When Adding New States Helped the Republicans

Today, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform is scheduled to hold the first hearing in a quarter century on whether to admit the District of Columbia as a state. Over the past year, Puerto Rico’s tribulations after a deadly hurricane have invigorated the statehood movement there, too. Adding the 51st and 52nd stars to the flag might seem like a dramatic change to Americans who haven’t seen a new one in nearly six decades—and Republicans have been quick to characterize the very notion as a radical move. In June, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warned that a House plan to admit the two jurisdictions to the union would give the Democrats four more senators, permitting them to impose “full-bore socialism” on America, and he pledged to stop it.

The number of states in the union has been fixed at 50 for so long, few Americans realize that throughout