According to Pedro Menéndez Sanabri, writing in El Vocero, Puerto Rico is formally requesting statehood. The “House of Representatives is preparing to file a measure today to formally request the federal Congress and President Donald Trump to admit Puerto Rico as a state,” the article reports.
Then-Governor Rossello officially requested statehood in 2018, but while two additional status votes and several statehood bills have come about since then, there have been no further direct government demands formally requesting statehood.
Governor Jenniffer González Colón had previously told El Vocero “that she was convinced that the plebiscites had already fulfilled their purpose.” That purpose was to establish democratic self-determination.
The statement
“Puerto Rico has already voted four times in favor of statehood, and as elected officials, we already have that mandate decided by the people,” the governor said in a statement. “Therefore, I am filing, along with the leadership of the legislative assembly, a joint resolution, with the force of law, to formally petition the Congress and the President of the United States to admit us as a State of the Union, in the same way that has been done with the other states for the last 250 years since the American Declaration of Independence.”
The resolution from the territorial government will press Congress to enact legislation making Puerto Rico a state, on equal footing with all 50 current states.
The details
The legislation has not yet been made public, but the news report says that it reminds Congress and the White House that plebiscites in 2012, 2017, 2020 and 2024 showed that statehood is the first choice of Puerto Rico voters.
“The people of Puerto Rico have repeatedly exercised their right to determine their political future through plebiscites and have expressed their preference for Puerto Rico to become a state of the Union,” El Vocero quotes the bill as saying. “In a plebiscite held on November 6, 2012, 53.97 percent of participating voters rejected the continuation of the existing territorial status. In the plebiscite held on November 5, 2024, statehood received 58.61 percent of the legal votes cast among the status options presented to the electorate.”
The legislation also notes a number of reasons to admit Puerto Rico as a state, including “shared American values, economic capacity, military service, importance to national security, and Puerto Rico’s historical integration into constitutional, economic, and political life.”
The legislation calls for the request to be sent to Congress and to President Trump. While many U.S. presidents have publicly supported statehood, it is in the power of Congress rather than the president to admit new states.
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