Populate Custom Category Taxonomy with Data

I’m writing a plugin that allows people in the admin to hide/show content specific to US states. I have a custom category taxonomy called States, and it lists all of the states. Admins can check which states they want the post to appear in. Pages and posts will not show up in the loop if the user’s state doesn’t match up with the posts’ selected states.

Now, my question is, how do I populate the plugin with all of the states’ data upon install?