Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant and it's just the two of us. And that's okay because we are here and we are ready to do this thing and it's gonna be good stuff. You should not. That's right. Waiting into political waters yep, no way around it, no way around it. What does that DC license plates say? Taxation without representation? That says it all, it really does. I love it because it's so subversive, you know. That's right. We're talking about DC statehood and why the District of Columbia it's not a state when they have seven hundred thousand roughly people living there, about two hundred and fifty thousand of which were born and raised there. Uh, and yet they don't get the benefits of statehood we'll talk about for reasons that are kind oft I think. So. Um, yeah, if you aren't aware, if you live in d C. You you have some voting rights, but mostly, um, you are very much limited or restricted as far as like what you're allowed to do to participate in democracy, at least compared to other states, right, and all of this was like because of a layer, layer after layer after layer of rules and laws and regulations that basically prevent DC residents from voting or participating like other other residents of other states. Um. And so this idea that like, wait, this isn't right has been something that people have been talking about for a very long time, and yet we still can't reach this finish line to make d C the fifty first state, um, which a lot of people is, including most the people who live in d C want they want to become the fifty first state. They want to be a state, they want to be treated like a state, and they just can't quite get it to the finish line. But it's possible, Chuck, that we're close, closer than ever, actually closer than ever, but still not too close. If he asked me, well, we'll we'll we'll see. I think we'll see. Yeah, we'll see. So let's talk about how DC was even established and why all of this is is like this hodgepodge of weird laws and rules and where it came from. Yeah, so we didn't have a capital as a country at first? Uh for about um, I guess from seventeen seventy six to eighty nine, the Continental Congress met in different places. They met in Philly, of course, they met in Maryland. Some they met New York City. Some they even met in New Jersey some believe it or not. And in sev seven and the Philadelphia Convention, they wrote the Constitution and said, you know, that's really kind of beefed up the oral government, and said we need someplace that's like clearly ours that we will meet, that is permanent. And it was written right there in the Constitution, Article one, Section eight, Class seventeen. Yes, and um. Exactly where they were going to put this new capital was a huge debate, Like everybody just presumed it would be someplace like New York or Philadelphia, where it was already you know, the populations were very established and large, and where they had already written the Constitution, and where a lot of the early founding fathers were from. Um. But the Southern States said, hey, man, we don't want the capitol all the way up there in New York or in Pennsylvania. We need it somewhere that's a little closer to the middle of this country. This string of thirteen colonies along the eastern seaboard. So they came up with what's called the Compromise of seventy, which said, Okay, we'll place this capital further south towards you guys, but you have to say that the colonial um debts obligations that were accrued during the Revolutionary War, we get to move those over to them to the federal government's responsibility, because we these northern colonies are swimming in debt and we just can't pay them off. So one of the first things we have to do when we established this country is laden it with revolutionary war debt, right. Uh. And with the Residents Act, they said, you know, we literally need land, like physical space, So Maryland, Virginia, pony up. You've got to give up each a little bit, uh to create this area. And um, I think they eventually not. I think I know they eventually got back Alexandria Virginia in eighty six, But initially that was a part of the uh, the tranche of land and sort of the very I think from the very beginning they weren't a state because of something that happened that kind of feels a little more contemporary of the past couple of recent years. The the Pennsylvania Mutiny of seventeen eighty three when these veterans, hundreds of veterans, stormed Congress and said, you know, this is what we want. They were angry, we want back Bay, we want this and that, and the Pennsylvania Executive Council would not send the state militia to protect Congress and they had to move to New Jersey temporarily. And so they were like, this is not good. We need to be able to be in charge of our own um defense really, and so we need a federal land that is not a state so we can have our own uh, our own defense system, our own soldiers system. They just saw that if it ever came down to, you know, a federal versus a state kind of situation again, that they couldn't rely on a state militia, so that capital couldn't be associated or affiliated with the state, had to be a stateless capital that was its own territory. It made sense, It definitely did um and and it was all because of that Pennsylvania Mutiny of seventeen eighty three, because war veterans were oh back pay and they were mad about it, and we're chasing Congress all over the country. For it. So, um, so that's why d C was stateless to begin with, like that, so that the federal government could have its own jurisdiction over this this area, over the capital, that's right. And uh in eighteen hundred Congress set up there in Washington, d C. And like I said, Alexandria is part of it. First Georgetown was and still is, and they were you know, there were port towns, so there was a lot going on there. But for the first um several decades, d C was pretty rural, uh, and didn't really start growing a lot, and we have some population breakdowns, but it was really post Civil War is when the population boom happened there. I think in eighteen hundred there was eight thousand people there, eighteen sixty seventy thousand, eighteen eighty a hundred and seventy five thousand. That's a big jump. Yeah. And these are you know, people that work for the government, and these are also uh, free people now that came up from the South set up presidents there and so d C for many many years had a majority black population and kind of right away, Uh, the federal government was like, well that won't do either, yes, And so the reason that they were not okay with it was because well, at first, so people in DC have been agitating for, um, what's called home rule, which is just basically, you're allowed to self determine your own government. You can elect your own officials. They can pass laws other people can't, like out other people in the country can't tell you that your laws are invalid. Um just basically the right to sovereignty that any state holds right. So people have been interested in that in d C since the outset. But as you said earlier, it was a really rural and small population for a while, so it didn't really matter as much because it affected so few people. But as the population grew it became more and more of a pressing issue until um, they finally said, and I think eighteen sixty seven, you know what you're you're you're totally right, like we should we should let d C residents vote, And they passed an act that said everybody in DC can vote. And by saying everybody in d C, or I should say every man in DC can vote, Um, they were for the first time in American history, enfranchising black men to vote. Like there had never been a law that allow black men to vote in the history of the country to that point, and that was the first one that was ever passed. And so starting in eighteen sixty seven, uh for a full three long years, UM, black men were allowed to vote in d C for things like federal federal federal government positions like the president and vice president. Right. And when I said that won't do that's what I was talking about, they uh quit realized that you have a large city or you know, a larger city now that is being controlled. You know, there's a lot of political power with black people for the first time, and this alarmed them. And so they said, all right, we're going to replace this with a federally appointed commission. And they did that really quickly, and it was exactly for that reason. It was to read disenfranchise black people. Yeah. There's a famous quote from a senator named John Tyler Morgan who was describing it years later. Why why they repealed that law and appointed that that federal commission to rule the city? He said, And I'm sorry for this, everybody. After the Negroes came into the district, it became necessary to deny the right of suffrage entirely to every human being, to burn down the barn to get rid of the rats. The rats being the Negro population and the barn being the government of the District of Columbia. So what do you said? He said it out loud, he did, and wrote it down like it's in quote there. So he Um, what he's saying is is that to keep black people from voting in d C, they had to remove the voting rights of everybody. Um. And that's what they did. And what's crazy is that's how it has generally remained for hundred and fifty years now for basically the same reason. Unfortunately. Yeah, it was from the eighteen hundreds until nineteen seventy three, like I was born and alive, when Washington, d C. Was still a territory that had a governor and a ruling counsel that the president appointed. Uh, they did have a single delegate to Congress. Uh, and but that they were not given a congressional vote. So there was a delegate that could do the things that delegates do. Uh, they can even introduce articles, but they can't even vote on their own articles. No, no, they can. They can beyond