You'll appreciate that the current proposal on the table for DC statehood leaves a "Capital District" consisting of the National Mall and surrounding federal bu

You'll appreciate that the current proposal on the table for DC statehood leaves a "Capital District" consisting of the National Mall and surrounding federal buildings (including the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court), and only turns the rest of DC into a state. See the map at the bottom of https://statehood.dc.gov/page/resource-center https://statehood.dc.gov/page/resource-center . If you haven't been to DC or looked closely at a map, it might surprise you that the vast majority of it is an ordinary city with residences and shops and schools, and the seat of federal government is a pretty small area. I didn't actually realize that until poking at a map and talking with friends who have lived in DC - I had the impression that DC was already small and most non-federal stuff was across the border in Virginia or Maryland, but that isn't actually true. DC is larger in area than SF! (Also, federal districts like DC are relatively rare: most other countries don't have them. The hypothesis may not have changed since the founding, but we have a couple of centuries of experimental data now. Even the UN has buildings in Manhattan that are part of Manhattan and the US and not a separate UN exclave - I can and do bike down First Avenue, with UN buildings on both sides, without going through a border crossing.)