What happens when enough states want to change the Constitution?

Our Constitution provides for its own changes -- the framers knew that, while they worked hard, the law of the land was neither perfect nor should it be entirely immutable. So they included Article V, which allows either Congress OR the states to amend the Constitution if enough people agree. We've never had a constitutional convention of the states before, but that doesn't mean we won't. There's currently a movement trying to make it happen -- we dig into the why and how of this totally legal but very difficult path to change. CLICK HERE: Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more! To see Civics 101 in book form, check out A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro. Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast, Outside/In - we think you'll love it! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:29Hannah McCarthy?

  Nick, can you think of something in the Constitution that just seems, I don't know, kind of irrelevant?

• 1:37Nick Capodice?

  I am so glad we're finally doing an episode about this.

• 1:40Hannah McCarthy?

  Oh, good.

• 1:41Nick Capodice?

  Look, I know it was super important to the framers.

• 1:44Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, and honestly, with good reason.

• 1:46Nick Capodice?

  Absolutely.

• 1:47Hannah McCarthy?

  Think about what they had just been through, right?

• 1:49Nick Capodice?

  I hear you, Hannah. And, you know, just because it's never been applied doesn't mean we won't need it in the future.

• 1:56Hannah McCarthy?

  Point of this episode.

• 1:57Nick Capodice?

  Wait, do you know something I don't know?

• 1:59Hannah McCarthy?

  I think maybe I know a lot of somethings that you don't know.

• 2:02Nick Capodice?

  That's fair. I just feel like I would know if this were imminent.

• 2:07Hannah McCarthy?

  Now, I'm not saying that it's going to happen tomorrow or anything, but there are people who are trying very hard to make it happen.

• 2:15Nick Capodice?

  I never thought I'd see the day.

• 2:17Hannah McCarthy?

  But we don't even know how it would work, Nick.

• 2:19Nick Capodice?

  Well, I think it's pretty straightforward, actually. But what is that law even going to say? That I have to read them a bedtime story, make them pancakes in the morning?

• 2:28Hannah McCarthy?

  Wait a minute. What?

• 2:30Nick Capodice?

  But I guess I don't have a choice if we're not in peacetime and Congress passes a law.

• 2:35Hannah McCarthy?

  Oh, no, no, no. Okay, um, we are not making an episode about the Third Amendment.

• 2:42Nick Capodice?

  Oh, we're not talking about the quartering of soldiers?

• 2:47Hannah McCarthy?

  Why would we be talking about that?

• 2:49Nick Capodice?

  Because it's quirky and fun?

• 2:51Hannah McCarthy?

  I actually think we could make a whole episode about why there is an amendment prohibiting the quartering of soldiers during peacetime, and it is not as silly as you think it is. But no, Nick, we're talking about the other thing in the Constitution that has not happened since it was ratified.

• 3:07Nick Capodice?

  The other thing? Get out of town!

• 3:10Hannah McCarthy?

  I will not.

• 3:11Nick Capodice?

  And are you talking about what I think you're talking about? The other way to ratify the Constitution?

• 3:18Hannah McCarthy?

  The very one.

• 3:19Nick Capodice?

  As in, the states get together and do it themselves? Something that has not come to pass in 250 years?

• 3:26Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, well, some people are trying to change that. This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.

• 3:30Nick Capodice?

  I'm Nikita Diche.

• 3:31Hannah McCarthy?

  And today, we are talking about a movement aimed at accomplishing an entirely constitutional goal: changing that Constitution.

• 3:39Speaker 05

  Disillusion with the federal government is nothing new, but in some corners, it seems to have reached a crescendo.

• 3:45Speaker 06

  It's not just about fiscal responsibility. Other people want term limits, some people want campaign finance, they want different issues.

• 3:51Speaker 07

  They want delegates from the states to be able to propose changes in term limits for federal officials and members of Congress.

• 3:58Speaker 08

  State lawmakers this afternoon will be discussing whether to call for a constitutional convention.

• 4:03Speaker 05

  Supporters and opponents say it's closer than you may think to actually happening.

