Twenty-two Republican attorneys general have declared they will “challenge any attempt” to make the District of Columbia the 51st state, calling such efforts unconstitutional and bad policy. “If this Congress passes and President Biden signs this Act into law, we will use every legal tool at our disposal to defend the United States Constitution and the rights of our states from this unlawful effort to provide statehood to the District of Columbia,” the attorneys general wrote in an April 13 letter (pdf) to President Joe Biden and congressional leaders. The letter comes in response to proposed legislation by non-voting Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) and Sen. Thomas Carper (D-Del.), which seeks to shrink the size of the federal district serving as the nation’s capital and establish a new state upon the remaining land. Proponents of Norton’s bill argue that while the Constitution specifies that the federal district can’t exceed “ten …