can middies and all that, like almost everything that a House member can do as congressional member could do, but just not vote. It's a non voting delegate. And so in that way, like, yes, you had somebody who could advocate for d C, but the the people of d C couldn't elect somebody who could go vote on their behalf in the House of Representatives. And that's just the house. They have nobody and never have had a single representative in the Senate. So the only representation that DC has has is a single non voting member of the House of Representatives. And that's it. Yeah, like constituents without a real say at the end of the day. It gets even far far worse than that, you know, because I'm sure people are like, well, come on, you know, how much does that affect these people? Really? Um, Well, we're gonna explain exactly how it affects him. But one of the big ways, if it stands out to me, is that when um, the Home Rule Act was passed in ninety three that said, okay, you guys can elect your own mayor and you an electoral own city council. Bully for you. There's this thing that we have to to tell you about. Though it's not all you know, great, every single law that gets passed by you in your town is subject to Congressional review. It doesn't actually become law until Congress says that your laws that you came up with in past yourselves are okay. And that means that any congress person, any House member from anywhere in the country, who is offended by one of your laws, who takes an issue with one of your laws, can strike that law down basically single handedly by attaching a rider to your annual budget. And so if you don't like that writer, well then you you can do without it, but you have to do without the money that makes up about your operating budget every year. That's the kind of like a drag Toonian rule that Congress holds over d C to this day. Yeah, and this is why. And you know, unfortunately this does wait into politics, and we'll get into that more later. But like it is kind of purely for partisan politics why d C is not a state at this point. Uh. And it's the ironies are pretty rich here in that. UM. Generally Republicans do not want d C to become a state. UM. But they're also the same party who decries government overreach in states states rights. And I guess they'll say well, yeah, but it's not a state. But it is certainly government overreach when you have the local people of a terror of a district voting there for their own laws that their constituents want, but the federal government can override those. And again you might say, like, what laws, who cares? What? What's the problem? How are these people actually really harmed with that? Well, there's actually like a lot of laws that DC has passed that Congress has either dragged its feet on or overturned that have actually harmed people. Um d C had a needle exchange program to try to slow the spread of HIV um and it was overturned by Congress in and was not allowed to happen again until two thousand seven. And it turns out that when that was finally allowed to start up again, the HIV infection rates in the city and by the way, d C had one of the highest rates of HIV. After its needle exchange program was was banned by Congress, um it's HIV rates dropped by sev and an estimated hundred and twenty people were prevented from being infective with HIV in just two years after the needle program was allowed to to start up again in two thousand seven. There's also ones on abortion access COVID nineteen they got the short end of the stick as far as funds go. Um. And then there's another one where, uh, they tried to repeal their sodomy law, which outlawed sex between men back in one and Congress didn't let it actually go through until there's just been a lot of stuff where basically, if you have somebody in Congress who does and like the idea of d C, the people of d C having um legalized marijuana or being able to use taxpayer money for abortions, like DC doesn't get to do that because the writer gets attached to their budget and they have to they have to take it. And that COVID thing you were talking about, they um, every US state got one point to five billion dollars in aid, but Congress cut that in half for d C even though they had Well, first of all, they're like, well, we're bigger than Vermont, uh and like one one other state too, right, And they're almost the same size as Alaska, UM, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Delaware population wise. Yeah, and they were I think had more confirmed COVID cases at the time than nineteen other states, yet they got half the aid just just because. Yes, so it's it's my numbing and crazy and if you like, just put yourself in the position of somebody who's a like interested in the political process and lives in d C and the idea that your city can pass a law huge like with huge support. I think they're marijuana legalization, UM law passed with supportive voters, and somebody from Arizona could come along and be like, Nope, you're not doing that. That law doesn't go through. I'm attaching that as a writer to your your annual budget. How outrage inducing would that be? You know, how how frustrating would it be at the very least. So, yes, it actually is harmful um to the to the democracy of Washington, d C. And their their self determination and their ability for home rule. UM. The situation as it stands right now, all right, well, let's take a break. I think it's pretty clear where we stand here, and we'll talk about the electoral College, just that little thing right after this. Alright, So, uh, people have been allowed to vote in Washington, d C. For elections for presidential national elections for a long time now, uh. In nineteen sixty one, they Radifford, that Radifford ratified the twenty three Amendment to the Constitution that was specifically for d C electoral College votes in the presidential election. That was when they started to be able to vote for president vote at all. That's right. So, so sixty sixty years is how long the residents of DC have been able to vote. Yeah, I mean when I said quite a while, it didn't mean on the like the beginning of time scale, just sort of oh, I didn't know if you're being facetious or not. No, no no, no, I mean for many decades now, but not Yeah, it's a guess. In that context, it's it's an outrage for sure. And so that that that twenty three amendment. That's the whole purpose of the twenty three Amendment is to basically say, yes, DC can now vote in presidential elections, and they can contribute electors, um, but they can never have more electors than the number of electors that the least populous state in the United States has. It doesn't matter how many people DC could swell to. It probably couldn't handle it, but it could swell to the size of a two million population and it doesn't matter. You get your three electors, right, and it's always going to be three at the minimum because you're a number of electors are based on the representation you have in the in the House and the Senate, so you always every state has two senators and every state has at least one congress person, and d C probably would always still have one congress person anyway, that's how many Alaska has, in Vermont and Delaware like these are, it's just based on population, so they will probably always have three electors UM. And so those electors ever since the I believe the nineteen sixty four election, the first time DC ever contributed electors to the Electoral College UM, those those electors almost invariably go towards the Democratic candidate, right Like DC is one of the first states that gets called on like those electoral maps during every presidential election, and they go towards the Democrat. So if you've made DC a state that's not gonna be a huge change, like nothing's going to change, You're they're still going to have their three electoral votes and they're probably going to go towards the Democratic candidate for president. They're only going to have one congress person, and that one congress person will probably be a Democrat. But it's kind of a drop on the bucket when you're talking about like four hundred and thirty or sixty I can't remember however many are in the House right now. But when you talk about the Senate, now we get to the problem, the partisan political problem with why DC is not a state, because d C is and has been for a very long time, majority black as far as the population goes, in as far as their voting base goes, traditionally, Black voters lean Democrat. That's as far as voting history goes. That's typically the case for the last several decades at least. And if you have to new senators that just did not exist before, the Senate would go from a hundred senators to a hundred two senators, and those two senators were almost guaranteed to be Democratic senators. Will imagine what two extra Democrats senators would do right now if you had two more Democrats in the Senate than what we have right now. Now we've reached exactly now, we've reached the reason why DC is not being allowed to be a state and why it's a partisan political matter. Right, and here is where you're going to get into. UM, to me, some very disingenuous arguments. Uh, that are just it would be so much easier if they just talked about what the reality was instead of disingenuous arguments that everybody knows isn't the real reason. Uh, it's just that That's the stuff I hate about politics in this country is no one's talking about the what the real situation is. UM. You know, some people they'll try and call it out, but they So there are sort of two avenues that have been bandied about over the years. Is basically the two two main paths for uh, making DC estate. And one is what you what we need to do? Is the idea is that what we need to do is shrink what is called the federal district to only the buildings that are under federal control, like the White House, in the Capitol Building and you know