• 4:13Nick Capodice?

  All right, Hannah, first things first, we have got to tell people what this thing is. There are two ways to amend the Constitution according to the Constitution.

• 4:23Hannah McCarthy?

  That is right. Article 5. It tells us that the Constitution can be changed, and it tells us how it works. An amendment must be proposed and that amendment must be ratified.

• 4:35Nick Capodice?

  Ratification, meaning the amendment has to be approved. It has to be consented to.

• 4:40Hannah McCarthy?

  And once it is, it becomes law of the land.

• 4:43Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, and the only way this has ever happened in the past is that 2/3 of both the House and the Senate vote for an amendment. Now, anyone can propose it, but you need that 2/3's majority in both houses.

• 4:56Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, which is not easy. It's super time consuming and laborious. Tens of thousands of amendments have been proposed. 27 have been passed. The first 10 are the Bill of Rights. The other 17 took a lot of effort.

• 5:11Nick Capodice?

  The 26th passed in 100 days, though, lowering the voting age to 18 during the Vietnam War.

• 5:17Hannah McCarthy?

  War has a way of speeding things up.

• 5:19Nick Capodice?

  Yep. All right, so Congress proposes and votes on an amendment, and then that amendment is sent to the 50 states for ratification.

• 5:28Hannah McCarthy?

  And 3/4 of the states have to approve it, which, depending on the situation, may be even more difficult than getting that super majority in Congress.

• 5:36Nick Capodice?

  And Hannah, the president doesn't get a say here, right? Like, at least not an official one. It's not their decision.

• 5:42Hannah McCarthy?

  Right, this is not your everyday law. The president cannot veto it. This is the Constitution. The most any president has done is be a witness and signatory to a certification of an amendment. That's the step in the process where the national archivist basically says, yep, this is real. We got an amendment, everybody.

• 6:00Nick Capodice?

  And I feel we can't stress this enough to everybody, Hannah. This is hard, really, really hard. Getting a bunch of people to agree to change the law of the land is difficult.

• 6:11Hannah McCarthy?

  It is so hard. And Nick, all the Constitution tells us is that an amendment can be proposed by Congress or it can be proposed by the states. And then it tells us what fraction of Congress and the states need to approve it. Beyond that, which is just so like the Constitution, we have to figure it out for ourselves.

• 6:31Nick Capodice?

  The Constitution loves to be both definitive and super vague.

• 6:35Hannah McCarthy?

  Amelia Bedelia would have a field day. But anyway, that brings me to why we have never changed the Constitution using the other method, precisely and vaguely, outlined by the Constitution. It is both really, really difficult and we don't know how it would work.

• 6:53Hannah McCarthy?

  So here's the other amendment option. The Constitution tells us that 2/3 of states have to essentially apply for a constitutional convention. At least 34 out of 50 have to ask Congress to please call that convention, and then a convention happens, and then 38 states have to ratify whatever amendment or amendments come out of that convention.

• 7:18Nick Capodice?

  Well, you skipped the part in the middle, Hannah, where a convention happens. So what's a convention?

• 7:23Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, what is a convention? Constitution doesn't tell us.

• 7:26Nick Capodice?

  But where does it happen?

• 7:27Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, where does it happen?

• 7:29Nick Capodice?

  What are the rules?

• 7:30Hannah McCarthy?

  It could be Thunderdome in there, for all we know.

• 7:33Nick Capodice?

  And who gets to go? It's the states, but like, who from those states? And who gets to decide that?

• 7:41Hannah McCarthy?

  And these are just the questions. We haven't even gotten to the concerns yet.

• 7:44Nick Capodice?

  Oh, yeah, it makes sense that there would be some concerns.

• 7:48Hannah McCarthy?

  And we're gonna mul those over after the break.

• 7:50Nick Capodice?

