With all due respect, that will never ever ever fucking happen.
But hypothetically, it would look like this: All States are guaranteed two senators, so the question is how many House seats would they get. Congress capped the total number of seats in the House to 435. (Completely arbitrary number that’s about as likely to change as PR/DC getting Statehood.) So in the dream world where DC and PR are given Statehood, their populations would need to be determined, and they would receive a proportional amount of representatives. DC, if it became a State, would be the third smallest, so DC would receive one House rep. PR would be the 33 largest State, and would likely receive about 4 House seats.
Again, this will never happen in the current post-Constitutional America. Those seats would almost all go to Dems, which is why it’ll never fucking happen.
Why would it never happen?
Reps would never let DC become a state, and Puerto Rico currently prefers being a territory for political reasons.
We have a fascist, literal criminal as president who is a republican. Based on the demographics of DC/PR, most—if not all—of their representatives and senators would be democrats.
Republicans control the Senate 53-47. You can see why the potential of adding four new Democrat senators would be a dealbreaker for republicans. Adding DC/PR to Congress would have the direct effect of lessening republican power. Republicans will not let that happen, and honestly, from a purely political standpoint, I see the logic (but still staunchly disagree with disenfranchising DC/PR folks).
I get that this is a political question, but geez people need to slack up a little… This question could have been asked during any administration. If it’s such a democrat advantage then why didn’t they do it 4 years ago?
Easy. Because in order for DC/PR to become states, it would take an act of Congress. Given the reality of the Senate filibuster, a vote to make DC/PR states would require 60 Senators in support. Democrats have not had 60 Senators since the 1970s. Therefore, it has been a political impossibility for the Dems to get enough support to overcome the filibuster and make DC/PR states.
Any other questions, my friend? :) I’m a political scientist, so these questions are fun for me.
Economic damage from Trump’s tariffs could cause the Republicans to lose the House and maybe the Senate in 2026. They might even lose the majority in some Republican controlled state legislatures. Voters will blame the party currently in power. Democrats can run on deauthorizing all of the Trump tariffs and help to normalize international trade relationships. If Republicans lose control of the state legislatures then NPVIC could be in reach.
You assume there will be free and fair elections in 2026 and beyond. I don’t see a world in which the trump regime doesn’t meddle in the next election and ensure repubs maintain power. But I mean this with every fiber of my being when I say this, I hope to god you’re right.
With all due respect, that will never ever ever fucking happen.
It’s crazy that the '09 Congress didn’t push them through. Imagine subsequent congresses in which Dems were functionally guaranteed +2 Senate seats and 2-4 House seats from DC. Imagine Republicans being forced to compete for votes in Puerto Rico, while running anti-Hispanic campaigns at home (Republicans have lost enormous ground in big Latino states like Nevada, Arizona, California, and Texas already).
You’d like to think Dem party with an eye towards the future would ram this through without a second thought. But liberals are nothing if not self-defeating.
Again, this will never happen in the current post-Constitutional America.
I would argue some of the most radical progressive changes to the American system came precisely during periods of disregard to an anachronistic and anti-democratic document like the Constitution. We abolished slavery under martial law. We nationalized the economy under the WW2 War Powers Act. If ever there was a time during which a radical progressive could take the helm without being hamstrung by conservatives in their own party, it would be in the wake of a constitutional crisis like this.
But you’d need a radical left wing ideologue to get near the reins of office in order to make it happen. It certainly won’t come about under a Gavin Newsome or Pete Buttigieg administration.
population determines House of Representative numbers and each state gets 2 Senators
There is a cap on the size of the US House of Representatives.
But it does get rebalanced from time to time. Each have a (relatively speaking) small population and would likely get 1 rep for D.C and maybe around 3-4 for Puerto Rico. Those seats would be taken from other states whose proportion of the population was decreased by the addition of the 2 new states population.
The rebalancing ignores what population growth does to the ratio - each representative is responsible for more and more constituents over time. It’s just like teacher to student ratio, the higher the number the less effective they are at the job. The physical logistics of having a building that can’t seat a realistic number of representatives is something that could be figured out, especially with today’s tech.
Each state gets a minimum of one rep. So some states would probably lose reps to make up the difference.
The number of seats is capped at 435, so at the next census, they will receive a portion of the number of seats, with a min of 1. And from history, when Alaska and Hawaii joined, the cap was momentarily raised to 437 to give each of them 1 seat immediately, which was then lowered again at the next census when seats were partitioned out properly, so I would expect the same to happen here. Based on population, PR should get around 4 seats, and DC 1 seat.
Is there a good reason for not making them states already?
It is a very complicated question. Many Puerto Ricans do not wish for PR to be a state. This is also true of other territories.
For DC the reason it is not a state is because it would guarantee 2 Democratic senators and a Democratic representative. Which is a terrible reason.
Assuming no other legal change, you’d be doing the same apportionment math we have historically applied under The Reapportionment Act of 1929
The Reapportionment Act of 1929 capped the number of representatives at 435 (the size previously established by the Apportionment Act of 1911), where it has remained except for a temporary increase to 437 members upon the 1959 admission of Alaska and Hawaii into the Union.
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Since 1941, seats in the House have been apportioned among the states according to the method of equal proportions.
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In this method, as a first step, each of the 50 states is given its one guaranteed seat in the House of Representatives, leaving 385 seats to be assigned. The remaining seats are allocated one at a time, to the state with the highest average district population, to bring its district population down.
Consider the reapportionment following the 2010 U.S. census: after every state is given one seat:
- The largest value of A1 corresponds to the largest state, California, which is allocated seat 51.
- The 52nd seat goes to Texas, the 2nd largest state, because its A1 priority value is larger than the An of any other state.
- The 53rd seat goes back to California because its A2 priority value is larger than the An of any other state.
- The 54th seat goes to New York because its A1 priority value is larger than the An of any other state at this point.
This process continues until all remaining seats are assigned. Each time a state is assigned a seat, n is incremented by 1, causing its priority value to be reduced.
Of course, I would simply repeal the The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 as part of the legislation that incorporated these territories as official US states. It’s a bad law. It creates bizarre political incentives for both the US Census and the function of the lower chamber. It incentivizes gerrymandering of what is engineered as a scarce political resource. And it facilitates a bunch of downwind bad behaviors in the states that have mimicked it, to date.
The same thing that happened when Hawaii and Alaska joined. The joining state gets one at large representative until the next census. So for a few years the size was 436 and then 437 until it reduced down to 435
