Democrats are concerned that a Republican-controlled Congress will attempt to rewrite the US Constitution, especially with the possibility of calling for a constitutional convention.
Republicans have big plans in mind for when they reclaim the White House and both chambers of Congress in January. President-elect Donald Trump’s disruptive agenda spans across immigration, the economy and foreign policy. But Democrats around the country are concerned that the GOP has its sights set even higher: a complete rewrite of the Constitution . At issue is a provision that allows Congress to call for a new convention to propose alterations to the country’s foundational text.
But, as The New York Times recently reported, states like California are now racing to rescind their previous calls for a constitutional convention. Their fear is that even a convention called under Trump to deal with a narrow issue, like a balanced budget amendment, would lead to a “runaway convention” where anything and everything is on the table. It’s not an unfounded worry on Democrats’ part. After all, the men who gathered in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787 were not there to draft a new constitution. The Continental Congress had only tasked the delegates with “the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation,” which only loosely governed the 13 independent American states. Instead, they emerged with a document that not only abolished the articles entirely but provided for a novel form of government. Crucially, the draft that was presented to the states for ratification was purposefully incomplete. Under the Articles of Confederation, the only method of revision required unanimity from all 13 state legislatures. As you can imagine, this made the chance of amending them exceedingly low. The Constitution offered up two alternatives, both in Article V of the text: The first method has been used to add 27 updates to the Constitution since it was ratified, most notably with the first Congress’ passage of the Bill of Rights
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