  But before that break, if you're looking for something to make our Constitution, our history, and our future seem just a little less chaotic, I have a book recommendation for you. And while, yes, I helped to write it, I also turned to it in times of trouble. It's called A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works. You get it wherever books are sold. Haven't you out there ever Googled your own name? Like, actually done it? You'll find your address, your phone number, maybe even that police report from the time you went to see Rain Man in the movie theater, but you were underage? Maybe that one's just me. But here's the thing. There are companies called data brokers, whose entire business model is collecting your personal information and selling it to advertisers, to strangers, sometimes to

• 8:35Nick Capodice?

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• 9:16Speaker 09

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• 9:45Speaker 01

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• 10:11Speaker 01

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• 10:18Hannah McCarthy?

  We're back. We're talking about the other white meat, amending the Constitution by way of the states.

• 10:23Nick Capodice?

  And just before the break, Hannah, you said that there were concerns.

• 10:27Hannah McCarthy?

  Oh, there are concerns. But to make them a little more tangible, let's talk about why we're talking about this now. So back in the 1970s, we had a lot going on, and that included Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman.

• 10:40Nick Capodice?

  Wow, that was quite a transition there, Hannah.

• 10:43Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, well, those two names set the stage pretty well. What do you think when you hear Reagan and Friedman?

• 10:50Nick Capodice?

  When I think of Milton Friedman, I think of him explaining how a pencil is not made by any one person. It's just one of my favorite videos. I like watching Milton Friedman talk about a pencil. And Reagan was the president who famously corralled government. I think the expression used by Grover Norquist was, "So small you could drown it in a bathtub." That's what I think of those two people.

• 11:10Hannah McCarthy?

  And who is Milton Friedman, Nick?

• 11:12Nick Capodice?

  Oh, great question. To the best of my understanding, Milton Friedman was a famous economist, and Reagan, you know, people know who Reagan was, he was a president who liked Milton Friedman's way of thinking. So I hear those names, and I think free market capitalism and Reaganomics and big tax cuts, small government.

• 11:31Hannah McCarthy?

  So basically, the big and very popular among certain people theory is that the market will regulate itself, and so it does not need regulations from the government. Prices of things should be established by supply and demand and not by rules. Now, people who like this theory say that it is about economic growth and personal freedom. People who do not like this idea say it leads to inequity and exploitation.

• 11:54Nick Capodice?

  What does any of this have to do with the amendments?

• 11:56Hannah McCarthy?

  I'm getting there. In the 1970s, there was this big fiscal conservative push to pass what was called the Balanced Budget Amendment in Congress.

• 12:07Nick Capodice?

  Well, that sounds reasonable.

• 12:09Hannah McCarthy?

  It was meant to. This is probably a good time to remind everyone that politics is about good branding and conservatives tend to be great branders.

• 12:16Nick Capodice?

  Everyone, listen to our episode on the frame wars to learn more about that.

• 12:20Hannah McCarthy?

  You really should do that. All right, so the Balanced Budget Amendment would require the government to have a balanced budget every single year.

• 12:28Nick Capodice?

  Which is something I assume we do not have.

• 12:30Hannah McCarthy?

  We do not. We have had a budget deficit almost every year since 1970, meaning nearly every year the government has spent more money than it has made.

• 12:40Nick Capodice?

  So if we had an amendment requiring the budget to be balanced every year, that would mean cutting a lot of spending.

• 12:47Hannah McCarthy?

  Or raising taxes, or both. Actually, Milton Friedman wrote a whole thing for the Wall Street Journal back in 95 saying, hey, the Balanced Budget Amendment has got to limit taxes in addition to the other stuff. His whole thing was the problem is government spending, not how much money it receives in taxes. Anyway, even though Reagan was all for it.

• 13:08Speaker 10

  So I asked the Congress to pass as soon as possible a constitutional amendment requiring that it balance the federal budget.

• 13:16Hannah McCarthy?

  The Balanced Budget Amendment went nowhere in Congress.

• 13:22Hannah McCarthy?

  Which brings us to the last time. There was a major call for a constitutional convention.

• 13:28Nick Capodice?

  Okay, so that is why we're talking about this. When this amendment didn't get through Congress, the states took on the mantle.

• 13:38Hannah McCarthy?