kind of everything there. D c all the all the government buildings basically and just make it that. Um. But no, no one lives is there except for you. No one lives in these buildings. These are office buildings except for the White House where the president and first family live and maybe some of the staff So one of the disingenuous arguments that comes up is, well, we can't have a situation where there's only three or four people, like let's say, living in these places that get this kind of representation. Yeah, that's completely disingenuous. Sure, and especially if that that president is an incumbent running for election again, then that incumbent president would have three electoral votes to cast for themselves. Right. So so on paper, you're like, oh, yeah, I could see that being a problem. Let's just give up because of the twenty three Amendment and that cork that it attributed, right, But there are a lot of like workarounds too that people are like, no, that's that's a ridiculous argument, right, Like the president could in fact usually does vote uh absentee from their own home state. That's that's one. Then, so if no electoral votes are cast, or if no votes are actually cast in the district of Columbia, then you there's no electors to be given, right, so you'd have those three electors that just never didn't go to anybody. That's one. That's one solution. Um. Another one is to just take those three electors and give them to whoever wins the popular vote regardless. Yeah, and then a lot of people are like, no, you just repeal the twenty three amendment if you make to see a state like it's a one two punch, like they that's just how it has to be. That's right. And we'll talk more about some some disingenuous arguments and deconstruct him as we go, but that's the one that seems to be bandied about most most commonly. Right. Yeah, and you know, we've talked a little bit about why it matters to begin with. Um, we mentioned at the very beginning their license plate taxation without representation, and you know, that's a little bit of a snide license plate, but it's very true. They pay federal income tax and like really high federal income tax, so much that they contribute more than they received from the federal government. One thing I saw, Chuck is like I was like, well, wait a minute, can DC like even handle being a state? You know, how much does it get from the federal government? And apparently it is not, in any way, shape or form, the the state that or the area that receives the most federal funding. I guess that honor goes to Mississippi. Of Mississippi state and local budget is made up of federal funds thirty percent for Louisiana, New Mexico, and South Dakota, pent DC is twent so just a quarter of all of the money that DC uses to operate comes from the federal government. The rest is from local taxes. And DC apparently has a little bonnet, a little flower in its bonnet, and that it typically has a balanced budget every year too. Oh really, so we could do just fine without um being a state. It would be like, yeah, we should still get the federal funding because other states get federal funding too. But even if you kept it at the federal funding they get now, they would be doing just fine as far as federal law is concerned. They are treated as a state. Yeah, they're not a state with representation like a state. We already talked about congressional representation. Uh. They you know, they can't vote on bills. It's uh, it's really weird that you can introduce a bill and write the bill, but not vote in that bill. Yeah. And because constitutional amendments are typically what's thrown around about making DC a state or not, or has been up until recently. Um, it's kind of ironic that D c wouldn't be able to vote on its own ratification like its own statehood, like, because it cannot vote on constitutional amendments because it's not a state. So it would basically DC has to rely on everybody else to go to bat for it because it doesn't have self determination. That's right. You want to take another break and then talk about some of the arguments for and against. Yeah, okay, well we're gonna do just that, everybody, George, all right, So we've you know, made our position clear that most of the arguments against statehood are and these aren't our arguments. I mean, like I said, any honest person will tell you that it is strictly partisan political issue. It's because they don't want two more Democratic senators in there. They just don't. And um, you know, uh, that's their right to fight against that, I guess, uh, and they and they do. But it's disingenuous and it's an anti social sentiment like there how somebody or some group of people are expected to vote has like nothing to do with whether they should have the right to vote or not. You can't just keep people from voting because you don't like the way they're going to vote. That is an anti social act anti democratic. Yeah, it's both, and you did. That's exactly what's going on right now. That is that's it. They boil it down, I mean, get mad at us, just like you did our gerrymandering episode or our voter suppression episode. It's still the case. That's just how it is right now. It's one of those political fictions that it's anything but that. That's right. Um. The one of the arguments is that it's unconstitutional to begin with. That's why you said that. Up until recently, most of the attempts to make DC a state have tried to come via constitutional amendments. And here's the thing though, like there's nothing specifically prohibiting d C from becoming a state in the constitution. No, you had mentioned that, like some some people are like, let's shrink d C the capital down to just the federal buildings. Basically as ed who helps us out with this one? UM puts it like tourists d C, right, and that everything else commercial and residential DC that would become the state and then that federal district would become the capital. And people are like no, no no, no, you can't do that. There's like a size requirement in the in the Constitution can't change something like that. And and people are saying, well, actually, there is a size requirement. It's a maximum, not a minimum. It doesn't say how small it can be, it says how big it can be. It can't be more than ten miles square. Yeah, I think ten square mouths sare mouth So yes, you totally could shrink it. So just shut down that argument. But but one more thing, chuck about that. One of the reasons why they have abandoned a constitutional amendment making DC estate is twofold one. That's a huge hurdle to jump over. I think you have to have two thirds of the state to ratify account. So first of all, you have to get it through both houses of Congress, which is an impossibility to begin with. And then you have to have two thirds of the state, many of which are controlled by Republican legislatures, to ratify that amendment to make DC a state. So it's just too huge of uh an obstacle to this amount. But also it's really disingenuous to require a constitutional amendment to make DC estate because since the Constitution itself was ratified in not a single state that was admitted into the Union from that time had had was was admitted through a constitutional amendment. There are no constitutional amendments that that have admitted states. They've all come in through congressional decree instead. That's right, and well we'll talk about that in just a second more detail. But another one of the paths that has been bandied about a little bit is um well, not past the statehood but passed to making it not a state and ensuring it never become the state, saying well, why don't we just make it part of Virginia or Maryland like it used to be. Give it back to them and nobody you know, you know who doesn't want that, d C, Virginia and Maryland. Yeah, none of them want it. Maryland doesn't want to assume those seven hundred thousand people. Virginia doesn't want it. DC doesn't want to be a part of either one of those. Like, the only people that want that are are frankly Republicans who don't want it to become state. Yes, because it might add a few more electoral votes to Maryland or Virginia, but it would not add a single extra senator. You can't have more than two senators no matter what your population size. Again the crux to the matter. Um. Another one is that the idea that the city can't take care of that federal property. And I don't think anybody who's a pro statehood advocate says, oh yeah, yeah they can, that's just not true. But they say, well, we wouldn't be taking care of most of that property. It would be shrunk down to be the capital, so it'd still be the federal government's jurisdiction. People said, well, there's other federal buildings outside of this little tourist area. How what are you gonna do about those? And d C says, do you know how many states and cities have federal buildings in them that the state in the city takes care of in conjunction with the federal government and with funding from the federal government. Totally not a problem. I think disingenuinuity is that a word? It is now, Buddy, is one of my least favorite things to witness. It is because it's just it's just dishonest. It's just a bunch of garbage, like acting a certain like just call it what it is. Is so frustrating, it's almost almost disingenuous. Um. So we you mentioned earlier that no other state needed a Congressional or i'm sorry, a constitutional amendment to become a state. Um, the Tennessee model is sort of where DC has tried to go more recently. The Tennessee Plan in se when Tennessee as an a state yet, and they said, you know what, we're tired of waiting around for Congress to do anything about it. So we're gonna hold our own referendum. We're gonna vote to become a state. And we passed it, and then we're gonna write and approve our own state constitution and how we're going to administer that and kind of this is how we would do things. And they did