Stuff You Should Know - Why Is DC Not A State?

Episode Date: November 18, 2021

The residents of Washington, D.C., the capital of the oldest democracy in the world, are not allowed to pass their own laws without the federal government agreeing with them first. That’s because DC is not a state, something DC residents want to change. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart 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. We are ready to do this thing

and it's gonna be good. Stuff you should not. That's right. Waiting in two political waters. Yep. No way around it. No way around it. What does that DC license plate 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 is not a state when they have 700,000 roughly people living there, about 250,000 of which were born and raised there. And yet they don't get the benefits of statehood, which we'll talk about for reasons that are kind of terrible. Not too relevant, I think. Yeah. So yeah, if you aren't aware, if you live in DC, you have some voting rights, but mostly

you are very much limited or restricted as far as what you're allowed to do to participate in democracy, at least compared to other states, right? And all of this was 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 residents of other states. 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 DC the 51st state, which a lot of people, including most of the people who live in DC, want. They want to become the 51st 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 closer than ever, actually. Closer than ever, but still not too close, if you ask me. Well, 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 this 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 for about, I guess, from 1776 to 89. The Continental Congress met in different places. They met in Philly, of course. They met in Maryland some. They met in New York City some. They even met in New Jersey some, believe it or not. And in 1787 in the Philadelphia Convention, they wrote the Constitution

and said, you know, that's really kind of beefed up the federal government and said, we need some place that's like clearly ours that we will meet that is permanent. And it was written right there in the Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17. Yes. And 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'd already written the Constitution and where a lot of the early founding fathers were from. But the Southern states said, hey, man, we don't want the capital 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 13 colonies along the eastern seaboard. So they came up with what's called the Compromise of 1790, which said, okay, we'll place this capital further south toward you guys, but you have to say that the colonial debts and obligations that were accrued during the Revolutionary War, we get to move those over 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 establish this country is laden it with Revolutionary War debt. Right. And with the Residence Act, they said, you know, we literally need land

like physical space. So Maryland, Virginia, pony up. You got to give up each a little bit to create this area. And I think they eventually, not I think I know, they eventually got back Alexandria, Virginia in 1846, but initially that was a part of the, the tronche 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. And the, the Pennsylvania mutiny of 1783, when these veterans, hundreds of veterans, stormed Congress and said, you know, this is what we want. They were angry. We want back pay. 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 defense, really. Right. And so we need a federal land that is not a state so we can have our own defense system, our own soldiers. Yeah, 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 the 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. And it was all because of that Pennsylvania mutiny of 1783, because those war veterans were owed back pay and they were mad about it and were chasing

Congress all over the country for it. So, so that's why DC was stateless to begin with, like that, so that the federal government could have its own jurisdiction over this area, over the capital. That's right. And in 1800, Congress set up there in Washington DC. And like I said, Alexandria is part of it first, Georgetown was and still is. And they were, you know, they were port towns. So there was a lot going on there. But for the first several decades, DC was pretty rural and didn't really start growing a lot. And we have some population breakdowns. But there's really post civil war is when the population boom happened there. I think in 1800, there was 8,000 people there, 1860, 70,000, 1880, 175,000.

That's a big jump. Yeah. And these are, you know, people that work for the government. And these are also free people now that came up from the south, set up residents there. And so DC, for many, many years, had a majority black population and kind of right away, 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 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 in the country can't tell you that your laws are invalid. Just basically the right to sovereignty that any state holds, right? So people have been interested

in that in DC 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 they finally said, and I think 1867, you know what, you're totally right. We should let DC residents vote. And they passed an act that said everybody in DC can vote. And by saying everybody in DC, or I should say every man in DC can vote, they were for the first time in American history in franchising Black men to vote. Like there had never been a law that allowed 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 1867, for a full

three long years, Black men were allowed to vote in DC for things like federal government positions like president and vice president. Right. And when I said that won't do, that's what I was talking about. They quickly 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 re-disenfranchise Black people. Yeah. There was a famous quote from a Senator named John Tyler Morgan, who was describing it years later why they repealed that law and appointed

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 he said? He said it out loud. He did and wrote it down. Like it's in quotes there. So what he's saying is that to keep Black people from voting in D.C., they had to remove the voting rights of everybody. And that's what they did. And what's crazy is that's how it has generally remained remained for 150 years now, for basically the same reason, unfortunately.