  And 26 of those states passed resolutions calling for a constitutional convention, mostly so that they could hammer out this balanced budget amendment.

• 13:46Nick Capodice?

  26 is not 34.

• 13:49Hannah McCarthy?

  It sure is not. Many people at that time had concerns. There was a fear of a, quote, "runaway convention." Article 5 doesn't put any limits on how many amendments can show up at a convention, and it only makes three exceptions for the kind of amendments that can be passed.

• 14:05Nick Capodice?

  And what are those exceptions?

• 14:06Hannah McCarthy?

  Well, two of them pertain to the slave trade and to taxes and were only relevant until 1808. The last one, however, is that a state cannot be deprived of equal suffrage in the Senate without its consent.

• 14:19Nick Capodice?

  Okay, so all states have two senators, and basically, they can't pass an amendment saying that Idaho only has one senator unless Idaho agrees.

• 14:30Hannah McCarthy?

  Right. But the point here is there are hardly any rules for an Article 5 convention. There is technically nothing stopping a total overhaul of the Constitution at one of these things. The concern was that a convention might start with a balanced budget and end with a whole new body of laws for the United States.

• 14:48Nick Capodice?

  It sounds like utter chaos.

• 14:50Hannah McCarthy?

  Which is why some states at the time ended up withdrawing their applications for a convention. And eventually, the movement went pretty dark.

• 15:00Nick Capodice?

  Until?

• 15:01Hannah McCarthy?

  Until 2014. And that's where we'll pick up after a quick break.

• 15:13Nick Capodice?

  Have any of you out there ever Googled your own name? Like, actually done it? You'll find your address, your phone number, maybe even that police report from the time you went to see Rain Man in the movie theater but you were underage? Maybe that one's just me. But here's the thing. There are companies called data brokers, whose entire business model is collecting your personal information and selling it to advertisers, to strangers. Sometimes to people running scams. And once your data's out there, it just keeps circulating. That is where incogni comes in. Incogni contacts data brokers on your behalf and sends them removal requests over and over. So your info doesn't just pop right back up. You set it up once and they keep working in the background.

• 15:58Nick Capodice?

  You can even track the progress on a dashboard. And for our listeners, we have an exclusive 60% off an annual incogni plan. Just go to incogni.com/civics or use the code civics at checkout. There's a link in the episode description. Remember, they can't harm you if they can't find you.

• 16:19Speaker 09

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• 16:48Speaker 01

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• 17:15Speaker 01

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• 17:22Nick Capodice?

  We're back. We're talking about the mysterious and never before seen creature told of in Article 5 of our Constitution, the other way to amend the law of the land by way of the states. And Hannah, you just suggested that an Article 5 Convention movement kicked back up again in 2014?

• 17:39Hannah McCarthy?

  Sure did. That is when a group called the Citizens for Self-Governance founded the Convention of States Foundation. Their pitch? The government is spending too much. Let's get together and stop it.

• 17:51Nick Capodice?

  By way of a convention.

• 17:52Hannah McCarthy?

  By way of a convention. As of the most recent report, 19 states have passed a resolution calling for a convention. The Convention of States Project, or COS as we're going to call it, says this convention would only discuss amendments to, quote, "limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, impose fiscal restraints, and place term limits on federal officials."

• 18:15Nick Capodice?

  So is that a rule?

• 18:17Hannah McCarthy?

  Well, that's what they say would happen. The COS website says, basically, they're going to be limited to whatever the states put in their application when they asked Congress for a convention. They regularly reference an Article 5 handbook, and this is important, written by a former law professor named Robert Nadelson. You ever heard of this guy?

• 18:36Nick Capodice?

  No, I have not.

• 18:37Hannah McCarthy?

  He has done a lot of writing on the original meaning of things, including the Constitution.

• 18:42Nick Capodice?

  Hey, but this handbook and all the stuff the COS website says, those aren't laws or regulations, right?

• 18:49Hannah McCarthy?

  The code is more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules.

• 18:53Nick Capodice?

