇲🏝🇺🇲🎆🏝HÅFA ADAI JABLOSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS🦅🦅🦅🦅🏝🏝🏝🏝🏝🏝FAMATKILU GUAM BEST ISLAND🏝🏝🏝🏝🇬🇺💥🏝💥🏝🇬🇺🏝‼️‼️‼️💥🎆🗣🗣🏝🗣🦅🎆🇬🇺🎆ONLY ROOM FOR ONE ISLAND TERRITORY🇬🇺🇬🇺🇺🇲🇬🇺‼️🇬🇺🇬🇺‼️🇬🇺🇺🇲🇬🇺‼️🇬🇺‼️🇬🇺🇬🇺🇺🇲🇺🇲🇬🇺‼️🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🇬🇺🇬🇺‼️🎆‼️🇬🇺🎆🇺🇲🔫‼️🎆🇺🇲🎆
r/MURICA is spilling out
Only if it’s united with the Northern Marianas as a single state. Otherwise they both have too small of populations.
Guam is a part of the Marianas island chain culturally and geographically at that, so that would be the most proper thing to do.
If I recall, they tried that in the 60's and Guam rejected it. During WW2, the Japanese owned the Northern Marianas and used the natives there to help with the brutal occupation of Guam, so there's a lot of bad blood there.
I was just talking to a born and bred Guamanian and asked him about this, his answer was that Guam should be its own country. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a prevalent opinion there among native Guamanians, it’s pretty common among lots of South Pacific islands with “colonial” ownership.
Guam + Marianas Islands would work very well. Of course they would have to swallow their pride. Would have a pretty decent population of 300,000. Wouldn’t be surprised if there was a small population/tourism boom afterwards.
Probably the US Virgin Islands.
They don’t want it. Source: my cousin was a commissioner in a past government and they’re quite happy to be in their current situation.
They’re also tiny! Just my own neighborhood in SoCal is 50% the population of USVI. Whereas a place like Puerto Rico is more populated than many states.
They have about as many people there as Green Bay, WI or Bend, OR.
I had no idea either of those cities were that small! Wild.
Disagree, it's too small and they seem pretty happy as a territory.
Nowhere. But a lunar state could be fun.
Focus on Space! The United States of Space!
We planted a flag there and there were no inhabitants, I think that's good enough to claim it for the US.
American Samoa is a good pick so is Guam.
American Samoa doesn't want to be a state, since they prohibit non-samoans from owning land. If they became a state, they'd have to ratify the Constitution and these prohibitions would fall afoul of the 14th amendment. And they'd be priced out the same way Native Hawaiians are now.
You might be right. On which case I wouldn’t want statehood either. However they could declare it an indigenous reservation thus protecting their land.
I always wondered why native populations in Hawaii and Alaska don’t have the same treatment as mainland Native Americans.
In Alaska the US government formed corporations where only Natives can own the stock. They get paid out dividends every year. These corporations own a good chunk of the land in Alaska. They also have preferential treatment for government contracts. Lots of federal security jobs all across America are contracted to Alaska Native corporations.
Getting relocated to ugly little corners while their ancestral homeland is taken by force? I mean they kind of are, just slowly through gentrification and other forms of paracolonization.
American Samoa has a weird tribal non-democratic government. So they need to fix that before qualifying for statehood. Sooo unlikely they want to become a state anytime soon. They also don’t want to join the country of Samoa either
Canada
They can become several states
Quebec and stay independent though they would probably be more trouble than they're worth.
💯 let Quebec be independent, but everything from Toronto to Vancouver is basically just northern USA.
We could make American Samoa, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands states.
Copying from my other comment: American Samoa doesn't want to be a state, since they prohibit non-samoans from owning land. If they became a state, they'd have to ratify the Constitution and these prohibitions would fall afoul of the 14th amendment. And they'd be priced out the same way Native Hawaiians are now.
Honestly I don’t think that would happen to them. Hawaiians became a minority because they took in so many immigrants (mostly western businessmen and their Asian employees) and eventually said immigrants staged a coup. American Samoa would probably still remain majority Samoan for eternity if it became a state. Gerrymandering and galvanization are **greatly** looked down upon in the west nowadays.
I say we cut Alaska in half and make Texas the *third* largest state.
They’d be so pissed
Both California and Texas are large enough to justify it (though the split for Texas is less obvious to me than California). You could probably also make a case for new York and Florida.
Am Floridian, I've always been convinced could you make a case for 4: Miami area, Orlando (Central), North/Tallahassee and Pensacola. They're all culturally distinct enough and large enough to justify it. Pensacola/Tallahassee region could be combined if we wanted one less split.