that, and then Congress is sort of like everyone sort of sitting sitting there twiddling their thumbs staring at Congress like we're all ready to go. Just unlocked the door and we could become a state. And it worked, and it also worked in Michigan, Iowa, California, Oregon, Kansas and Alaska and so d C recently I think about five years ago, said maybe let's try this Tennessee plan forget constitutional amendments, let's just have a referendum. And it passed by and they said great, let's draft a constitution. And they did that and it was approved, and they said, the mayor is going to become the governor's city council will become the legislature, and here we go, Congress, let's get this done. We're ready to roll. Yeah. And I So this was in two thousand and sixteen that that referendum passed and they started to adopt the Tennessee Plan. And what sucks, Chuck, is that means that they were distracted by that idea that they had to become a state through constitutional amendment for decades, like they if they had taken up this Tennessee Plan decades ago, who knows where they would be now. They might be a state by now. It's just so it's just it's really sad to think like that that that work, that boondogg will work, that they needed for years. Yeah, basically, so that's why I'm like, I don't know, we might actually see it's possible we could see d C a state. Um, because this referendum and the plan that they followed where they basically made themselves an instant state, like just ad Congress kind of thing. Um. It came in just the last five years. So for the first time ever in the history of the District of Columbia, UM, a bill passed that says DC is a state. Please go ahead and m past this bill Senate, it past the House. Everything else has been like, we're the House of Representatives and we think DC should be a state, not a It's just a like a resolution and support of DC being a state. It's not an actual law. This is an actual law that passed the House of Representatives. Of course, it died in the Senate because, um, it was while Mitch McConnell was a majority leader and he didn't even let it come up for a vote. I I can't believe it even made it onto his desk before catching fire. But but the fact is that it did pass the House at least once. And that is brand new. That is definitely new. Yeah, it's amazing. And uh, it's amazing that we have a situation in our on our modern day government where one person can say no, we're not gonna vote on this two party system does not work. It's broken, it doesn't work. Yeah, it was reintroduced in one just this year past the House again. UM. Well, sadly in this case, it's probably not gonna happen because Democrats can't agree on anything within their own portable irony of the whole thing in it. Yes, it really is. You mentioned two people earlier, probably would be the same two people. That's what happen. Yeah. The only other question mark is Mark Kelly no Angus King from Maine, and he may be retired now, but yes, it is. From what I saw, it would come down to Kristen Cinema and Joe Manchin and UM both have not supported previous like DC statehood stuff before. Other people who have not actually didn't actually co sponsor that bill in the Senate, UM have supported other stuff, so they would be expected to vote yes. So it could come down to two people again, both of whom Democrats, that would keep d C from becoming a state. Now it's pretty interesting stuff. What would uh different names bandied about over the years that it did become a state. I knew that New Columbia was what they were gonna call it for a long time, but then you know, uh, in more recent years, Christopher Columbus has become less favorable in in the eyes of history, so they're saying maybe New Columbia is not the right the right name after all. No, and I didn't know this, but they they are. They plan as part of that referendum, um draft constitution that was passed, Uh, they would change the name. They would keep it as Washington d C, but d C would stand for Douglas Commonwealth, after Frederick Douglas, the abolitionist former. S I like it in that neat yeah, d C. You know, I think people they go to towards d C, which is a lot of fun. We both done that that thing a lot of times. Um, it is that. But d C is a rich city with a rich history, uh in and of itself, a rich history of music and culture and black culture and great food and like there's a there's a lot to d C besides the mall area. Um And every time I go there, I try to check out different areas and do different things, and uh, it's it's awesome. We have a great, great time when we do live shows in d C. It's one of my favorite places. When we go to uh what is it Lincoln and they give us us Lincoln logs. The pastry, where did those come from? What do you mean where they come from? What's what's the bakery that does those? Do you know, I don't know. I think it's I don't always just sitting there backstage and they're so delicious and we always eat like ten each of them. They're they're like Swiss cake rolls, but like the bakery version of a Swiss cake roll. Yeah. So before we go, Chuck, I feel like we have to talk about how some recent events like really kind of have brought the idea of DC not being a state to the four um both of which occurred in actually, oh, like the storming of the capital. That's that's one of them for sure. Yeah, and I think that kind of harkens back to the mutiny of seventeen eighty three and that uh there there are some people who think it could it would have gone down a lot differently if um, we had been able, if if the government had been able to call on the state national Guard like super quickly. Yeah, because the national Guard, the d C National Guard is not under control of d C, just like any other states national guard would be under the state's control, which is why that that's what Congress wanted it to be, Like, they wanted DC's National Guard to be under control of the federal government. Because of that that Mutiny of seventeen eighty three, But the exact opposite thing happened on January six, because d C and the Capital wanted the d C National Guard and definitely would have activated them and brought him out hours before, but the federal government at the time kept them from doing that because they were under federal control. So that was one that really just kind of pointed out, like, oh, well, this is harmful, this is not good. UM. The other way that it was pointed out was kind of the opposite of that, where during the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of after the murder of George Floyd UM and people took to the streets in d C. They were um, they were basically beating out of the streets, harassed out of the streets, used tear gas on um by the DC National Guard that was deployed by the federal government. Whereas you can pretty much guess that if Muriel Bowser had been the governor of the state of DC rather than just the mayor and had the power over the National Guard, those National Guard troops would not have been deployed against those protesters. So both of those events just in within months of one another, um, so the protests were in the insurrection was in the beginning of one. Yeah, that was this year. It's nuts, I think, really, I thought seems longer. This year has been a long decade him. But both of those, both of those events have pointed out like because of that mutiny of three, those things were able to happen the way that they did. Really really interesting. Yeah it is so now you guys know DC statehood. You make up your own mind about it. But them's the facts, just the facts. And since I said them's the facts, it's time of course everybody for listener mail. I'm gonna call this baby shout out. You don't do a lot of shout outs, but this is kind of special, I think, because this is a future shout out. I've been a long time listener and in January I had a baby. Who is your youngest listener. While I was pregnant, I worked as an assistant manager local horse boarding facility near Augusta, Georgia, And every morning when I fed the horses, I put my phone uh in my phone belt and turned on stuff. You should know, babies can hear nearby sounds in the womb. So Clara has been listening as long as she has been able to hear. Uh. Now we listen to stuff you should know during our afternoon walks together. If an episode finishes before it's over, Clara will sign and ask for more. You know that little toddler sign like which is the best? I know? It's adorable. I didn't realize it was the thing. And then one of you's best friends, Um taught her kids, and I was like, oh, that's really cool. Yeah. We did some basic stuff. We didn't get too involved, but there was a little bit of that early on. Man, kids are so neat these days. They're so neat. Uh not like us. We were just dummies. They're like, here, here's oatmeal and a television we've played with the stick in a wheel. Back to the mail. I would love for her to have a shout out on an episode, so one day we can go back and listen to her episode. So, uh, Clara, your episode is on DC Statehood. Maybe things will be different then? Yeah, wouldn't that be something? That would be something? But this is from Karas Texador and she just says, thanks for all we do. We really helped build the long arms of COVID shutdown at home with an infant and for helping making learning new things fun. That is Carris Texadore. Great name. That's awesome. Thanks Kris, definitely a great name. You sound like the last Starfighter or something that's right. And hello little Carla. I hope you keep listening in. Uh, I hope by the time your twenty we're still doing this show. No, maybe not by then recently retired. Yeah, I will be seventy. Yeah, yeah, I guess that's right. Yeah. So yeah, thank you very much for writing in. Carris and Carla. Best wishes to you on a fantastic life. And if you want to get in touch with this, like Harris and Carla did, you can send