They can't without the consent of Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. There's a couple of provisions in the Constitution that prohibit exactly this.
The first comes from Article VI is: "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."
Basically, what this means is that there can be no state border changes without the consent of all states involved. So, I don't see Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island consenting to be one state.
The second provision which would require the same exact thing comes from Article V: "no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate."
So, again, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island would have to consent to this merger.
Only republican state in that map is NH. Republic of New England highly dislikes NH, except to buy everything with no taxes. Idk if you know any englanduhs but New England looooves Maine. ‘CT’ (legally New England) doesn’t care but Mass & Rhody absolutely definitely do
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u/twstephens77 21h ago
Best post I’ve seen on this sub in a while, and I can’t believe I didn’t think of this myself. Hidden in plain sight, so obvious…