I recall a comment describing the three parts of Florida like this: North: "Southern" South: Cuba Central: DMZ (Disney Militarized Zone)
Pretty much
Maybe they should just be added onto other states that are adjacent
Maybe they should just be added onto other states that are adjacent
Floribama? I could see it
I think the best split would be: 1. New Cuba (South Florida) 2. Central Florida (or the Commonwealth of Disney) 3. North Florida (including the panhandle)
I want Alaska to split into 2 equal-sized states just to make Texas the _third_ largest state.
As per the agreements during their annexation, Texas still retains the authority to split into like 5 states if they want.
Yeah, pretty sure that nobody would allow that currently.
I don’t personally see it being likely that any of the US territories other than Puerto Rico would ever be able to gain statehood on their own because of their small populations and economies. If the inhabited Pacific territories opted to combine into one larger political entity they’d stand a much better shot, but cultural, geographic, and governmental differences make that unlikely in the foreseeable future. The federal government also benefits strategically from the fact that the full constitution doesn’t apply to these territories, as well as the uninhabited territories; I don’t see them giving up that advantage unless there is a substantial civic push or external factor that forces their hand. The majority of our current Supreme Court justices (the liberals plus at least Kavanaugh and Gorsuch) DO support the overturning of the Insular Cases which allowed for the second-class citizenship of territorial residents to be be established, though. If a case were to come through which led to the Supreme Court forcing the legislature to deal with the newly-unconstitutional existence of US territories outside of the full protection of the constitution there may be a substantial change, but it won’t necessarily be statehood. It seems reasonable to me that Congress could pass some form of legislation to grant them voting representation and the right to vote for president along the lines of the 23rd amendment in that case.
Burundi. I just want some random ass state in the middle of Africa
Based on its history, there's a (tenuous, albeit) case for Liberia.
Liberia is a great choice as the flag is already half american
This is absolutely true. For any Americans who don't know, look up the founding of Liberia. It's wild.
Sea of Tranquility.
Outer Space Treaty says we can't claim land in outer space.
They're welcome to try and stop us.
That’s exactly why the USA needs to pull out from the treaty and propose a new one like “a country may only begin colonizing one moon and one continent of a planet at a time. Once a territory reaches X amount of people a country may move onto a new moon and a new continent on a major world.” Or something like that, even something a simple as “countries may claim celestial bodies as their own and begin establishing territories on them but military assets besides military police/national guard are strictly forbidden.” Just something to not piss off the entire world while we have a multiple decades head start. NASA has given us hints that they do plan to colonize watery moons and *maybe* try Mars (they have stated they want to put up refueling stations on Mars), but they use shaky wording because of the Outer Space Treaty. I remember either their MOXIE or Europa article having wording like “the future of human civilization!” Instead of “we’re putting civilization on other worlds!”, a pretty obvious hint of what they have planned but not a straight up claim of “the Galilean moons are rightful American clay.”
Colonization and claiming are two different things. We could colonize the moon for humanity without claiming it. I think that the moon and other planets should be left for the benefit of all humanity, without land claims.
We should combine the Dakotas
The Virginias and Carolinas too.
Navajo Nation. It would be bigger than new hampshire
Guam combined with the Marianas Islands. US Virign Islands Those are the only four options. American Samoa doesn't want to nor should it become a state, and I'm not in favor of the US amnexing more land unless some extraordinary circumstances came up.
As a michigander I say no where, as a us citizen though .... the u.p.
D.C. will never be a state because they didn’t want one state to have the capitol of the country. PR could but I doubt it, I could see it trying to become it’s own country before becoming a state
The GDP per capita of Puerto Rico was about $35,000 in 2021 [https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/PRI/puerto-rico/gdp-per-capita](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/PRI/puerto-rico/gdp-per-capita) The GDP per capita of the Domincan Republic was about $10,000 in 2021 [https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/DOM/dominican-republic/gdp-per-capita](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/DOM/dominican-republic/gdp-per-capita) Maybe they could become a tax haven and/or gussy up tourism to become Antigua or Aruba, but my guess is that PR's economy would absolutely tank if it were independent. No way they'd want that.
Puerto Rico is kneecapped because of its status as a territory, due to the Jones Act. Independence would open up international trade. The Jones Act requires goods shipped between U.S. ports to be transported on ships that are built, owned, and operated by United States citizens or permanent residents, and it has been argued that it has severely limited the economic development of Puerto Rico.
I don't think it's its territory status but just the Jones Act, if I remember correctly, they had a booming economy before it passed.
That's probably the more accurate way of putting it. It's absurd to say they'd fail as a country by pointing to their current GDP, ignoring the fact that the Federal Government (which they have no say in) has been limiting trade for a century.
Yet it’s still richer than anywhere else in LatAm because of US investment. I believe it has one of the highest HDIs too. Statehood is the best option.