  And if we can get through like one year without quoting The Pirates of Caribbean, I'm going to be pretty shocked.

• 18:58Hannah McCarthy?

  The COS calls itself the largest grassroots movement in America. Its leaders are Mark Meckler, a major Tea Party figure.

• 19:05Nick Capodice?

  Uh, the Tea Party, by the way, being the conservative political movement that got going around 2009.

• 19:10Hannah McCarthy?

  Right, and Meckler has, I feel I should mention, made controversial statements, um, calling Black Lives Matter evil and saying that being transgender is a mental illness. Rick Santorum is also part of the leadership.

• 19:22Nick Capodice?

  Okay, Rick Santorum, conservative Republican politician, former senator, presidential candidate, fired by CNN for making dismissive comments about Native Americans.

• 19:33Hannah McCarthy?

  The very same. Uh, and Michael Ferris.

• 19:36Nick Capodice?

  I don't know Michael Ferris. Who's Michael Ferris?

• 19:38Hannah McCarthy?

  He is a prominent religious conservative lawyer, chief executive of a group called Alliance Defending Freedom, which works on opposing abortion and opposing LGBTQ rights.

• 19:47Nick Capodice?

  Okay. So I have to ask, does the Convention of States project label itself as a conservative movement?

• 19:56Hannah McCarthy?

  No, it very much labels itself a nonpartisan effort.

• 20:00Nick Capodice?

  And as a grassroots organization, right?

• 20:03Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, it calls itself a grassroots organization.

• 20:06Nick Capodice?

  What makes something grassroots, Hannah?

• 20:08Hannah McCarthy?

  Well, I mean, the word is used to mean a movement that originates with a community, right, with citizens at the public level. It's self-organized, local-level action. Like, it suggests something that grows from the ground up.

• 20:21Nick Capodice?

  As opposed to other things that grow the other way. But like, from the grass, right? From roots.

• 20:26Hannah McCarthy?

  Yes. COS, in its own words, calls itself "an organization of more than 5 million active grassroots volunteers representing every state legislative district in the nation, focusing on restoring a culture of self-governance in America." It also says it is "funded by thousands of everyday patriots." Now, I can tell you that even though the Convention of States is not required to disclose its funders, there is a 2019 financial report that states that just two donors accounted for about 36% of its funding.

• 21:02Nick Capodice?

  Wow.

• 21:03Hannah McCarthy?

  So, you know, take that as you will.

• 21:04Nick Capodice?

  All right. Let me ask you this, then. You said the last time an Article V Convention gained any real momentum, there were a lot of people who were worried it would go off the rails.

• 21:14Hannah McCarthy?

  I did.

• 21:15Nick Capodice?

  And you also said that COS claims that this convention would be limited. It would have guardrails.

• 21:23Hannah McCarthy?

  That is what they say, yes.

• 21:25Nick Capodice?

  But we know that the Constitution itself does not provide much in the way of guardrails.

• 21:31Hannah McCarthy?

  We do. There is a COS Article V Convention of States pocket guide, however.

• 21:37Nick Capodice?

  Do they know something we don't?

• 21:39Hannah McCarthy?

  So the guide is trying to answer questions, address concerns. It says that the convention cannot throw out the Constitution because it receives its authority from the Constitution.

• 21:51Nick Capodice?

  What do they mean by "throw out the Constitution"?

• 21:53Hannah McCarthy?

  They do not say.

• 21:54Nick Capodice?

  Does that mean they won't propose getting rid of existing amendments?

• 21:59Hannah McCarthy?

  They do not say. The guide says a Convention of States can only propose amendments that fit within the topic of the application adopted by the state legislatures.

• 22:09Nick Capodice?

  Is that true?

• 22:11Hannah McCarthy?

  Well, some states have passed codes, like state codes, that require their delegates, those are people who would go to the convention. But recently, states have started using the word commissioners. And I cannot tell you why they started using a different vocab word. Anyway, these codes require their delegates or commissioners to stick to the stuff on the application that the state sent to Congress.

• 22:32Nick Capodice?

