Last summer, Gov. Gavin Newsom made a spectacular announcement on national television morning show.
As millions of Americans tucked into breakfast and coffee, California’s Democratic governor said he had had enough of Congress’ inability to pass gun safety laws and took matters into his own hands, calling for a new constitutional amendment to restrict firearms .
The proposal was more a foolhardy play for attention than a plan with any rational chance of success. The last – and only – time the states met for a constitutional convention was in 1787, when George Washington had yet to be elected the first president of the United States.
Yet California’s Democratic lawmakers are overwhelmingly majority approved Newsom’s proposaland formally called for a convention to amend the Constitution to ban the sale of assault weapons, require universal background checks on gun purchases and raise the minimum age to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21.
But a handful of Democrats did not agree to the plan. A progressive senator from San Francisco was the most vocal critic, arguing that a constitutional convention could ultimately strengthen a conservative agenda. And with the country in flux and a former president known for defying the laws of political gravity and shattering long-standing norms soon to be sworn back into office, he has launched a new attempt to reverse the flashy maneuver of Newsom and rescinding California’s call for changes. the Constitution.
“In no way do I want California to inadvertently help these extremists trigger a constitutional convention where they, you know, rewrite the Constitution to restrict voting rights, eliminate access to reproductive health care, and so on,” said Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco).
Read more: Loved or hated, lawmaker Scott Wiener is a lightning rod who can make history
In January, Republicans will control the White House and both chambers of Congress. The Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority will likely remain in place for years to come.
For Wiener and some other Democrats, the once unlikely prospect of a new constitutional convention suddenly seems a little more credible under a second Trump term.
Calling a new constitutional convention would require the approval of 34 of the 50 states. But many, like California, have existing calls on the books. Stories vary as to how many states have already called for a constitutional convention, but… at least one count places the count above the required 34.
Wiener’s proposal, that was first reported by the New York Timeswould nullify and replace all applications for constitutional conventions previously submitted by the legislature.
Wiener, like Newsom, is an ambitious and media-savvy politician. He is a frequent Fox News bête noire and routinely pushes legislation that makes headlines and displaces Democrats from the left. Wiener has made no secret of his desire for a seat in Congress — specifically the one long occupied by Democratic power broker and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi whenever she retires.
Wiener is far from the only Democratic politician who fears the possibility of this a conservative-led constitutional convention on the horizon. Several other states, including New Jersey and Illinois, have also withdrawn their public calls for a constitutional convention in recent years.
“I think it is a greater danger than many realize. There has been a movement among fringe conservatives to create a constitutional convention for many, many years. And those people are closer to power in Washington DC than ever before,” said Jonathan Mehta Stein, executive director of the nonpartisan democracy organization California Common Cause.
Mehta Stein described the possibility of such a convention as a “Pandora box for our Constitution” that would “create the opportunity for forces we don’t even know about to overhaul our democratic institutions and our basic human rights.”
The governor’s office said its position regarding its support for a new constitutional amendment had not changed and declined to comment further.
Read more: A year after Newsom called for constitutional change on gun safety, no other states have joined him
Wiener’s decision to advance the resolution is a bit of a finger in the eye of the governor, who has vetoed some of Wiener’s most high-profile bills, including a bill to artificial intelligence and another to decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms.
Newsom could try to push Wiener’s resolution toward a silent death by relying on lawmakers to bury it without a vote. Representatives for Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) both declined to say whether Democratic legislative leaders support Wiener’s resolution.
Republican leaders were also non-committal, though Wiener might get their support. Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones (R-Santee) said he was reviewing Wiener’s resolution and assessing the benefits and potential impact of a constitutional convention. Like Wiener, both Jones and Republican Leader James Gallagher (R-Yuba City) voted against Newsom’s proposal last year.
“This plan was nothing more than a publicity stunt from the beginning,” said Gallagher, who is leaning toward supporting Wiener’s repeal efforts. thing.”
The coming fight could also be a boon for Wiener, further raising his public profile ahead of a possible congressional campaign. That said, it will also test his political power, especially if the governor chooses to wage a behind-the-scenes campaign against the proposal.
Part of the issue is how a constitutional convention might play out in practice, and whether it could be convened around a specific issue, such as gun safety, as Newsom has emphasized.
The instructions for how the states would proceed after convening a constitutional convention are set out in Article V of the Constitution, a 143-word sentence that contains virtually no instructions for specific logistics.
Newsom’s office has maintained that his original resolution contained provisions that would invalidate the call if a constitutional convention is convened on any topic other than gun control.
But legal experts have pushed back on the idea that a constitutional convention could be convened around a single issue.
“The problem is that since there has never been an Article V constitutional convention, no one knows whether it can be limited to one issue,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley Law School and a leading scholar in the field of constitutional law. you can do it and people have said you can’t do it. The only honest answer anyone can give you is that there is no way to know because it never happened.
Chemerinsky, who blasted Newsom’s call for a constitutional convention on gun safety as misleading, said he agreed with Wiener and thought it was plausible that a constitutional convention could actually happen.
“There is certainly a risk that it could be a very ideologically driven group of people who would propose quite extreme changes to the Constitution,” Chemerinsky said.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
