Last summer, Gov. Gavin Newsom made a splashy announcement on a nationally televised morning show.

As millions of Americans tuned in over their breakfast and coffee, California’s Democratic governor said he was fed up with Congress’ inability to pass gun safety laws and was taking matters into his own hands, calling for a new constitutional amendment to restrict firearms.

The proposal was more of a swashbuckling play for attention than a plan with any rational chance of success. The last — and only — time the states gathered for a constitutional convention was in 1787, when George Washington had yet to be elected as the United States’ first president.

Still, California’s Democratic lawmakers overwhelmingly approved Newsom’s proposal, and 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 buy a firearm from 18 to 21.

But a handful of Democrats did not go along with the plan. A progressive senator from San Francisco was the most vocal critic, arguing that a constitutional convention could wind up empowering a conservative agenda. And now, with the country in flux and a former president known for defying the laws of political gravity and pulverizing long-standing norms soon to be sworn back into office, he’s launched a new push to blunt Newsom’s flashy maneuver and rescind California’s call to amend the Constitution.

“There is no way that I want California to accidentally help these extremists trigger a constitutional convention where they, you know, rewrite the Constitution to restrict voting rights, to eliminate reproductive health access and so forth,” said Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco).

Come January, Republicans will control the White House and both chambers of Congress. The Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority is likely to remain in place for years to come.

To Wiener and some other Democrats, the once-improbable prospect of another constitutional convention suddenly seems a bit more credible under a second Trump term.

Calling another constitutional convention would require the approval of 34 of the 50 states. But many, like California, have existing calls on the books. Accounts differ on how many states have already called for a constitutional convention, but at least one tally puts the count above the requisite 34.

Wiener’s proposal, which was first reported by the New York Times, would nullify and supersede all constitutional convention applications previously put forth by the Legislature.

Wiener, like Newsom, is an ambitious and media-savvy politician. A frequent Fox News bête noire, he routinely carries legislation that makes headlines and pushes Democrats from the left. Wiener has made no secret of his desire for a congressional seat — specifically the one long occupied by Democratic powerbroker and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whenever she retires.

Wiener is far from the only Democratic politician to fear the possibility of a conservative-led constitutional convention on the horizon. Several other states, including New Jersey and Illinois, have similarly rescinded their open calls for a constitutional convention in recent years.

“I think it’s a more present danger than many appreciate. There has been a movement by fringe conservatives for many, many years now to create a constitutional convention. And those folks are closer to power in Washington, D.C., than ever before,” said Jonathan Mehta Stein, executive director of the nonpartisan democracy advocacy group California Common Cause.

Mehta Stein described the possibility of such a convention as a “Pandora’s box for our Constitution” that would create “the opportunity for forces we don’t even know to overhaul our democratic institutions and our basic human rights.”

The governor’s office said his position had not changed regarding his support for a new constitutional amendment and declined to comment further.

Wiener’s decision to bring the resolution forward is a bit of a finger in the eye to the governor, who has vetoed some of Wiener’s most high-profile bills, including one to regulate artificial intelligence and another to decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms.

Newsom could try to will Wiener’s resolution toward a soundless death by leaning 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 the Democratic legislative leaders support Wiener’s resolution.

Republican leaders were also noncommittal, though Wiener may wind up with their support. Senate GOP Leader Brian Jones (R-Santee) said he was reviewing Wiener’s resolution and assessing the benefits and potential consequences of a constitutional convention. Like Wiener, both Jones and Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher (R-Yuba City) voted against Newsom’s proposal last year.

“This scheme was nothing but a publicity stunt from the start,” said Gallagher, who is leaning toward supporting Wiener’s repeal effort. “If repealing it will get Newsom to focus on California’s problems instead of chasing the national limelight, that sounds like a good thing.”

The fight ahead could also be a boon for Wiener, further raising his public profile ahead of a potential congressional campaign. That said, it will also test his political might, particularly if the governor chooses to wage a behind-the-scenes campaign against the proposal.

At issue, in part, is the question of how a constitutional convention would actually play out on the ground, and whether it could be convened around a specific topic, such as gun safety, as Newsom has insisted.

The instructions for how the states would proceed after calling a constitutional convention are laid out in Article V of the Constitution, a 143-word sentence that includes virtually no instructions for specific logistics.

Newsom’s office has maintained that his original resolution includes provisions rendering the call void if a constitutional convention is convened on a topic other than gun control.

But legal experts have pushed back on the idea that a constitutional convention could be convened around a single topic.

“The problem is, since there’s never been a constitutional convention under Article V, no one knows” whether it can be limited to one topic, said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley Law School and a leading constitutional law scholar. “People have said you can do it and people have said you can’t do it. The only honest answer anybody can give you is there’s no way to know, since it’s never happened.”