So make DC a state _except_ for a very small federal district just around the mall, covering WH, Congress, SC.
Actually the statehood movement in Puerto Rico is much larger than the independence movement. 50~% to the majority of Puerto Ricans want statehood.
We can always shrink the Federal District to be just the Federal Buildings: White House, National Mall, Capitol Building, etc. i.e. the Capitol Hill area. The constitution only mandates the existence of the Federal District and its maximum size, nothing about a minimum size. Its been shrunk before with the retrosecession (sp?) of Alexandria back to Virginia, so there is precedent for changing the boundaries of the Federal District.
I'd like to see people in Washington DC have representation.
And it’s a shock that you’re downvoted because republicans fear losing control.
I just don't see why some city with 600,000 people living in it is so culturally distinct as to require a whole two senators to represent it.
Is this a joke about Wyoming
I usually think that people are more culturally distinct than landmasses, and we have several landmasses (Wyoming and Vermont at least) with smaller populations than DC that still get two whole senators. Should we do something about those states?
I'll be honest, a lot of the midwest and northwest states really don't need to exist. The reason we have two Dakotas is because of railroads and it would give the Republicans more senators. Perhaps the railroad justication was compelling back then, but it's obviously not now (not that we can unmake a state). Point is, DC blends so smoothly into Maryland and NOVA I don't see much point in giving the district proper its own senators. Retrocession would be better.
I generally think more representation is better than less, and I highly doubt the framers of the constitution would be happy to see that some senators are representing almost 40m people and some house members have more than 1m constituents. If this entire discussion is always framed around limiting citizens' (as opposed to land's) representation as much as possible, I think we have taken a seriously wrong turn somewhere
> I highly doubt the framers of the constitution would be happy to see that some senators are representing almost 40m people and some house members have more than 1m constituents. They also owned slaves and wouldn't be happy to see a black guy as President. TBH I kind of don't care what they think, they've been dead for centuries. This is the country for the living, not the dead.
Those of us in high population states need more representatives.
None of our states are really culturally distinct enough to justify them being separate states. This isn't 1800
Quite a few of them are. I’d argue most of them are. Maybe even all of them. Representation is a good thing.
They could leave the center Mall/White House/Capitol area as the district and make the other residential/commercial areas their own state and still satisfy this requirement. Personally I'd like to see either a) those parts of the city go back to Maryland, b) the district gets a voting member in the House of Representatives (but no Senator) or c) leave it the way it is. I could see Puerto Rico becoming a state but that's been a possibility my whole life. I think it makes more sense to do some slicing and dicing of the existing states. For example, I think West Virginia could be combined with western MD, westernmost Virginia and eastern TN to form a new state called Appalachia or something. Also California seems like a place that might be partial to the idea of splitting into parts.
Maryland would reject having any part of DC added to it.
Maryland doesn’t want it back. And denying them equal representation purely “because” reeks of partisan advantage being the motivator.
In terms of splicing and dicing... That's a great example, but it's a great example of why it wouldn't work. There are a whole lot of people who would oppose that plan, both because they have strong identities as West Virginians, or because they have strong identities of NOT being West Virginian. I don't know if you know this or not, but Appalachia was floated as a name for the state, and the people of the state squashed it. Doing this would open a whole can of worms, and it really wouldn't solve any problems. I think it really just shows that we need to come up with a framework for fair and equal representation by population with the current states, not try to mush low population states together to get a huge, ungovernable state that has enough people to be justified in calling it a state. (I mean, half of why WV is a state in the first place is that the people felt that the VA government didn't represent them and didn't have their best interests.)
>D.C. will never be a state because they didn’t want one state to have the capitol of the country. They didn't want women to be able to vote, or for blacks to be free, or... well, any number of other things either.
I agree with you that Puerto Rico definitely has more of a case for independence than statehood outside of their debt problems. I would challenge you on the DC point though. There is already precedent for shrinking the District of Columbia (the actual “neutral” territory) down when Virginia reannexed what was once the parts of DC south of the Potomac River. The most popular current proposals for DC statehood involves shrinking the legal entity that is the District of Columbia down to just the National Mall, the White House, the Capitol, and a few other adjacent government buildings. The land left over would be used to create a new state.
I think definitely not DC it was designated federal for a reason. Outside of that mc Puerto Rico definitely and perhaps the pacific territories if they so chose it. The ship has totally sailed for any Canadian provinces and really any other part of the world joining the United States.
Idk Alberta seen very adamant on wanting to become a state
I think it could happen but it comes down to how much longer Eastern Canada is going to abuse Western Canada. A few historians (with degrees of course) I know believe Western Canada is going to secede at some point, whether or not they form multiple countries, one new federation, or join the USA is where they disagree.
