Article V Convention

“What we’re seeing is they’re kind of putting all these applications into one basket,” said Rebecca Timmons, a communications coordinator at Common Cause, which opposes the Article V convention. “There are no guardrails.”

“The First Amendment, the 14th Amendment, the 15th Amendment,” said Jay Riestenberg of Common Cause, a liberal group that campaigns against the calling of a convention. “Any civil rights, any constitutional protection in the Constitution could be up for grabs in this constitutional convention.” Common Cause and other groups have, over the last few years, focused their efforts on persuading states with longstanding convention resolutions to rescind them, with some success. Colorado’s state legislature in April voted to rescind all of the previous convention resolutions its general assembly had passed in an effort to ensure the state did not play an unwitting role in the calling of a new convention. Still, that Walker and other conservatives may even be willing to try the legal route has aroused concern among convention opponents.  “They know their agenda is unpopular,” Riestenberg said. “So they have to find a different way to push their agenda without getting legislators or voters to care about it.” 

Though their regularly stated goal is to relentlessly petition their state legislatures to call for an Article V convention, the coronavirus crisis presents a unique opportunity for their movement, said Jay Riestenberg of Common Cause, who has monitored the group and its involvement with other right-wing groups focused on state legislatures. “The Convention of States is interested in showing any type of image or anything that shows that people don’t like their government. I mean, that is their end goal, to overthrow the federal government and rewrite the Constitution,” Riestenberg said. “So this is a perfect opportunity for them to show that.”

President Trump’s contempt for the United States Constitution is laid bare again with the White House announcement that the G-7 Summit will be held at a Trump resort in Florida. If not stopped by the courts, the summit would represent yet another violation of the emoluments clause as the President harnesses the power of his office to pad his own bank account.

Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, has sounded alarms on a possible convention and portrays the coast-to-coast emergence of resolutions on the issue "a game of Whack-a-Mole. This is the most dangerous idea in American politics that most people know nothing about," she said.