Senator John Nance "Cactus Jack" Garner (D-TX) suggested splitting Texas into five states. It’s unusual to carve a new state out of an existing one, or even to redraw state boundaries.  The United States’ Constitution makes it very difficult to do.  Not only would the residents of the existing and potential new states have to agree, Congress has to agree, too.  In 1820, the new state of Maine was carved out of Massachusetts, and the new state of West Virginia was (sort of) carved out of Virginia.  Besides that, there have been occasions where state boundaries were nudged a little bit, but for the past century, things have been pretty calm on the new-borders front. That’s not to say there are no efforts to break new states out of the old ones.  Most of these efforts don’t go anywhere—a handful of counties in rural Colorado tried to form the state of North Colorado in 2013, complaining that they didn’t get the attention they deserved from the government in Denver.  The re