us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant and it's just the two of us. And that's okay because we are here and we are ready to do this thing and it's gonna be good stuff. You should not. That's right. Waiting into political waters yep, no way around it, no way around it. What does that DC license plates say? Taxation without representation? That says it all, it really does. I love it because it's so subversive, you know. That's right. We're talking about DC statehood and why the District of Columbia it's not a state when they have seven hundred thousand roughly people living there, about two hundred and fifty thousand of which were born and raised there. Uh, and yet they don't get the benefits of statehood we'll talk about for reasons that are kind oft I think. So. Um, yeah, if you aren't aware, if you live in d C. You you have some voting rights, but mostly, um, you are very much limited or restricted as far as like what you're allowed to do to participate in democracy, at least compared to other states, right, and all of this was like because of a layer, layer after layer after layer of rules and laws and regulations that basically prevent DC residents from voting or participating like other other residents of other states. Um. And so this idea that like, wait, this isn't right has been something that people have been talking about for a very long time, and yet we still can't reach this finish line to make d C the fifty first state, um, which a lot of people is, including most the people who live in d C want they want to become the fifty first state. They want to be a state, they want to be treated like a state, and they just can't quite get it to the finish line. But it's possible, Chuck, that we're close, closer than ever, actually closer than ever, but still not too close. If he asked me, well, we'll we'll we'll see. I think we'll see. Yeah, we'll see. So let's talk about how DC was even established and why all of this is is like this hodgepodge of weird laws and rules and where it came from. Yeah, so we didn't have a capital as a country at first? Uh for about um, I guess from seventeen seventy six to eighty nine, the Continental Congress met in different places. They met in Philly, of course, they met in Maryland. Some they met New York City. Some they even met in New Jersey some believe it or not. And in sev seven and the Philadelphia Convention, they wrote the Constitution and said, you know, that's really kind of beefed up the oral government, and said we need someplace that's like clearly ours that we will meet, that is permanent. And it was written right there in the Constitution, Article one, Section eight, Class seventeen. Yes, and um. Exactly where they were going to put this new capital was a huge debate, Like everybody just presumed it would be someplace like New York or Philadelphia, where it was already you know, the populations were very established and large, and where they had already written the Constitution, and where a lot of the early founding fathers were from. Um. But the Southern States said, hey, man, we don't want the capitol all the way up there in New York or in Pennsylvania. We need it somewhere that's a little closer to the middle of this country. This string of thirteen colonies along the eastern seaboard. So they came up with what's called the Compromise of seventy, which said, Okay, we'll place this capital further south towards you guys, but you have to say that the colonial um debts obligations that were accrued during the Revolutionary War, we get to move those over to them to the federal government's responsibility, because we these northern colonies are swimming in debt and we just can't pay them off. So one of the first things we have to do when we established this country is laden it with revolutionary war debt, right. Uh. And with the Residents Act, they said, you know, we literally need land, like physical space, So Maryland, Virginia, pony up. You've got to give up each a little bit, uh to create this area. And um, I think they eventually not. I think I know they eventually got back Alexandria Virginia in eighty six, But initially that was a part of the uh, the tranche of land and sort of the very I think from the very beginning they weren't a state because of something that happened that kind of feels a little more contemporary of the past couple of recent years. The the Pennsylvania Mutiny of seventeen eighty three when these veterans, hundreds of veterans, stormed Congress and said, you know, this is what we want. They were angry, we want back Bay, we want this and that, and the Pennsylvania Executive Council would not send the state militia to protect Congress and they had to move to New Jersey temporarily. And so they were like, this is not good. We need to be able to be in charge of our own um defense really, and so we need a federal land that is not a state so we can have our own uh, our own defense system, our own soldiers system. They just saw that if it ever came down to, you know, a federal versus a state kind of situation again, that they couldn't rely on a state militia, so that capital couldn't be associated or affiliated with the state, had to be a stateless capital that was its own territory. It made sense, It definitely did um and and it was all because of that Pennsylvania Mutiny of seventeen eighty three, because war veterans were oh back pay and they were mad about it, and we're chasing Congress all over the country. For it. So, um, so that's why d C was stateless to begin with, like that, so that the federal government could have its own jurisdiction over this this area, over the capital, that's right. And uh in eighteen hundred Congress set up there in Washington, d C. And like I said, Alexandria is part of it. First Georgetown was and still is, and they were you know, there were port towns, so there was a lot going on there. But for the first um several decades, d C was pretty rural, uh, and didn't really start growing a lot, and we have some population breakdowns, but it was really post Civil War is when the population boom happened there. I think in eighteen hundred there was eight thousand people there, eighteen sixty seventy thousand, eighteen eighty a hundred and seventy five thousand. That's a big jump. Yeah. And these are you know, people that work for the government, and these are also uh, free people now that came up from the South set up presidents there and so d C for many many years had a majority black population and kind of right away, Uh, the federal government was like, well that won't do either, yes, And so the reason that they were not okay with it was because well, at first, so people in DC have been agitating for, um, what's called home rule, which is just basically, you're allowed to self determine your own government. You can elect your own officials. They can pass laws other people can't, like out other people in the country can't tell you that your laws are invalid. Um just basically the right to sovereignty that any state holds right. So people have been interested in that in d C since the outset. But as you said earlier, it was a really rural and small population for a while, so it didn't really matter as much because it affected so few people. But as the population grew it became more and more of a pressing issue until um, they finally said, and I think eighteen sixty seven, you know what you're you're you're totally right, like we should we should let d C residents vote, And they passed an act that said everybody in DC can vote. And by saying everybody in d C, or I should say every man in DC can vote, Um, they were for the first time in American history, enfranchising black men to vote. Like there had never been a law that allow black men to vote in the history of the country to that point, and that was the first one that was ever passed. And so starting in eighteen sixty seven, uh for a full three long years, UM, black men were allowed to vote in d C for things like federal federal federal government positions like the president and vice president. Right. And when I said that won't do that's what I was talking about, they uh quit realized that you have a large city or you know, a larger city now that is being controlled. You know, there's a lot of political power with black people for the first time, and this alarmed them. And so they said, all right, we're going to replace this with a federally appointed commission. And they did that really quickly, and it was exactly for that reason. It was to read disenfranchise black people. Yeah. There's a famous quote from a senator named John Tyler Morgan who was describing it years later. Why why they repealed that law and appointed that that federal commission to rule the city? He said, And I'm sorry for this, everybody. After the Negroes came into the district, it became necessary to deny the right of suffrage entirely to every human being, to burn down the barn to get rid of the rats. The rats being the Negro population and the barn being the government of the District of Columbia. So what do you said? He said it out loud, he did, and wrote it down like it's in quote there. So he Um, what he's saying is is that to keep black people from voting in d C, they had to remove the voting rights of everybody. Um. And that's what they did. And what's crazy is that's how it has generally remained for hundred and fifty years now for basically the same reason. Unfortunately. Yeah, it was from the eighteen hundreds until nineteen seventy three, like I was born and alive, when Washington, d C. Was still a territory that had a governor and a ruling counsel that the president appointed. Uh, they did have a single delegate to Congress. Uh, and but that they were not given a congressional vote. So there was a delegate that could do the things that delegates do. Uh, they can even introduce articles, but they can't even vote on their own articles. No, no, they can. They can beyond can middies and all that, like