Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) received a swift lesson in constitutional law on Monday after declaring that Washington, D.C., should become a state.
Without context, Warren simply tweeted, “D.C. should be a state.”
Despite being just five words, the pithy tweet generated a forceful response and had more than 9 million views by Tuesday morning. The reason? People were quick to highlight why the nation’s capital is not a state — because the Constitution, in its current form, prohibits D.C. statehood.
- “Senators should read the Constitution,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) responded.
- “I recommend you read the Constitution first before tweeting again about this again,” Tim Kennedy suggested.
- “You should read the constitution,” Graham Allen advised.
- “It makes no sense to make a single city its own state. So, if it weren’t unconstitutional, DC should be absorbed by Maryland.
But Liz wouldn’t want that because it’s not really about that. It’s about rigging the system to get two more Democrat senators,” one person said.
- “Do you use the Constitution as a coaster?” another person responded.
Indeed, Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution establishes the district as an independent entity, and thus not as a state, for an important reason.
Politico explains:
The federal district was established in 1790 in accordance with the constitutional imperative that the seat of the federal government be under the control of the Congress, rather than any other entity. (It’s right there in Article I, Section 8.) The reason, as James Madison explained in Federalist 43, was that the federal government had to be independent of any one state’s supervision.
The district—to be no more than 10 square miles—was situated on its spot on the Potomac River as a compromise between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, with George Washington himself surveying the territory.
The only way, therefore, that D.C. could ever become a state is through the ratification of a constitutional amendment granting it statehood.
For years, Democrats have argued that D.C. and Puerto Rico should be granted statehood. While D.C. license plates, for example, bemoan “taxation without representation,” Democrats want statehood because it would likely increase their ability to maintain control of Congress.
With two more likely Democratic senators representing each territory and a host of Democratic House members, Republicans would be poorly positioned to ever control Congress short of an electoral landslide.
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