  And this time around, those applications are about term limits, fiscal restraints, and limiting the power of the federal government.

• 22:40Hannah McCarthy?

  Right.

• 22:41Nick Capodice?

  Do they specify how they're gonna try to limit the power of the federal government?

• 22:47Hannah McCarthy?

  No. But either way, the how it works that the Convention of States Pocket Guide provides is not in the Constitution. I know we keep saying that, but this is not in the Constitution. There are no rules in the Constitution. There is no official how it works. Okay, last thing, and this is a big point of contention for opponents of this movement. This guide says, "According to historical precedent, each state has one vote at the convention."

• 23:18Nick Capodice?

  Wait, Hannah, we have never had one of these before. There is no historical precedent.

• 23:27Hannah McCarthy?

  Okay, remember how I told you that COS gets a lot of their ideas from a former law professor, a guy named Robert Nadelson?

• 23:35Nick Capodice?

  I do. You told me to remember that name, too.

• 23:37Hannah McCarthy?

  He says he knows the rules of an Article V convention because they are the same as the rules for certain 18th century colonial and state gatherings. And he's the one who says there is a one-state, one-vote rule.

• 23:55Nick Capodice?

  But to be clear, the framers did not say the rules for an Article V convention are the same as the rules for the other stuff we've done.

• 24:02Hannah McCarthy?

  They did not say that.

• 24:03Nick Capodice?

  And correct me if I'm wrong here, Hannah, the Articles of Confederation did do the one-state, one-vote thing.

• 24:09Hannah McCarthy?

  They did do that.

• 24:10Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, and the Articles of Confederation were a disaster.

• 24:14Hannah McCarthy?

  So bad the framers had to stage a coup to change them.

• 24:17Nick Capodice?

  And when they wrote the new law of the land, they came up with proportional representation, so that larger states with more people and more ideas would have more people representing the more ideas in Congress.

• 24:30Hannah McCarthy?

  That one came from James Madison, mostly, from the Virginia Plan.

• 24:33Nick Capodice?

  And didn't Madison, though, also have something to do with Article V?

• 24:36Hannah McCarthy?

  Yes, and Madison actually ends up talking about it as a safeguard in the Federalist Papers. But, OK, so then I read this letter that he wrote. And this is when there are people who are suggesting that perhaps there should be another convention to revise the Constitution. And here is what Madison says. Another convention would, quote, "naturally consider itself as having greater latitude than Congress." He says it would, quote, "give greater agitation to the public mind." He says that people who would want to be delegates of this convention would probably be, quote, "the most violent partisans on both sides," that it would probably consist

• 25:16Hannah McCarthy?

  of, quote, "the most heterogeneous characters," that it would contain individuals of, quote, "insidious views." And here is the last one, quote, "might have a dangerous opportunity of sapping the very foundations of the fabric. Under all these circumstances, it seems scarcely to be presumable that the deliberations of the body could be conducted in harmony or terminate in the general good."

• 25:42Nick Capodice?

  Wow. He didn't want it to happen. So in other words, James Madison was super, super duper worried about one of these things actually happening.

• 25:56Hannah McCarthy?

  Yep.

• 25:57Nick Capodice?

  All right, got it.

• 26:09Nick Capodice?

  All right. I think I have a pretty decent grasp of what the plan is here, although I'm still not super sure how it would all work. So do we have any other clues, any other plans that tell us what COS wants to do at a convention like this?

• 26:25Hannah McCarthy?

  Fortunately for you, they've been practicing.

• 26:29Nick Capodice?

  Practicing?

• 26:30Hannah McCarthy?

  If you're going to do something that nobody has ever done before, you might want to run a few, like, simulations. And the Convention of States Project, COS, has held two. The most recent one happened in 2023. It was attended by legislators, academics, and business people from 49 states. Most of them, but not all, were Republicans. And they agreed on six amendments.

• 26:51Nick Capodice?

  And just to be clear, because this was not the real deal, this was not a real constitutional convention, these amendments were also not the real deal.

• 27:00Hannah McCarthy?