Yeah. It was from the 1800s until 1973. Like I was born and alive when Washington, D.C., was still a territory that had a governor and a ruling council that the president appointed. They did have a single delegate to Congress, but they were not given a congressional vote. So there was a delegate that could do the things that delegates do. They could even introduce articles, but they can't even vote on their own articles. No. No, they can be on committees and all that. Like almost everything that a House member can do, a congressional member can do, but just not vote. It's a non-voting delegate. And so in that way, yes, you had somebody who could advocate for D.C., but 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 D.C. 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? Well, we're going to explain exactly how it affects them. But one of the big ways, if it stands out to me, is that when the Home Rule Act was passed in 1973 that said, okay, you guys can elect your own mayor and you

can elect your own city council, bully for you. There's this thing that we have 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 and passed 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 rider, well, then you can do without it, but you have to do without the money that makes up about 25% of

your operating budget every year. That's the kind of like a draconian rule that Congress holds over DC to this day. Yeah. And this is why, and you know, unfortunately, this does wade into politics and we'll get into that more later, but like it is kind of purely for partisan politics why DC is not a state at this point. And it's, the ironies are pretty rich here in that generally Republicans do not want DC to become a state, but they're also the same party who decries government overreach in 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 district voting 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'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. DC had a needle exchange program to try to slow the spread of HIV. And it was overturned by Congress in 1998 and was not allowed to happen again until 2007. 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, DC had one of the highest rates of HIV after its needle exchange program was banned by Congress. HIV rates dropped by 70% and an estimated 120 people were prevented from being infected with HIV in just two years after the

needle program was allowed to start up again in 2007. There's also ones on abortion access, COVID-19, they got the short end of the stick as far as funds go. And then there's another one where they tried to repeal their sodomy law, which outlawed sex between men back in 1981. And Congress didn't let it actually go through until 1993. Well, there's just been a lot of stuff where basically if you have somebody in Congress who doesn't like the idea of DC, the people of DC having legalized marijuana or being able to use taxpayer money for abortions, like DC doesn't get to do that because a rider gets attached to their budget and they have to take it. And that COVID thing you were talking about, every U.S. state got $1.25 billion in aid,

but Congress cut that in half for DC, even though they had, well, first of all, they're like, well, we're bigger than Vermont and like one other state too, right? Wyoming or? Yep. And they're almost the same size as Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Delaware, population-wise. Yeah. And they were, I think, had more confirmed COVID cases at the time than 19 other states, yet they got half the aid just because. Yes. So it's mind-numbing and crazy. And if you just put yourself in the position of somebody who's interested in the political process and lives in DC, and the idea that your city can pass a law with huge support, I think their marijuana legalization law passed with 65% support of 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 rider to your annual budget. How outrage-inducing would that be? You know, how frustrating would it be at the very least? So yes, it actually is harmful to the democracy of Washington DC and their self-determination and their ability for home rule, 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. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest

thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so,

tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesha Tickler. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses,

major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So people have been allowed to vote in Washington, D.C. for elections, for presidential national elections for a long time now. In 1961, they ratified the 23rd 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 60 years is how long the residents of D.C. have been able to vote. Yeah. I mean, when I said quite a while, it didn't mean on the beginning of timescale, just sort of... Gotcha. Oh, I didn't know if you're being facetious or not. No, no, no. I mean, for many decades now, but not... Yeah. I guess in that context, it's an outrage for sure. And so that 23rd Amendment, that's the whole purpose of the 23rd Amendment, is to basically say, yes, D.C. can now vote in presidential elections and they can contribute electors. But they can never have more electors than the number of electors that the least

populist state in the United States has. Like, it doesn't matter how many people D.C. could swell to... Well, it probably couldn't handle it, but it could swell to the size of a 2 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 your number of electors are based on the representation you have in the House and the Senate. So you always... Every state has two senators and every state has at least one congressperson. And D.C. probably would always still have one congressperson 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. And so those electors, ever since the, I believe,

the 1964 election, the first time D.C. ever contributed electors to the Electoral College, those electors almost invariably go 100% toward the Democratic candidate, right? Like, D.C. is one of the first states that gets called on those electoral maps during every presidential election and they go towards the Democrat. So if you made D.C. a state, that's not going to be a huge change. Like, nothing's going to change. They're still going to have their three electoral votes and they're probably going to go toward the Democratic candidate for president. They're only going to have one congressperson and that one congressperson will probably be a Democrat, but it's kind of a drop in the bucket when you're talking about like 430

or 60. 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 D.C. is not a state. Because D.C. is and has been for a very long time, majority black as far as the population goes and 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 two new senators that just did not exist before, the Senate would go from 100 senators to 102 senators and those two senators were almost guaranteed to be Democratic senators. Well, imagine what two extra Democrat senators would do right now if you had two more Democrats

in the Senate than what we have. That's a plenty number right now. Now we've reached exactly. Now we've reached the reason why D.C. 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, to me, some very disingenuous arguments that are just, it'd 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. It's just that that's the stuff I hate about politics in this country is no one's talking about what the real situation is. 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 main paths for making D.C. a state. And one is 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 and the Capitol building and, you know, kind of everything there in D.C., all the government buildings basically and just make it that. But no one lives there except for, you know, 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.