almost everything that a House member can do as congressional member could do, but just not vote. It's a non voting delegate. And so in that way, like, yes, you had somebody who could advocate for d C, but the the people of d C couldn't elect somebody who could go vote on their behalf in the House of Representatives. And that's just the house. They have nobody and never have had a single representative in the Senate. So the only representation that DC has has is a single non voting member of the House of Representatives. And that's it. Yeah, like constituents without a real say at the end of the day. It gets even far far worse than that, you know, because I'm sure people are like, well, come on, you know, how much does that affect these people? Really? Um, Well, we're gonna explain exactly how it affects him. But one of the big ways, if it stands out to me, is that when um, the Home Rule Act was passed in ninety three that said, okay, you guys can elect your own mayor and you an electoral own city council. Bully for you. There's this thing that we have to to tell you about. Though it's not all you know, great, every single law that gets passed by you in your town is subject to Congressional review. It doesn't actually become law until Congress says that your laws that you came up with in past yourselves are okay. And that means that any congress person, any House member from anywhere in the country, who is offended by one of your laws, who takes an issue with one of your laws, can strike that law down basically single handedly by attaching a rider to your annual budget. And so if you don't like that writer, well then you you can do without it, but you have to do without the money that makes up about your operating budget every year. That's the kind of like a drag Toonian rule that Congress holds over d C to this day. Yeah, and this is why. And you know, unfortunately this does wait into politics, and we'll get into that more later. But like it is kind of purely for partisan politics why d C is not a state at this point. Uh. And it's the ironies are pretty rich here in that. UM. Generally Republicans do not want d C to become a state. UM. But they're also the same party who decries government overreach in states states rights. And I guess they'll say well, yeah, but it's not a state. But it is certainly government overreach when you have the local people of a terror of a district voting there for their own laws that their constituents want, but the federal government can override those. And again you might say, like, what laws, who cares? What? What's the problem? How are these people actually really harmed with that? Well, there's actually like a lot of laws that DC has passed that Congress has either dragged its feet on or overturned that have actually harmed people. Um d C had a needle exchange program to try to slow the spread of HIV um and it was overturned by Congress in and was not allowed to happen again until two thousand seven. And it turns out that when that was finally allowed to start up again, the HIV infection rates in the city and by the way, d C had one of the highest rates of HIV. After its needle exchange program was was banned by Congress, um it's HIV rates dropped by sev and an estimated hundred and twenty people were prevented from being infective with HIV in just two years after the needle program was allowed to to start up again in two thousand seven. There's also ones on abortion access COVID nineteen they got the short end of the stick as far as funds go. Um. And then there's another one where, uh, they tried to repeal their sodomy law, which outlawed sex between men back in one and Congress didn't let it actually go through until there's just been a lot of stuff where basically, if you have somebody in Congress who does and like the idea of d C, the people of d C having um legalized marijuana or being able to use taxpayer money for abortions, like DC doesn't get to do that because the writer gets attached to their budget and they have to they have to take it. And that COVID thing you were talking about, they um, every US state got one point to five billion dollars in aid, but Congress cut that in half for d C even though they had Well, first of all, they're like, well, we're bigger than Vermont, uh and like one one other state too, right, And they're almost the same size as Alaska, UM, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Delaware population wise. Yeah, and they were I think had more confirmed COVID cases at the time than nineteen other states, yet they got half the aid just just because. Yes, so it's it's my numbing and crazy and if you like, just put yourself in the position of somebody who's a like interested in the political process and lives in d C and the idea that your city can pass a law huge like with huge support. I think they're marijuana legalization, UM law passed with supportive voters, and somebody from Arizona could come along and be like, Nope, you're not doing that. That law doesn't go through. I'm attaching that as a writer to your your annual budget. How outrage inducing would that be? You know, how how frustrating would it be at the very least. So, yes, it actually is harmful um to the to the democracy of Washington, d C. And their their self determination and their ability for home rule. UM. The situation as it stands right now, all right, well, let's take a break. I think it's pretty clear where we stand here, and we'll talk about the electoral College, just that little thing right after this. Alright, So, uh, people have been allowed to vote in Washington, d C. For elections for presidential national elections for a long time now, uh. In nineteen sixty one, they Radifford, that Radifford ratified the twenty three Amendment to the Constitution that was specifically for d C electoral College votes in the presidential election. That was when they started to be able to vote for president vote at all. That's right. So, so sixty sixty years is how long the residents of DC have been able to vote. Yeah, I mean when I said quite a while, it didn't mean on the like the beginning of time scale, just sort of oh, I didn't know if you're being facetious or not. No, no no, no, I mean for many decades now, but not Yeah, it's a guess. In that context, it's it's an outrage for sure. And so that that that twenty three amendment. That's the whole purpose of the twenty three Amendment is to basically say, yes, DC can now vote in presidential elections, and they can contribute electors, um, but they can never have more electors than the number of electors that the least populous state in the United States has. It doesn't matter how many people DC could swell to. It probably couldn't handle it, but it could swell to the size of a two million population and it doesn't matter. You get your three electors, right, and it's always going to be three at the minimum because you're a number of electors are based on the representation you have in the in the House and the Senate, so you always every state has two senators and every state has at least one congress person, and d C probably would always still have one congress person anyway, that's how many Alaska has, in Vermont and Delaware like these are, it's just based on population, so they will probably always have three electors UM. And so those electors ever since the I believe the nineteen sixty four election, the first time DC ever contributed electors to the Electoral College UM, those those electors almost invariably go towards the Democratic candidate, right Like DC is one of the first states that gets called on like those electoral maps during every presidential election, and they go towards the Democrat. So if you've made DC a state that's not gonna be a huge change, like nothing's going to change, You're they're still going to have their three electoral votes and they're probably going to go towards the Democratic candidate for president. They're only going to have one congress person, and that one congress person will probably be a Democrat. But it's kind of a drop on the bucket when you're talking about like four hundred and thirty or sixty I can't remember however many are in the House right now. But when you talk about the Senate, now we get to the problem, the partisan political problem with why DC is not a state, because d C is and has been for a very long time, majority black as far as the population goes, in as far as their voting base goes, traditionally, Black voters lean Democrat. That's as far as voting history goes. That's typically the case for the last several decades at least. And if you have to new senators that just did not exist before, the Senate would go from a hundred senators to a hundred two senators, and those two senators were almost guaranteed to be Democratic senators. Will imagine what two extra Democrats senators would do right now if you had two more Democrats in the Senate than what we have right now. Now we've reached exactly now, we've reached the reason why DC is not being allowed to be a state and why it's a partisan political matter. Right, and here is where you're going to get into. UM, to me, some very disingenuous arguments. Uh, that are just it would be so much easier if they just talked about what the reality was instead of disingenuous arguments that everybody knows isn't the real reason. Uh, it's just that That's the stuff I hate about politics in this country is no one's talking about the what the real situation is. UM. You know, some people they'll try and call it out, but they So there are sort of two avenues that have been bandied about over the years. Is basically the two two main paths for uh, making DC estate. And one is what you what we need to do? Is the idea is that what we need to do is shrink what is called the federal district to only the buildings that are under federal control, like the White House, in the Capitol Building and you know kind of everything there. D