Chemerinsky, who characterized Newsom’s call for a constitutional convention on gun safety as misguided, said he agreed with Wiener and thought it was plausible that a constitutional convention could actually happen.

“There’s 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.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued several major decisions over the course of 2024. 

Its rulings include those that have pushed back on the Biden administration’s attempted change of Title IX protections for transgender students, reversed a 40-year precedent that had supported what conservatives have condemned as the administrative state in Washington, and considered the constitutionality of Republican-controlled state efforts to curtail what they define as liberal Silicon Valley biases online. 

The high court also ruled on presidential immunity at a consequential time for current President-elect Trump during the 2024 election – and sided with a Jan. 6 defendant who fought a federal obstruction charge. 

Here are the top cases considered by the justices over the past year. 

Department of Education v. Louisiana

The Supreme Court on Aug. 16, 2024, kept preliminary injunctions preventing the Biden-Harris administration from implementing a new rule that widened the definition of sex discrimination under Title IX to include sexual orientation and gender identity, while litigation over the rule continues.

After the Fifth and Sixth Circuit Courts of Appeal denied the administration’s request to put a stay on the injunctions, the Department of Education turned to the Supreme Court, arguing that some parts of the rule should be able to take effect. The Supreme Court rejected their request.

“Importantly, all Members of the Court today accept that the plaintiffs were entitled to preliminary injunctive relief as to three provisions of the rule, including the central provision that newly defines sex discrimination to include discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity,” the court’s unsigned opinion said, concluding that the Biden administration had not “adequately identified which particular provisions, if any, are sufficiently independent of the enjoined definitional provision and thus might be able to remain in effect.”

In April, the Department of Education issued the new rule implementing Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, arguing that expanding the definition of discrimination to include “sexual orientation and gender identity” would protect LGBTQ students. Louisiana led several states in suing the DOE, contending the new rule “violates students’ and employees’ rights to bodily privacy and safety.” 

Title IX implemented the long-standing athletics regulation allowing sex-separate teams decades ago, and Republicans contended Biden’s new rule would have significant implications on women- and girls-only spaces and possibly legally back biological males playing in women’s sports. Separate court injunctions blocked the rule from taking effect in 26 states. 

LIBERAL SUPREME COURT JUSTICE MAKES ‘CRINGE’ CAMEO PERFORMANCE ON BROADWAY

“I’m grateful that the Supreme Court agreed not to block our injunction against this radical rewrite of Title IX,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement at the time. “Other than the 19th Amendment guaranteeing our right to vote, Title IX has been the most successful law in history at ensuring equal opportunity for women in education at all levels and in collegiate athletics. This fight isn’t over, but I’ll keep fighting to block this radical agenda that eviscerates Title IX.” 

Moody v. NetChoice, LLC

The Supreme Court on July 1, 2024, kept on hold efforts by Texas and Florida to limit how Facebook, TikTok, X, YouTube and other social media platforms regulate content in a ruling that strongly defended the platforms’ free speech rights.

Writing for the court, Justice Elena Kagan said the platforms, like newspapers, deserve protection from governments’ intrusion in determining what to include or exclude from their space. “The principle does not change because the curated compilation has gone from the physical to the virtual world,” Kagan wrote in an opinion signed by five justices. All nine justices agreed on the overall outcome.

The justices returned the cases to lower courts for further review in broad challenges from trade associations for the companies.

While the details vary, both laws aimed to address long-standing conservative complaints that the social media companies were liberal-leaning and censored users based on their viewpoints, especially on the political right. 

The Florida and Texas laws were signed by Republican governors in the months following decisions by Facebook and Twitter (now X) to cut then-President Trump off over his posts related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Trade associations representing the companies sued in federal court, claiming that the laws violated the platforms’ speech rights. One federal appeals court struck down Florida’s statute while another upheld the Texas law, but both were on hold pending the outcome at the Supreme Court.

In a statement made when he signed the Florida measure into law, Gov. Ron DeSantis said it would be “protection against the Silicon Valley elites.”

When Gov. Greg Abbott signed the Texas law, he said it was needed to protect free speech in what he termed the new public square. Social media platforms “are a place for healthy public debate where information should be able to flow freely – but there is a dangerous movement by social media companies to silence conservative viewpoints and ideas,” Abbott said. “That is wrong, and we will not allow it in Texas.”

NetChoice LLC has sued Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. 

“The judgments are vacated, and the cases are remanded, because neither the Eleventh Circuit nor the Fifth Circuit conducted a proper analysis of the facial First Amendment challenges to Florida and Texas laws regulating large internet platforms. NetChoice’s decision to litigate these cases as facial challenges comes at a cost,” the court wrote. “The Court has made facial challenges hard to win. In the First Amendment context, a plaintiff must show that ‘a substantial number of [the law’s] applications are unconstitutional, judged in relation to the statute’s plainly legitimate sweep.’ So far in these cases, no one has paid much attention to that issue.” 