Right, like three electoral votes. Yeah, that's completely disingenuous. Sure. And especially if that president is an incumbent running for election again, then that incumbent president would have three electoral votes to cast for themselves. Right? So on paper you're like, oh yeah, I could see that being a problem. Let's just give up because of the 23 amendment and that quirk that it attributed, right? But there are a lot of like workarounds too that people are like, no, that's a ridiculous argument. Right, like the president could in fact usually does vote absentee from their own home state. That's one. And then so if no electoral votes are cast or if no votes are actually cast in the district of Columbia, then

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. Right. 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 23rd amendment if you make DC a state. Like it's a one-two punch, like that's just how it has to be. That's right. And we'll talk more about some disingenuous arguments and deconstruct them as we go, but that's the one that seems to be bandied about most commonly, right? Yeah. And we've talked a little bit about why it matters to begin with. We mentioned at the very beginning their license plate taxation with representation.

And 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 so that they contribute more than they receive 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 state that or the area that receives the most federal funding. I guess that honor goes to Mississippi. 35% of Mississippi state and local budget is made up of federal funds, 34% for Louisiana, New Mexico and South Dakota, 27%. DC's is 25%. 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 flower in its bonnet in that it typically has a balanced budget every year too. Oh, really? So it could do just fine without 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, yet they're not a state with representation like a state. We already talked about congressional representation. They can't vote on bills. 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, it's kind of ironic that DC 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 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 going to do just that everybody. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Hard Podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough

or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure

to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams,

canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So we've made our position clear that most of the arguments against statehood are and these aren't our arguments. Like I said, any honest person will tell you that it is a strictly partisan political issue. It's because they don't want two more democratic senators in there. They just don't.

And that's their right to fight against that, I guess. And they do, but it's disingenuous. And it's an antisocial sentiment. 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 antisocial act. Antidemocratic. Yeah, it's both. And that's exactly what's going on right now. That's it. They boil it down. I mean, get mad at us just like you did at 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. 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, there's nothing specifically prohibiting DC from becoming a state in the Constitution. No, you had mentioned that some people are like, let's shrink DC, the capital, down to just the federal buildings, basically as Ed, who helps us out with this one, puts it like tourist DC. And that everything else, the 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,

you can't do that. There's like a size requirement in the Constitution. Can't change something like that. 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 10 miles square. Yeah, I think 10 square miles. Yeah, it's 10 square miles. Yeah. So yes, you totally could shrink it. So just shut down that argument. But one more thing, Chuck, about that. One of the reasons why they have abandoned a constitutional amendment making DC a state is twofold. One, that's a huge hurdle to jump over. I think you have to have two thirds of the state to ratify. Yeah. 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 an obstacle to shumout. But also, it's really disingenuous to require a constitutional amendment to make DC a state because since the constitution itself was ratified in 1788, not a single state that was admitted into the union from that time was admitted through a constitutional amendment. There are no constitutional amendments 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 in more detail. But another one of the paths that has been bandied about a little bit is, well, not past the statehood, but past to making it not a state and ensuring it never becomes a state and 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 who doesn't want that? DC, Virginia and Maryland. None of them want it. Maryland doesn't want to assume those 700,000 people. Virginia doesn't want it. DC doesn't want to be a part of either one of those. Right. Like the only people that want that 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. Yeah. 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 say, well, there's other federal buildings outside of this little tourist area. What are you going to do about those? And DC says, do you know how many states and cities have federal buildings in them that the state and the city takes care of

in conjunction with the federal government and with funding from the federal government? Yeah. Disingenuous. Not a problem. Totally not a problem. I think disingenuity. Is that a word? It is now, buddy. Is one of my least favorite things to witness. It is. Because it's just dishonest. It's just a bunch of garbage like acting a certain, like just call it what it is. It's so frustrating. It's almost disingenuous. So you mentioned earlier that no other state needed a congressional or I'm sorry, a constitutional amendment to become a state. The Tennessee model is sort of where DC has tried to go more recently.

