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GUEST COMMENTARY - Republicans have pulled off a coup against an entire branch of government, and nobody seems to have noticed. But if you pay attention, it’s shocking.
Sometimes you can learn as much from attending to what Republicans suddenly stop saying as from what they are talking about. In this case, it’s their half-century-long obsession with convening a constitutional convention to rewrite the U.S. Constitution. Under Article V of our Constitution, when two-thirds of the states formally call for a “con-con” to rewrite our nation’s founding document, it officially comes into being.
They can then make small changes like enshrining the right of billionaires and corporations to bribe judges and politicians or insert the doctrine of corporate personhood into the document, or simply throw the whole thing out and start over. Many on the right are hoping to insert a national ban on abortion into a new constitution; others want to end the right of women to vote, do away with all antidiscrimination laws, outlaw labor unions, or return the selection of senators to the states.
So far, 19 Republican-controlled states have signed on to a call for a convention under Article V. The project, heavily funded by rightwing billionaires, even has its own website: conventionofstates.com. Consider just a sampling of recent GOP supporters of the project:
- Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.): “One of the things I’m going to do on my first day in office is I will put the prestige and power of the presidency behind a constitutional convention of the states.”
- Texas Gov. Greg Abbott: “We need a Convention of States to restore the rule of law in America.”
- Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: “An Article V Convention of States is the best way to bring power back to the states and the people.”
- Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas): “We need to go back to our founding document, back to our Constitution, and put the restraints on Congress that our founders intended.”
- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas): “An Article V Convention of States is a powerful tool given to us by the founders to rein in the federal government.”
- Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.): “I’m a big fan of the Convention of States project. I think it’s the solution to Washington’s overreach.”
But over the past year, Republicans have suddenly fallen silent on the issue. Project 2025, for example, the all-encompassing wish-list for the GOP and its billionaire owners, lacks even one single mention of a constitutional convention.
Why would this be?
The simple and obvious answer is that Republicans are rewriting the Constitution right now, this year and last, through their proxies among the six corrupt Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Having succeeded in seizing the court, the GOP has been able to relax about their plan to call a convention. So far, just in the past two years, Republicans on the court have taken an ax to the Constitution. They have:
- Turned presidents who are inclined to break the law into kings or monarchs who are no longer accountable to police, courts, or juries, essentially rewriting Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution.
- Ended the constitutional rights of women to their own bodies, ignoring or rewriting the 1st, 4th, 9th, and 14th Amendments to the Constitution.
- Gutted the power of federal agencies to protect consumers and our environment, essentially rewriting Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution.
- Fully legalized the bribery of politicians so long as the bribes are paid after the deed is done (making it a “tip”) rather than before (which the court said would still be a bribe) overriding multiple constitutional prohibitions on bribery.
- Overturned parts of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act to legalize racially discriminatory gerrymandering where it benefits Republicans.
- Rewritten the Second Amendment and legalized bump stocks to put functionally fully-automatic weapons of war on our streets.
And, it appears, they’re just getting warmed up. Next year could see an end to gay marriage, contraception for single people, the abortion pill, the right to possess pornography (which they get to define) or read “banned” books, any meaningful regulation of billionaire-owned social media, further gutting of union rights, and the insertion of religion into schools nationwide… among other things.
Given how radical and willing they are to overturn established law, constitutional doctrine, and to create new law or constitutional doctrine out of thin air, it’s easy to see why Republicans would shift their efforts away from trying to rewrite the Constitution and toward supporting their shills on the court.
This has not gone unnoticed by U.S. President Joe Biden and his Democratic colleagues. Last month, when the six corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court ruled that presidents can commit crimes without consequences if they call them “official acts,” President Biden spoke out with an uncharacteristic ferocity:
This decision today has continued the court’s attack in recent years on a wide range of long-established legal principles in our nation, from gutting voting rights and civil rights to taking away a woman’s right to choose to today’s decision that undermines the rule of law of this nation.
Two weeks later, The Washington Post reported:
President Biden is finalizing plans to endorse major changes to the Supreme Court in the coming weeks, including proposals for legislation to establish term limits for the justices and an enforceable ethics code, according to two people briefed on the plans.
With Vice President Kamala Harris having replaced President Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, and the House still under the control of extremist Republicans under Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), it appears that President Biden’s Supreme Court agenda has receded into the background.
But Vice President Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz should be (and almost certainly are) putting considerable attention and work into how to restrain the Supreme Court from doing further violence to our constitutional system of government once they’re in office. It must be, in fact, their first order of business, for two major reasons.
The first is that several of the rulings by Republicans on the court have had the effect of amplifying and solidifying Republican control over the nation. By single-handedly overturning the voting rights act and legalizing bribery by billionaires, they’ve created a political imbalance that fails to represent the people of our country and instead just does what their favorite billionaires and giant corporations want.
As Michael Moore reports, multiple polls have found in recent years:
- 90% of Americans want stronger gun control laws.
- 89% want an end to partisan and racial gerrymandering.
- 84% want free pre-kindergarten.
- 79% want the morbidly rich and corporations to pay their damn taxes.
- 76% want a higher minimum wage.
- 73% want an end to student debt and free college.
- 72% want action on the climate crisis and money out of politics.
- 71% want an end to union-busting.
- 70% want marijuana legalized nationwide.
- 69% want to maintain gay marriage and abortion rights.
- 65% want to end the electoral college and put term limits on SCOTUS justices.
None of these things are happening because of the Republican lock on the Supreme Court, the third and unelected branch of government which is today only beholden to whichever billionaire offers individual members the best gifts, goodies, and expensive vacations.
Had the actual winners of the national vote become president in 2000 and 2016, the only Republican on the court today would be Clarence Thomas, and America would be a very different nation.
Instead, we’ve had two illegitimate Republican presidents who essentially packed the court. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was clear about why she cast the tie-breaking vote to hand the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000: She told friends she didn’t want her replacement to be chosen by Al Gore. And, of course, Donald Trump would never have become president without help from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
These Republicans on the Supreme Court, 5 of the 6 appointed by presidents who lost the national vote, are the main reason why Americans can’t have nice things—from a national healthcare system to free college to a functioning democracy that does what the majority of its citizens want—like every other democracy in the world.
The second reason Harris and Walz should be preparing to act immediately after they’re sworn into office on January 20 of next year (G-d willing!) is that a president’s power is at its peak the moment she takes office. After that, it’s largely downhill, as opposition politicians and the press pile on and even members of their own party begin to highlight cracks in the new administration’s policy chops.
This is why FDR, LBJ, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, and Biden all got so much done in their first 100 days. If they hadn’t started out with their top and most controversial priorities, they never would have been able to get to them.
And, because the cancer at the heart of our democracy is currently centered in the Supreme Court, it’s why President Harris and Gov. Walz must focus their energy and political capital on taking on this out-of-control Supreme Court’s power as soon as they take office.
(Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of "The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream" (2020); "The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America" (2019); and more than 25 other books in print. This article was first featured in CommonDreams.org.)