The court said its analysis and arguments “focused mainly on how the laws applied to the content-moderation practices that giant social-media platforms use on their best-known services to filter, alter or label their users’ posts, i.e., on how the laws applied to the likes of Facebook’s News Feed and YouTube’s homepage,” but the justices said they “did not address the full range of activities the laws cover, and measure the constitutional against the unconstitutional applications.”

Trump v. United States

The Supreme Court on July 1, 2024, ruled that former presidents have substantial protection from prosecution, handing a major victory to Donald Trump, the former president who at the time was the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and is now president-elect.

Trump had moved to dismiss his indictment in a 2020 election interference case based on presidential immunity. 

The U.S. Supreme Court on July 1, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (Drew Angerer/AFP via Getty Images)

The court did not dismiss the case, but the ruling did ensure the 45th president would not face trial in the case before the November 2024 election. 

In a 6-3 decision, the court sent the matter back down to a lower court, as the justices did not apply the ruling to whether or not Trump is immune from prosecution regarding actions related to efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

“The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. “The President is not above the law. But Congress may not criminalize the President’s conduct in carrying out the responsibilities of the Executive Branch under the Constitution. And the system of separated powers designed by the Framers has always demanded an energetic, independent Executive.” 

Trump, having won the 2024 presidential election, will take office Jan. 20, 2025.

SCOTUS HEARS ARGUMENTS IN CASE THAT COULD RESHAPE ENVIRONMENTAL LAW

Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce

In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court on June 28, 2024, overruled the 1984 landmark decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council. 

Known as Chevron deference, the 40-year-old decision instructed lower courts to defer to federal agencies when laws passed by Congress were too ambiguous. It had been the basis for upholding thousands of regulations by dozens of federal agencies, but has long been a target of conservatives and business groups who argue that it grants too much power to the executive branch, or what some critics call the administrative state.

Roberts, writing for the court, said federal judges must now “exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority.”

The ruling does not call into question prior cases that relied on the Chevron doctrine, Roberts wrote. 

The reversal makes it so executive branch agencies will likely have more difficulty regulating the environment, public health, workplace safety and other issues. 

The case came about when Atlantic herring fishermen sued over federal rules requiring them to pay for independent observers to monitor their catch. The fishermen argued that the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act did not authorize officials to create industry-funded monitoring requirements and that the National Marine Fisheries Service failed to follow proper rulemaking procedures.

Chief Justice John Roberts and associate justices Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson await President Biden’s State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 7, 2023. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

In two related cases, the fishermen asked the court to overturn the 40-year-old Chevron doctrine, which stems from a unanimous Supreme Court case involving the energy giant in a dispute over the Clean Air Act. In that case, the court upheld an action by the Environmental Protection Agency under President Ronald Reagan.

In the decades following the ruling, Chevron has been a bedrock of modern administrative law, requiring judges to defer to agencies’ reasonable interpretations of congressional statutes.

The current Supreme Court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, has been increasingly skeptical of the powers of federal agencies. Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch have questioned the Chevron decision. Ironically, it was Gorsuch’s mother, former EPA Administrator Anne Gorsuch, who made the decision that the Supreme Court upheld in 1984.

The Biden administration argued that overturning Chevron would be destabilizing and could bring a “convulsive shock” to the nation’s legal system.

Fischer v. US

The Supreme Court on June 28, 2024, ruled in favor of a participant in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot who challenged his conviction for a federal obstruction crime.

The case stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Joseph Fischer – a former police officer and one of more than 300 people charged by the Justice Department with “obstruction of an official proceeding” in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. His lawyers argued that the federal statute should not apply, and that it had only ever been applied to evidence-tampering cases. 

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court held to a narrower interpretation of a federal statute that imposes criminal liability on anyone who corruptly “alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding.” 

The ruling reversed a lower court decision, which the justices said swept too broadly into areas like peaceful but disruptive conduct, and returned the case to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. 

The Justice Department argued that Fischer’s actions were a “deliberate attempt” to stop a joint session of Congress directly from certifying the 2020 election, thus qualifying their use of the statute that criminalizes behavior that “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do” and carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.

However, Roberts said the government stretched the law too far.

“January 6 was an unprecedented attack on the cornerstone of our system of government – the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next. I am disappointed by today’s decision, which limits an important federal statute that the Department has sought to use to ensure that those most responsible for that attack face appropriate consequences,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement reacting to the ruling. 

“The vast majority of the more than 1,400 defendants charged for their illegal actions on January 6 will not be affected by this decision,” he said.

