The final contiguous territories didn’t become states until 1912. Yet even then the country wasn’t a legally homogeneous zone, carpeted wall-to-wall with self-governing states. Washington, DC, remains a highly visible exception—a plurality-Black district whose nearly 700,000 residents may vote for president but lack congressional representation (“End Taxation without Representation,” DC’s license plates read) and have been repeatedly denied statehood. Less visible are the 574 federally recognized tribal nations within US borders today, quasi-states lacking full sovereignty. And within US
...more