  Yes, but I'm going to share them with you anyway because you want to know what would go on there.

• 27:04Nick Capodice?

  I do.

• 27:04Hannah McCarthy?

  Okay.

• 27:08Hannah McCarthy?

  Term limits for Congress.

• 27:09Nick Capodice?

  That's pretty straightforward.

• 27:11Hannah McCarthy?

  Limiting the Supreme Court to nine seats.

• 27:14Nick Capodice?

  Hmm, which it has.

• 27:17Hannah McCarthy?

  It does, but people dissatisfied with the actions of the Supreme Court often propose raising that number.

• 27:23Nick Capodice?

  They do.

• 27:24Hannah McCarthy?

  Okay, also granting all states standing in court to challenge the constitutionality of any action of the executive branch or of Congress.

• 27:33Nick Capodice?

  Right, standing is important because that's how you actually get something to court.

• 27:37Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, normally you have to prove that you have suffered a real injury because of what someone or something did. This would skirt that whole thing. Okay, next, granting state legislators the authority to, quote, "abrogate any action of Congress, President, or administrative agencies of the United States."

• 27:56Nick Capodice?

  Abrogate, so that's like repeal or ignore. Any action of federal lawmakers, the President or the agency.

• 28:05Hannah McCarthy?

  Yes. They also came up with a version of the balanced budget amendment, the one we talked about earlier, a restriction of Congress's Commerce Clause power, and a restriction of the federal government's claim to land.

• 28:18Nick Capodice?

  All right, those are some strong and broad fake amendments, Hannah.

• 28:22Hannah McCarthy?

  They sure appear to be.

• 28:23Nick Capodice?

  They give a lot of power to the states.

• 28:25Hannah McCarthy?

  Oh, yeah. By the way, you can watch the nearly nine-hour video of this simulated convention on YouTube.

• 28:31Nick Capodice?

  Did you watch it? Did you like see what happened?

• 28:34Hannah McCarthy?

  I skipped around. It's long, but it seemed pretty calm. Then again, it was mostly legislators and activists from one party, the Republican Party.

• 28:44Nick Capodice?

  All right, Hannah, so you know what I am wondering, and probably everybody out there listening is wondering too. How likely is it that this is going to actually happen? You said earlier that 19 states have sent a COS-style application to Congress?

• 28:59Hannah McCarthy?

  Yes.

• 29:00Nick Capodice?

  And the Constitution requires 2/3 of states to ask for one. So they're 15 states shy.

• 29:07Hannah McCarthy?

  And states can also rescind their applications, you know, though some people involved with C O S claim that those applications and older applications from past Article 5 attempts should count to the total.

• 29:19Nick Capodice?

  But let's say they get those last 15 states. If they stick with the one state, one vote idea in a country where one party controls more states than another party.

• 29:30Hannah McCarthy?

  And we do live in that country. Currently, 56% of legislatures are Republican-controlled.

• 29:35Nick Capodice?

  Then that might take something that's really hard to do, AKA amending the Constitution, and make it a little less hard.

• 29:42Hannah McCarthy?

  I think that might be the idea.

• 29:44Nick Capodice?

  So now we wait to see if something completely unprecedented actually comes to pass.

• 29:51Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, unprecedented. Where have I heard that one before lately?

• 29:54Nick Capodice?

  We're hearing this was an unexpected turn of events and an unprecedented one as well.

• 29:59Speaker 11

  It is an unprecedented move. Democrats and Republicans using an unprecedented maneuver. Unprecedented action.

• 30:04Speaker 12

  Action today is unsettling and unprecedented.

• 30:08Speaker 11

  Unprecedented situation.

• 30:09Speaker 13

  Unprecedented demands. Again, this is unprecedented.

• 30:22Hannah McCarthy?

  This episode was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy, with Nick Capodice. Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. Marina Hanke is our producer. Music in this episode comes from Epidemic Sound. If you want more Civics 101, and there is a lot more Civics 101, you can find it all at our website, civics101podcast.org. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

• 30:58Speaker 14

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• 31:59Speaker 15

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