The Tennessee plan in 1796, when Tennessee wasn't 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 going to hold our own referendum. We're going to vote to become a state and we passed it. And then we're going to 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's sort of sitting there, twiddling their thumbs, staring at Congress. Like we're all ready to go just unlock 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 DC 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 85%. And they said, great, let's draft the constitution. And they did that and it was approved. And they said the mayor is going to become the governor, city council will become the legislature. And here we go, Congress, let's get this done. We're ready to roll. Yeah. And so this was in 2016 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 if they'd 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 that that work, that boondoggle work that they needed. For a couple of hundred plus years. Yeah, basically. So that's why I'm like, I don't know, we might actually see, it's possible we could see DC a state because this referendum and the plan that they followed where they basically made themselves an instant state, like just ad Congress kind of thing. It came in just the last five years. So for the first time ever in the history of the district of Columbia, a bill passed that says DC is a state. Please go ahead and pass this bill Senate. It passed the House. Everything else has been like, we're the House of Representatives and we think DC should be a state. It's just 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 it was while Mitch McConnell was a majority leader and he didn't even let it come up for a vote. I can't believe it even made it onto his desk before catching fire. But the fact is that it did pass the House at least once and that is brand new. That is definitely new. Yeah. In 2020, it's amazing and it's amazing that we have a situation in our modern day government where one person can say, no, we're not going to vote on this. Two-party system does not work. It's broken. It doesn't work. Yeah. It was reintroduced in 2021 just this year past the House again. Well, sadly, in this case, it's probably not going to happen because Democrats can't agree on

anything with it in their own party. This is a terrible irony of the whole thing, isn't it? Yes, it really is. You mentioned two people earlier. Probably would be the same two people to keep this from happening. That's what I saw. Yeah. The only other question Mark is Mark Kelly? No. Angus King from Maine. Really? He may be retired now. But yes, from what I saw, it would come down to Kristen Sinema and Joe Manchin and 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 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 DC from becoming

a state now. It's pretty interesting stuff. I've heard different names bandied about over the years that it did become a state. I knew that New Columbia was what they were going to call it for a long time. But then in more recent years, Christopher Columbus has become less favorable in the eyes of history. So they're saying maybe New Columbia is not the right name after all. No. And I didn't know this, but they plan as part of that referendum draft constitution that was passed. They would change the name. They would keep it as Washington DC, but DC would stand for Douglas Commonwealth after Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist former slave. I like it. Isn't that neat? Yeah. DC, I think people that go to tourist DC, which is a lot of

fun. We've both done that thing a lot of times. It is that, but DC is a rich city with a rich history in and of itself, a rich history of music and culture and black culture and great food. There's a lot to DC besides the mall area. Oh, yeah. And every time I go there, I try to check out different areas and do different things. And it's awesome. We have a great, great time when we do live shows in DC. It's one of my favorite places when we go to, what is it, Lincoln? They give us those Lincoln logs, the pastry. Where did those come from? What do you mean where they come from? What's the bakery that does those? Do you know? I don't know. I think it's in nearby a bakery on New Street. I don't remember.

They're always just sitting there backstage and they're so delicious. And we always eat like 10 each of them. 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, both of which occurred in 2020 actually. Oh, like the storming of the Capitol? That's one of them for sure. Yeah. And I think that kind of harkens back to the mutiny of 1783 and that there are some people who think it could have, it would have gone down a lot differently if we had been able, if the government had been able to call on the state National Guard like

super quickly. Yeah. Because the National Guard, the DC National Guard is not under control of DC, just like any other state's National Guard would be under the state's control, which is why 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 mutiny of 1783. But the exact opposite thing happened on January 6th because DC and the Capitol wanted the DC National Guard and definitely would have activated them and brought them 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. 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 2020 after the murder of George Floyd and people took to the streets in DC, they were basically beaten out of the streets, harassed out of the streets, used tear gas on 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 within months of one another, so the protests were in 2020, the insurrection was in the beginning of 2021?

Yeah, that was this year. It's nuts to think of. It seems really, I thought 2020 was long. 2021 seems longer. This year's been a long decade, you know? But both of those events have pointed out like because of that mutiny of 1783, those things were able to happen the way that they did. Really, really interesting. Yeah, it is. So now you guys know DC's statehood. Make up your own mind about it, but them's the facts. Them's the facts. And since I said them's the facts, it's time, of course, everybody for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this a baby shout out. I don't do a lot of shout outs, but this is kind of special, I think, because this is a future shout out. Okay. I've been a long time listener

and in January 2020, I had a baby. Who's your youngest listener? Well, 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 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's been able to hear. 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 language is the best. I know it's adorable. I didn't realize it was the thing of them. One of Yumi's best friends taught her kids and I was like, I don't know. 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. Not like us. We were just dummies. Yeah. Here's oatmeal and a television. We play with the stick and 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 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 KarisTexador and she just says thanks for all we do. We really help fill the long arms of COVID shutdown at home with an infant and for helping making learning new things fun. That is Karis

Teksador. Great name. That's awesome. Thanks, Karis. Definitely a great name. You sound like the last Starfighter or something. That's right. And hello, little Carla. I hope you keep listening and I hope by the time you're 20, we're still doing this show? No, maybe not by then. I'm recently retired. Yeah, I'll be 70. Yeah, I guess that's right. Yeah. Thank you very much for writing in Karis and Carla. Best wishes to you on a fantastic life. If you want to get in touch with us like Karis and Carla did, you can send us an email to stuffpodcastatihartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart Podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups,

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