c all the all the government buildings basically and just make it that. Um. But no, no one lives is there except for you. No one lives in these buildings. These are office buildings except for the White House where the president and first family live and maybe some of the staff So one of the disingenuous arguments that comes up is, well, we can't have a situation where there's only three or four people, like let's say, living in these places that get this kind of representation. Yeah, that's completely disingenuous. Sure, and especially if that that president is an incumbent running for election again, then that incumbent president would have three electoral votes to cast for themselves. Right. So so on paper, you're like, oh, yeah, I could see that being a problem. Let's just give up because of the twenty three Amendment and that cork that it attributed, right, But there are a lot of like workarounds too that people are like, no, that's that's a ridiculous argument, right, Like the president could in fact usually does vote uh absentee from their own home state. That's that's one. Then, so if no electoral votes are cast, or if no votes are actually cast in the district of Columbia, then you there's no electors to be given, right, so you'd have those three electors that just never didn't go to anybody. That's one. That's one solution. Um. Another one is to just take those three electors and give them to whoever wins the popular vote regardless. Yeah, and then a lot of people are like, no, you just repeal the twenty three amendment if you make to see a state like it's a one two punch, like they that's just how it has to be. That's right. And we'll talk more about some some disingenuous arguments and deconstruct him as we go, but that's the one that seems to be bandied about most most commonly. Right. Yeah, and you know, we've talked a little bit about why it matters to begin with. Um, we mentioned at the very beginning their license plate taxation without representation, and you know, that's a little bit of a snide license plate, but it's very true. They pay federal income tax and like really high federal income tax, so much that they contribute more than they received from the federal government. One thing I saw, Chuck is like I was like, well, wait a minute, can DC like even handle being a state? You know, how much does it get from the federal government? And apparently it is not, in any way, shape or form, the the state that or the area that receives the most federal funding. I guess that honor goes to Mississippi. Of Mississippi state and local budget is made up of federal funds thirty percent for Louisiana, New Mexico, and South Dakota, pent DC is twent so just a quarter of all of the money that DC uses to operate comes from the federal government. The rest is from local taxes. And DC apparently has a little bonnet, a little flower in its bonnet, and that it typically has a balanced budget every year too. Oh really, so we could do just fine without um being a state. It would be like, yeah, we should still get the federal funding because other states get federal funding too. But even if you kept it at the federal funding they get now, they would be doing just fine as far as federal law is concerned. They are treated as a state. Yeah, they're not a state with representation like a state. We already talked about congressional representation. Uh. They you know, they can't vote on bills. It's uh, it's really weird that you can introduce a bill and write the bill, but not vote in that bill. Yeah. And because constitutional amendments are typically what's thrown around about making DC a state or not, or has been up until recently. Um, it's kind of ironic that D c wouldn't be able to vote on its own ratification like its own statehood, like, because it cannot vote on constitutional amendments because it's not a state. So it would basically DC has to rely on everybody else to go to bat for it because it doesn't have self determination. That's right. You want to take another break and then talk about some of the arguments for and against. Yeah, okay, well we're gonna do just that, everybody, George, all right, So we've you know, made our position clear that most of the arguments against statehood are and these aren't our arguments. I mean, like I said, any honest person will tell you that it is strictly partisan political issue. It's because they don't want two more Democratic senators in there. They just don't. And um, you know, uh, that's their right to fight against that, I guess, uh, and they and they do. But it's disingenuous and it's an anti social sentiment like there how somebody or some group of people are expected to vote has like nothing to do with whether they should have the right to vote or not. You can't just keep people from voting because you don't like the way they're going to vote. That is an anti social act anti democratic. Yeah, it's both, and you did. That's exactly what's going on right now. That is that's it. They boil it down, I mean, get mad at us, just like you did our gerrymandering episode or our voter suppression episode. It's still the case. That's just how it is right now. It's one of those political fictions that it's anything but that. That's right. Um. The one of the arguments is that it's unconstitutional to begin with. That's why you said that. Up until recently, most of the attempts to make DC a state have tried to come via constitutional amendments. And here's the thing though, like there's nothing specifically prohibiting d C from becoming a state in the constitution. No, you had mentioned that, like some some people are like, let's shrink d C the capital down to just the federal buildings. Basically as ed who helps us out with this one? UM puts it like tourists d C, right, and that everything else commercial and residential DC that would become the state and then that federal district would become the capital. And people are like no, no no, no, you can't do that. There's like a size requirement in the in the Constitution can't change something like that. And and people are saying, well, actually, there is a size requirement. It's a maximum, not a minimum. It doesn't say how small it can be, it says how big it can be. It can't be more than ten miles square. Yeah, I think ten square mouths sare mouth So yes, you totally could shrink it. So just shut down that argument. But but one more thing, chuck about that. One of the reasons why they have abandoned a constitutional amendment making DC estate is twofold one. That's a huge hurdle to jump over. I think you have to have two thirds of the state to ratify account. So first of all, you have to get it through both houses of Congress, which is an impossibility to begin with. And then you have to have two thirds of the state, many of which are controlled by Republican legislatures, to ratify that amendment to make DC a state. So it's just too huge of uh an obstacle to this amount. But also it's really disingenuous to require a constitutional amendment to make DC estate because since the Constitution itself was ratified in not a single state that was admitted into the Union from that time had had was was admitted through a constitutional amendment. There are no constitutional amendments that that have admitted states. They've all come in through congressional decree instead. That's right, and well we'll talk about that in just a second more detail. But another one of the paths that has been bandied about a little bit is um well, not past the statehood but passed to making it not a state and ensuring it never become the state, saying well, why don't we just make it part of Virginia or Maryland like it used to be. Give it back to them and nobody you know, you know who doesn't want that, d C, Virginia and Maryland. Yeah, none of them want it. Maryland doesn't want to assume those seven hundred thousand people. Virginia doesn't want it. DC doesn't want to be a part of either one of those. Like, the only people that want that are are frankly Republicans who don't want it to become state. Yes, because it might add a few more electoral votes to Maryland or Virginia, but it would not add a single extra senator. You can't have more than two senators no matter what your population size. Again the crux to the matter. Um. Another one is that the idea that the city can't take care of that federal property. And I don't think anybody who's a pro statehood advocate says, oh yeah, yeah they can, that's just not true. But they say, well, we wouldn't be taking care of most of that property. It would be shrunk down to be the capital, so it'd still be the federal government's jurisdiction. People said, well, there's other federal buildings outside of this little tourist area. How what are you gonna do about those? And d C says, do you know how many states and cities have federal buildings in them that the state in the city takes care of in conjunction with the federal government and with funding from the federal government. Totally not a problem. I think disingenuinuity is that a word? It is now, Buddy, is one of my least favorite things to witness. It is because it's just it's just dishonest. It's just a bunch of garbage, like acting a certain like just call it what it is. Is so frustrating, it's almost almost disingenuous. Um. So we you mentioned earlier that no other state needed a Congressional or i'm sorry, a constitutional amendment to become a state. Um, the Tennessee model is sort of where DC has tried to go more recently. The Tennessee Plan in se when Tennessee as an a state yet, and they said, you know what, we're tired of waiting around for Congress to do anything about it. So we're gonna hold our own referendum. We're gonna vote to become a state. And we passed it, and then we're gonna write and approve our own state constitution and how we're going to administer that and kind of this is how we would do things. And they did that, and then Congress is