Whereas Associate Justices of the Supreme Court Neil Gorsuch and Sonia Sotomayor have agreed it is past time to acknowledge the gravity of the error of the Insular Cases, and expressed the view that the Constitution’s application should never turn on . . . the misguided framework of the Insular Cases ; Whereas territories have been an important part of the United States since the beginning of our Nation, starting with the Northwest Territory in 1787, with Chief Justice John Marshall writing for the Supreme Court in 1820 that the United States is the name given to our great republic, which is composed of States and territories (Loughborough v. Blake, 18 U.S. (5 Wheat.) 317, 319 (1820)); Whereas today the United States has 5 populated territories, American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands of the United States, which together have a population of over 3,500,000 residents, equal to the population of the 5 smallest States combined, more than 95 percent of whom are racial or ethnic minorities; Whereas Puerto Rico and Guam have now been a part of the United States since 1898, American Samoa since 1900, the Virgin Islands of the United States since 1917, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands since 1986; Whereas, until the Insular Cases were decided in the early 1900s, the Supreme Court long recognized that Congress’ powers over the territories, while broad, were not absolute and unlimited , but rather subject to such restrictions as are expressed in the Constitution (Murphy v. Ramsey, 114 U.S. 15, 44 (1885))