It's Sunday

MAGA ultra: COSA (Convention of States Action)

For the last 10 years, the “Convention of States” movement has sought to remake the Constitution and force a tea party vision of the framers’ intent upon America. This group wants to wholesale rewrite wide swaths of the U.S. Constitution in one fell swoop. In the process, they hope to do away with regulatory agencies like the FDA and the CDC, virtually eliminate the federal government’s ability to borrow money, and empower state legislatures to override federal law.

As far-fetched as this idea might sound, the movement is gaining traction — and now, it believes, it has a friend in the speaker of the House.

“Speaker Mike Johnson has long been a supporter of Convention of States.”

[...]

“It feels like, to me, a potential real turning point[," Rick Green, the founder of evangelical education outfit Patriot Academy, which heavily promotes COS, gushed.] His co-hosts, Tim and David Barton, agreed. “This is literally the kind of guy that we’ve been praying for to be in that position,” Tim replied. “We’ve known this guy for years. He’s been a friend for years.”

[...]

[David] Barton is the architect of an alternative, evangelical version of U.S. history that is at the core of the COSA movement, and someone Johnson has cited as a major influence. “[Johnson will] make you smile,” Barton continued, “before he hits you in the mouth so that he won’t bloody your lips when he breaks your teeth.”

[...]

“This man has a biblical worldview. I’m in tears,” Patriot Academy founder Rick Green, who like Johnson and most COSA supporters is a longtime Barton acolyte, said during a livestream on Rumble just after Johnson accepted the gavel. “We’ve been praying for leaders that have a fear of God, that we know have a foundation of biblical truth.”

“We’ve already been talking to [Johnson] about staff,” Barton said the next day on “Wallbuilders.” “The members that are helping him are all good guys. They’re all God guys. They’re all conservative guys.”]

[...]

[Mark] Meckler, who co-founded Tea Party Patriots back in 2009 before leaving and pivoting to COSA, still wants to party like it’s 1784. In August, COSA chose delegates from 49 states [...] to convene [...] for a Convention of States simulation. After three days of debate, the delegates emerged with six proposed amendments that would, among other things, make it nearly impossible for the federal government to borrow money, tighten the commerce clause in a way that would eliminate most federal regulatory bodies, and insert a nullification clause that would allow a simple majority of state legislatures to overrule any federal law or regulation. Such amendments, if passed, would make it impossible to fund Social Security, eliminate agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Education, and make federal governance virtually impossible.

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“They have been carefully training for this for years,” [ex-Senator Russ] Feingold told me last year for an article in The New Republic. “Anybody that can ignore this kind of training and work by the right is not learning the lessons of recent history.”

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COSA does not see its cause as secular. Ferris, Meckler and other major supporters believe a Convention of States is the only way to save America from their foes in the godless left and restore the country to the form its deeply religious founders intended: A nation under God, evangelical, founded on biblical principles and enforcing Christian law.

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[There] two processes for amending the Constitution. The first is the one you probably learned sometime in grade school: Two-thirds of Congress must approve a potential amendment, which then goes to the states for consideration. If three-fourths of the states approve it, the amendment is added into the Constitution.

But Article V of the Constitution provides a second path: If two-thirds of the states petition Congress, it must call a constitutional convention, where multiple amendments could be proposed at the same time. The Constitution does not specify how to select delegates from states to this convention, provides no limit on the scope of such a convention, and offers no guidance on how the convention would ratify these new amendments. Once the convention developed a method to pass amendments, the slate of amendments they selected would return to the states for consideration. In order to become law, three-fourths of states would need to approve the slate of amendments, either through their legislatures or through statewide conventions — at least in theory.

[...]

According to the mainstream legal opinion [...] an Article V convention could rewrite any part of the Constitution — including the part that requires the approval of three-fourths of the states to change it. A second Constitutional convention could therefore become a repeat of the first: One that completely restructures the U.S. government, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights according to rules they could make up as they go along.

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Nineteen states have signed COSA petitions — over halfway to the 34-state threshold required to call a convention. According to COSA, seven other states have passed its petition through one legislative chamber, and active legislation remains pending in 18 others.

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Johnson has never directly endorsed COSA as a member of Congress, and he does not directly endorse it now.

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[But i]n 2016, while the [Louisiana] state legislature debated whether to become the eighth state to petition Congress for an Article V convention, Johnson was a vocal proponent of the cause.

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“The Speaker has incredible power, and the number one power is to set the agenda. No piece of legislation can come to the floor unless he wants it to,” [Michael Farris, who co-founded COSA,] said on the October 31st edition of the “COS Live” videocast. Beyond the power of the gavel, however, COSA advocates are saying Johnson’s perceived support could help their movement move farther into the mainstream.

[...]

The COSA website lists 51 high-profile endorsements that include Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Jeb Bush. The Heritage Foundation reversed its longtime opposition to an Article V convention to specifically endorse Meckler and COSA two days after Johnson became speaker. John Malcolm, who penned the group’s opposition to the idea in 2016, offered a simple explanation for the change: “The situation on the ground at the moment is favorable to conservatives.”

[...]

“This is the wind in our sails that we’ve prayed for[,” said co-founder Farris.]

  Politico

Scary, but I'm not sure the "situation on the ground" really is favorable to conservatives.  They sure didn't do well in the 2023 elections.

Also, if they're as sure as they claim to be that the Constitution is founded on Christianity, why do they need to rewrite it?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.