sort of like everyone sort of sitting sitting there twiddling their thumbs staring at Congress like we're all ready to go. Just unlocked the door and we could become a state. And it worked, and it also worked in Michigan, Iowa, California, Oregon, Kansas and Alaska and so d C recently I think about five years ago, said maybe let's try this Tennessee plan forget constitutional amendments, let's just have a referendum. And it passed by and they said great, let's draft a constitution. And they did that and it was approved, and they said, the mayor is going to become the governor's city council will become the legislature, and here we go, Congress, let's get this done. We're ready to roll. Yeah. And I So this was in two thousand and sixteen that that referendum passed and they started to adopt the Tennessee Plan. And what sucks, Chuck, is that means that they were distracted by that idea that they had to become a state through constitutional amendment for decades, like they if they had taken up this Tennessee Plan decades ago, who knows where they would be now. They might be a state by now. It's just so it's just it's really sad to think like that that that work, that boondogg will work, that they needed for years. Yeah, basically, so that's why I'm like, I don't know, we might actually see it's possible we could see d C a state. Um, because this referendum and the plan that they followed where they basically made themselves an instant state, like just ad Congress kind of thing. Um. It came in just the last five years. So for the first time ever in the history of the District of Columbia, UM, a bill passed that says DC is a state. Please go ahead and m past this bill Senate, it past the House. Everything else has been like, we're the House of Representatives and we think DC should be a state, not a It's just a like a resolution and support of DC being a state. It's not an actual law. This is an actual law that passed the House of Representatives. Of course, it died in the Senate because, um, it was while Mitch McConnell was a majority leader and he didn't even let it come up for a vote. I I can't believe it even made it onto his desk before catching fire. But but the fact is that it did pass the House at least once. And that is brand new. That is definitely new. Yeah, it's amazing. And uh, it's amazing that we have a situation in our on our modern day government where one person can say no, we're not gonna vote on this two party system does not work. It's broken, it doesn't work. Yeah, it was reintroduced in one just this year past the House again. UM. Well, sadly in this case, it's probably not gonna happen because Democrats can't agree on anything within their own portable irony of the whole thing in it. Yes, it really is. You mentioned two people earlier, probably would be the same two people. That's what happen. Yeah. The only other question mark is Mark Kelly no Angus King from Maine, and he may be retired now, but yes, it is. From what I saw, it would come down to Kristen Cinema and Joe Manchin and UM both have not supported previous like DC statehood stuff before. Other people who have not actually didn't actually co sponsor that bill in the Senate, UM have supported other stuff, so they would be expected to vote yes. So it could come down to two people again, both of whom Democrats, that would keep d C from becoming a state. Now it's pretty interesting stuff. What would uh different names bandied about over the years that it did become a state. I knew that New Columbia was what they were gonna call it for a long time, but then you know, uh, in more recent years, Christopher Columbus has become less favorable in in the eyes of history, so they're saying maybe New Columbia is not the right the right name after all. No, and I didn't know this, but they they are. They plan as part of that referendum, um draft constitution that was passed, Uh, they would change the name. They would keep it as Washington d C, but d C would stand for Douglas Commonwealth, after Frederick Douglas, the abolitionist former. S I like it in that neat yeah, d C. You know, I think people they go to towards d C, which is a lot of fun. We both done that that thing a lot of times. Um, it is that. But d C is a rich city with a rich history, uh in and of itself, a rich history of music and culture and black culture and great food and like there's a there's a lot to d C besides the mall area. Um And every time I go there, I try to check out different areas and do different things, and uh, it's it's awesome. We have a great, great time when we do live shows in d C. It's one of my favorite places. When we go to uh what is it Lincoln and they give us us Lincoln logs. The pastry, where did those come from? What do you mean where they come from? What's what's the bakery that does those? Do you know, I don't know. I think it's I don't always just sitting there backstage and they're so delicious and we always eat like ten each of them. They're they're like Swiss cake rolls, but like the bakery version of a Swiss cake roll. Yeah. So before we go, Chuck, I feel like we have to talk about how some recent events like really kind of have brought the idea of DC not being a state to the four um both of which occurred in actually, oh, like the storming of the capital. That's that's one of them for sure. Yeah, and I think that kind of harkens back to the mutiny of seventeen eighty three and that uh there there are some people who think it could it would have gone down a lot differently if um, we had been able, if if the government had been able to call on the state national Guard like super quickly. Yeah, because the national Guard, the d C National Guard is not under control of d C, just like any other states national guard would be under the state's control, which is why that that's what Congress wanted it to be, Like, they wanted DC's National Guard to be under control of the federal government. Because of that that Mutiny of seventeen eighty three, But the exact opposite thing happened on January six, because d C and the Capital wanted the d C National Guard and definitely would have activated them and brought him out hours before, but the federal government at the time kept them from doing that because they were under federal control. So that was one that really just kind of pointed out, like, oh, well, this is harmful, this is not good. UM. The other way that it was pointed out was kind of the opposite of that, where during the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of after the murder of George Floyd UM and people took to the streets in d C. They were um, they were basically beating out of the streets, harassed out of the streets, used tear gas on um by the DC National Guard that was deployed by the federal government. Whereas you can pretty much guess that if Muriel Bowser had been the governor of the state of DC rather than just the mayor and had the power over the National Guard, those National Guard troops would not have been deployed against those protesters. So both of those events just in within months of one another, um, so the protests were in the insurrection was in the beginning of one. Yeah, that was this year. It's nuts, I think, really, I thought seems longer. This year has been a long decade him. But both of those, both of those events have pointed out like because of that mutiny of three, those things were able to happen the way that they did. Really really interesting. Yeah it is so now you guys know DC statehood. You make up your own mind about it. But them's the facts, just the facts. And since I said them's the facts, it's time of course everybody for listener mail. I'm gonna call this baby shout out. You don't do a lot of shout outs, but this is kind of special, I think, because this is a future shout out. I've been a long time listener and in January I had a baby. Who is your youngest listener. While I was pregnant, I worked as an assistant manager local horse boarding facility near Augusta, Georgia, And every morning when I fed the horses, I put my phone uh in my phone belt and turned on stuff. You should know, babies can hear nearby sounds in the womb. So Clara has been listening as long as she has been able to hear. Uh. Now we listen to stuff you should know during our afternoon walks together. If an episode finishes before it's over, Clara will sign and ask for more. You know that little toddler sign like which is the best? I know? It's adorable. I didn't realize it was the thing. And then one of you's best friends, Um taught her kids, and I was like, oh, that's really cool. Yeah. We did some basic stuff. We didn't get too involved, but there was a little bit of that early on. Man, kids are so neat these days. They're so neat. Uh not like us. We were just dummies. They're like, here, here's oatmeal and a television we've played with the stick in a wheel. Back to the mail. I would love for her to have a shout out on an episode, so one day we can go back and listen to her episode. So, uh, Clara, your episode is on DC Statehood. Maybe things will be different then? Yeah, wouldn't that be something? That would be something? But this is from Karas Texador and she just says, thanks for all we do. We really helped build the long arms of COVID shutdown at home with an infant and for helping making learning new things fun. That is Carris Texadore. Great name. That's awesome. Thanks Kris, definitely a great name. You sound like the last Starfighter or something that's right. And hello little Carla. I hope you keep listening in. Uh, I hope by the time your twenty we're still doing this show. No, maybe not by then recently retired. Yeah, I will be seventy. Yeah, yeah, I guess that's right. Yeah. So yeah, thank you very much for writing in. Carris and Carla. Best wishes to you on a fantastic life. And if you want to get in touch with this, like Harris and Carla did, you can send us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.