It’s a popular enough theme for books. One showed the US split into 25 areas with a city at the center of each, instead of at the edges of states, like history dealt us.
In several states, every year, there are bills up to split or redivide things.
Usually, it’s because the interests of the cities are the opposite of the rural areas.
Some town, like Gary Indiana, even take Chicago’s time zone instead of following the rest of the state.
And much of Upper Michigan thinks it should join Minnesota, because everything flows through of Duluth.
Those in Alabama have always envied the Florida Panhandle.
Actually, all the panhandles have been sort of forgotten by the pans, from West Va. to Oklahoma to Idaho.
I don’t see states combining anytime soon, although I think they should. I see combining state governments as a good way to eliminate redundancies. The problem here is the Senate. Rhode Island gets the same 2 votes in the Senate as California and Texas. It is not in the political interests of states with small populations to combine with others.
New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states
shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed
by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the
legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.
That would make it a pain in the ass. It’s hard enough to get a majority vote for something drastic in one legislature, let alone three.
Heck, we’ve already got cities that straddle 2 or more states. (I.e. Kansas City, Missouri, and Kansas City, Kansas. Right across the river from each other. They’re effectively one city.)
It wouldn’t be practical. Maybe if the 25 largest cities in the US were evenly spread across the mainland, it would be a different story.
For example, 4 of the top 25 cities in size are in Texas and are 250 miles apart or so (Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston). How would this get split into 4 states? Same situation in California.
Cute animation, but what’s the point? It’s almost a century since any of that stuff changed. We’re no more likely to change a border than to change any of the faces on our coins, or to get rid of the one-dollar bill. Merkins hate changing stuff.