Fox News’ Chris Pandolfo, Bill Mears, Shannon Bream, Brooke Singman, Brianna Herlihy and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This country has always had a hypocritical relationship with the undocumented workers who keep America’s agricultural, construction and hospitality industries humming.

On one hand, we simply cannot function without them. On the other, xenophobic politicians whip up fear and mistrust of workers on the lowest economic rungs when it serves their purposes.

And voters, who may be angry about all sorts of things, often find it easier to blame outsiders for woes they have nothing to do with, such as inflation.

But we can’t delude ourselves: President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible threatens devastating consequences for the country’s economy, for prices and for the people who come to this country to pick our fruits and vegetables, build our homes and wash our dishes.

California, where some economists estimate that half of our 900,000 farmworkers are undocumented, would be especially hard hit.

Joe Del Bosque, 75, has grown cantaloupes, almonds and asparagus on the San Joaquin Valley’s west side for decades. During the picking season, his employment rolls can swell to as many as 200 workers, none of whom is native-born and white. Some of his workers have lived in the United States with “temporary protected status” for years, some have green cards and the rest have been able to provide documents that satisfy minimal federal requirements.

“A lot of these jobs in agriculture are not wanted by American citizens,” Del Bosque told me Wednesday. “And I don’t blame them. It’s hard work in extreme conditions out there that a lot of people don’t want to do at any wage.”

Also, he said, the work is seasonal. Farmworkers roam from crop to crop based on the time of year.

“The people that do it go from one farm to another to another,” Del Bosque said. “Who can make a living in this country working a three-month job? It’s not easy.”

The prospect of widespread immigration raids and deportations has sent chills down the spines of farmworkers and their bosses, many of whom remember when employment shortages left produce rotting in the fields as recently as 10 years ago.

“We need to get together and agree we need some form of immigration reform, especially for essential workers,” said Del Bosque. “They provide food for the country. Can’t get more essential than that.”

In the mid-1980s, when he managed cantaloupe fields, federal government pilots would fly small planes over the state’s cropland looking for large crews of workers, he recalled. The pilots would radio information about the workers to the ground, where vans full of immigration officers would storm farms to, as Del Bosque put it, “capture as many as they could.”

One raid he witnessed ended in tragedy. Two of the farmworkers fleeing the feds jumped into an aqueduct at the edge of the field and tried to swim away.

“One didn’t make it,” Del Bosque said. “He drowned on the spot. They pulled him out and he’d passed away. I remember they had a hearing in Merced, and several of us came to testify about what happened. But I don’t think anything ever came of it.”

Human Rights Watch reported that from 1974 to 1986, 15 migrant farmworkers were known to have drowned in Central Valley canals during immigration raids. Immigrant rights groups accused Border Patrol agents of deliberately herding workers toward irrigation canals, which they used as barriers to prevent flight.

Border Patrol vehicles at the time carried no lifesaving equipment, which “suggested callousness, if not criminal neglect,” Human Rights Watch argued. In 1984, Border Patrol officials belatedly announced that agents would be required to carry lifesaving equipment when working near rivers and canals.

Without question, this country’s immigration system is broken. It’s illegal to hire undocumented workers, but employers do so anyway because they can’t function without this human capital. With rare exceptions, the government looks the other way. In fact, the odds that an employer will face an inspection by immigration authorities, my colleague Don Lee recently wrote, “are even less than a taxpayer’s likelihood of being audited by the Internal Revenue Service.”

Lee’s story focused on E-Verify, the computer-based program that allows employers to check a prospective employee’s legal status easily, almost instantly and free of charge.

The problem, as Lee reported, is that most employers won’t use it. They simply do not want to know that workers are here illegally; they desperately need the labor.

The summer I graduated from high school, my sister got me a job waiting tables with her at a restaurant on Ventura Boulevard in Woodland Hills. The restaurant, Pages, was sort of an upscale diner, with a long counter, a pie case and booths along a picture window at the front.

Every so often, we would hear a stir in the kitchen as the Spanish-speaking men who worked in the kitchen warned each other that “la migra” — the immigration authorities — were on their way. This was long before cellphones; I don’t know who tipped them off.

From inside the restaurant, the guys would clamber up to the roof, wait for the “all clear” and then get right back to busing tables, washing dishes and cooking. Those who were apprehended and deported would soon return to work after sneaking back across the border, which was much more porous before President Reagan’s 1986 amnesty coupled with stricter border enforcement. Bosses who encouraged and condoned such attempts to evade the feds typically faced no repercussions.

It was a ritual, almost pointless dance — except that it was disruptive and scary as hell.

And it will continue unless and until Congress rectifies our incredible hypocrisy about undocumented immigrants by reforming the immigration system. It might be in Trump’s best interest to keep demonizing them, but it most definitely is not in ours.

Bluesky: @rabcarian.bsky.social. Threads: @rabcarian