Federal district in the context of "Federal capital"

Washington, D.C., officially the District of Columbia and commonly known as simply Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is separated from Virginia to its southwest by the Potomac River and shares land borders with Maryland to its north and east. It was named after George Washington, a Founding Father and the first president of the United States. The district is named for Columbia, the female personification of the nation.

The U.S. Constitution in 1789 called for the creation of a federal district under exclusive jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress. As such, Washington, D.C., is not part of any state, and is not one itself. The Residence Act, adopted on July 16, 1790, approved the creation of the capital district along the Potomac River, and is considered the city's founding date. In 1800, when the capital was moved from Philadelphia, the 6th Congress started meeting in the then-unfinished Capitol Building, and the second president, John Adams, moved into the newly finished White House. In 1801, the District of Columbia, formerly part of Maryland and Virginia and including the existing settlements of Georgetown and Alexandria, was officially made the federal district; initially, the city was a separate settlement within the larger district. In 1846, Congress reduced the size of the district when it returned the land Virginia had ceded, including the city of Alexandria. In 1871, it made the entire district into a single municipality. There have been several failed efforts to make the district into a state since the 1880s, including a statehood bill that passed the House of Representatives in 2021 but was not adopted by the U.S. Senate.

A capital district, capital region, or capital territory is normally a specially designated administrative division where a country's seat of government is located. As such, in a federal model of government, no state or territory has any political or economic advantage relative to the others because of the national capital lying within its borders. A capital territory can be a specific form of federal district.

A distinction should be made between administrative divisions which include national capitals, but have no special designated status legally (for example, Île de France has no distinct quality from other regions of France). Some federal countries (like Belgium and Germany), give their national capitals the status of full, equal federal units.

The Capital District (Spanish: Distrito Capital) is a federal district of Venezuela. It has an area of 433 km (167 sq mi) and there is only one administrative division (municipio), Libertador, which contains about half of Caracas, the Venezuelan capital city, which is also the seat of the three branches of the federal government of Venezuela. The population in 2004 was 2,073,768. The district borders the states of Vargas and Miranda.

The District of Columbia retrocession was the act of returning to Virginia some of the land from the District of Columbia that Virginia had previously ceded to the federal government of the United States. The land was originally ceded to the federal government by Virginia and Maryland in 1790 for the purpose of creating a federal district for the new national capital; the capital was moved from Philadelphia to what was then called the City of Washington in 1800. After moving through various stages of federal and state approval, the Virginia portion was retroceded in March 1847.

Retrocession is the act of returning some or all of a portion of land that had previously been ceded.

The District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871 is an Act of Congress that repealed the individual charters of the cities of Washington and Georgetown and established a new territorial government for the whole District of Columbia. Though Congress repealed the territorial government in 1874, the legislation was the first to create a single municipal government for the federal district. Direct rule by Congress continued until the 1973 passage of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, a century later.

The District of Columbia, the capital city and federal district of the United States, has been the subject of political movements that advocate making it a U.S. state, to provide the city's residents with voting representation in the Congress and complete control over local affairs.

Since its establishment by the "District Clause" in Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the United States Constitution, the District of Columbia has been a federal district under the exclusive legislative jurisdiction of the United States Congress. It is currently debated whether the District of Columbia could be made a state by an act of Congress or whether it would require a constitutional amendment. Alternative proposals to statehood include the retrocession of the District of Columbia and voting rights reforms. If the District of Columbia were to become a U.S. state, it would be the 51st state overall, and first to be admitted to the union since 1959.