Newt In Space!

Newt Gingrich reveals his weirdest idea ever: a Northwest Ordinance for Space.

Image by SHANNON STAPLETON / Reuters

Newt Gingrich has a bunch of weird ideas, but his “weirdest,” he says, was introducing a “Northwest Ordinance for Space” in Congress to provide a lunar colony a path to statehood.

“When they have 13,000 Americans living on the moon, they can petition to become a state,” Gingrich said to applause at a speech on Florida’s Space Coast.

Gingrich, a long-time proponent of spaceflight and public zoos, added, “By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American.”