Other than that, the closest Congress has come recently to sending a proposed amendment to the states was the Flag Desecration Amendment, which would have allowed for states to punish people who burned the American flag, overturning two Supreme Court decisions stating that individuals have a free speech right to do so. The measure passed the two-thirds threshold in the House but fell one vote short in the Senate.
The New Yorker piece notes, with alarm, that the Republican Party is close to having control of two-thirds of the state legislatures, which could result in a constitutional amendment being offered via the second method above, something that, to the best of my knowledge, has never happened before. The article notes that while a constitutional convention would most likely be called only to propose a so-called Balanced Budget Amendment, things could move in a different direction once the delegates met:
The original Constitutional Convention was intended only to recommend changes to the Articles of Confederation, not to do away with them, but the delegates literally took the law into their own hands and drafted a new document. It’s easy to imagine that an Article V convention would find it difficult to limit its agenda to the technicalities of budget finance. Abortion, the most divisive social issue of the past forty years, has insinuated itself into nearly every discussion of nominees for the Supreme Court. Could a gathering intoxicated by the possibility of imposing permanent change resist the urge to achieve by amendment what decades of lobbying, protesting, and the cultivation of sympathetic judicial candidates could not? Similarly, as the battle over immigration has intensified, conservatives have toyed with the idea of ending birthright citizenship, currently guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The allure of bypassing legislative stalemate on that issue might also prove tempting.In the age of Trump, it is easy to conjure up images of American democracy as we know it seeking to exist (as anyone who has heard me discuss the constitution know, I don't believe this is a possibility). This article lays out a scenario for the dismantling of sacred rights. I suppose if Trump can be elected President, anything is possible.