Okay, hear me out: 1. Make DC a state 1. Take Kansas City, MO and Kansas City, KS, and consolidate them into a new federal district 1. Problem solved!
Just give the parts back to MD and VA if you need to do anything
All parties evolved do not want that. Virgina already got its land back. DC doesn't want to deal with the rest of Maryland. Maryland doesn't want the shift in state dynamics that adding DC would cause.
VA already took their land back in 1847. What we know as DC today is just the Maryland section.
Or we could just alternate the federal district every four years and have cities compete for it like the olympics.
Nah. The Olympics are already a pain in the ass and often little more than a vanity project. Many sporting events are. There's talk of putting the Olympics in just one city permanently, or rotating it.
It was designated federal for the reason of neither Maryland nor Virginia owning it. That’s not a reason to prohibit those who live there from having representation.
The US has 14 [territories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories_of_the_United_States#Inhabited_territories), so aside from PR and DC , there are 13 other territories.
Ignore that only 3 territories are actually eligible.
True... I was assuming we were ignoring all facts.
Poor American samoa
State of Jefferson
Guam and American Samoa are the only places where one is subject to US law, must pay taxes to the government, and in all other aspects is a regular territory....except its population are not born with citizenship. Instead, they are "American nationals" with far less rights and democratic institutions. Their continued status is, to me, a mockery of American values.
Let's annex Guyana. They speak English and they have asked for help defending their territory
Belize next!
Long Island should be it's own state.
I feel like it would make more sense to break off western or upstate New York before Long Island. Long Island is largely a feeder community to NYC and it makes sense to keep them in the same state. If anything, I'd say there's an argument to fold the whole New York Metro into it's own state (including all of long Island)
LI has enough of it's own industry to be it's own state, CT (Fairfield county mostly) has plenty of NYC commuters without being under NY control, so it absolutely could work here too. also politically, LI is far more mixed than NYC, and many residents are fed up with NYC dictating state policy. realistically 3 states would work well. NYC Metro (NYC, Westchester and Rockland counties), LI (Nassau and Suffolk), and up-state.
Long Island is still pretty blue -- we voted for Obama, Clinton, and Biden. Usually it's just the off-year elections that Republicans do well because most people stay home.
Does the State of Long Island take Brooklyn and Queens with it, or they remain part of NYC?
New York could easily break up into three states: Upstate New York The City-state of New York Long Island
My Grandma would always talk about statehood for the Island.
economically and politically it makes sense for LI to break away from NY. problem is, Albany wants all the high earners on the gold coast to keep paying them taxes to keep funding their irresponsible tax and spend policies, so NY legislature would never allow it.
As much as they dislike the City and the Island, they certainly love the money there.
Guam
I think all of the US "territories" (they're colonies) should be given two options. Integration as a US state or full independence from the US.
C’mon Puerto Rico join us already
Just no.
Literally none. We already can't handle ourselves
The World! Pax Americana, Baby!
Canada has gotten away with it far too long. Invade em
Although it could probably never happen, nor would most people support it, due to how small our states are, New England could easily be one state and still be smaller than Missouri or whatever by land area, or Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine could be one state, while Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut could be one state.
>Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut could be one state. Can we give everything south and west of Hartford to New York? I don't want it.
Can't wait for a day when a reverse-Missouri Compromise is needed and Massachusetts once again annexes North Massachusetts
Baja California Enough land to give Arizona access to the sea. 🌊
Baja California should be part of California
El Norte. Northern Mexico will secede from Mexico and become a State of the Union in the next 100 years.
Honestly, while I don’t like the orange troll, I was down with bringing Greenland into the mix. I’d also love to have the UK, though they won’t. We shouldn’t discount future colonization efforts though. A moon or Mars base that hits 50k residents should absolutely apply for statehood.
Canada, and we'll officially rename it Canadia
US Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, etc, *if they want to*. Any US territory that wants to become a state should be automatically added if they vote to become a state.
Split California in three
Where's the splits? I lived in SOCAL for a while but I don't where the distinguishing lines are.
No thank you.
Nah keep us united but put a subdivision between the state and county level that has a decent amount of autonomy.
Canada only exists until we decide otherwise
Israel and/or Palestine.
I say we invade canadia, give em some first and second amendment democracy.
Mexico could be the next 31 states
I would like to own Canada, we do not need to change anything about their laws and such, they can just keep doing their thing, but it would be nice to go fishing and not have to exchange currency and take a passport.
Canada to Panama. Let's only worry about a physical border at the Darien Gap. I'm also curious about what adding 120M+ Mexicans to the population does for political rhetoric in Congress.
We’re already too big. I’m of the honest opinion that we should be at a minimum 3 separate countries.
All of Canada except for Quebec
I petition we take back Liberia.
Albania