 Hi folks, I'm here with Sam Fieldman National Council to Wolfpack. Now, many of you have probably heard of Wolfpack if you've listened to the Young Turks or Secular Talk or the Humanist Report. We've talked about them quite a bit, but he is here to give us the breakdown specifically on how this one organization can save US democracy. And I know that that sounds hyperbolic, but their mission is absolutely ambitious and what we need in this country. So Sam, thank you so much for coming on the program. Can you tell us a little bit about Wolfpack for those who are unfamiliar? Sure. Thank you very much for having me. Wolfpack seeks to empower a mass movement to amend the US Constitution, one that shatters the corrupting influence of money and restores the Democratic Republic that represents us all. We have existed since 2011. We started in the wake of Citizens United to address not only that case, but the precedent that came before it. There were other Supreme Court cases that dealt with the issue of money and politics as well. That really overturned what had been for a long time a pretty effective campaign finance system. And I was a young lawyer at the time. I had twins who my wife was pregnant with who were on the way. And I saw a world approaching in which they would have absolutely no say in the government in which they lived. And I made a promise to my kids before they were born that I wouldn't let that happen. That I would make sure that they grew up in a world in which they had some say in how their government worked. And around that time, Cenk Uger was a new viewer of the Young Turks at that time. And Cenk kept saying, you know, I've got this plan. There's something coming. I've got this idea. Right at the same time, I was doing my own research. And I found that there is a method for amending the Constitution that does not require the ascent of the national legislature. Those were actually the words that James Madison used when he described the way the amendment process should work. He said that the ascent of the national legislature ought not to be required. And that method put into the Constitution by our founders is the Article 5 Convention. With that method, if you get two-thirds of the states calling for a convention limited to a specific topic, then a convention is called specifically for that topic, the proposed amendments. They then get sent to the states exactly the same way as an amendment proposed by Congress would get sent to the states and ratified through the exact same process. And I had found that in my own research. Meanwhile, Cenk kept saying, there's this thing that I've planned that's coming. And I was thinking, I hope it's that because we need all of us to do this together. I looked into how the Article 5 Convention process works. And there's simply no way that you can get an amendment to the Constitution through that process without a broad, popular movement. And I knew that I didn't have the audience that Cenk had to start that kind of thing. And sure enough, that's exactly what he announced. It was announced at Occupy Wall Street. There's a misconception that it comes out of Occupy Wall Street. That wasn't true. It was more of just a convenient place to announce it. And I signed up on day one. I had many roles within the organization as a volunteer. Now I'm paid as a contractor, as a national counsel. And I've been with the organization ever since. And you told me that you were part of the organization as well early on, right? Well, I tried. I did a couple of donations. I signed up to volunteer and tried to do a little bit of lobbying of my state lawmakers. I couldn't do it for too long because I was in grad school. And of course, that takes up so much of your time. But one interesting story that I told to Cenk was that my state rep at the time, Betsy Johnson, is now an independent gubernatorial candidate. And she was very open to the idea of sponsoring that resolution to get money out of politics, calling for that Article V convention. She returned voicemail. She was great. But now she has been a prominent independent candidate specifically because she's being bankrolled by GOP donors. So she's done a complete 180. So my activism with regard, my limited activism with regard to Wolfpack has been a catastrophic failure, given the way that she's done that term. But I've always really respected the organization because it's a very practical solution to a massive problem. Like nobody expects these lawmakers to pass a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics because it's like trying to convince them to do something against their own interests. But if we go the route of the states individually calling for these resolutions, that's the way that you can get it done. And look, normal Americans might not be able to articulate specifically why money is a problem in the United States government, but they know that something is up. And when you point them to these examples of, you know, Kirsten Sinema, for example, taking money from predatory companies, lobbying against closing the carried interest loophole, you know, Joe Manchin with regard to fossil fuels. I mean, the the examples are countless at this point. But when you explain it to people, they acknowledge that corruption is a bipartisan issue. It's not just a Republican issue. It's a Democratic Party issue. And so I think this movement is really clever in trying to make sure that you you limit it. You try to be explicitly nonpartisan and you make it a grass roots movement. Now, I want you to give me a little bit of an update, because when I really followed the movement closely, was back in like circa 2014, 2015. And to my understanding, the movement had reached five states to call or past resolutions calling for article five conventions. Since then, two states have rescinded. And part of this is in due to, I think, a lot of fear mongering over the prospect of a runaway convention, something that I think that Jeng Yuga, for example, has done a great job of dispelling that myth. But why do you think there was so much fear mongering in my this is my, you know, own, own guess is that before like an article five convention was never done. But whenever there was momentum, that's when constitutional changes were made. So I think that this is them kind of anticipating there's momentum, we've got to start fear mongering some way right now. But what actually happened? Like, what's the state of Wolfpack? And why was there some, you know, backsliding with regard to progress? Sure. First, before I do that, I just want to clarify one thing. We've both mentioned Jeng, of course, he founded the organization. He was never involved in the day to day. He's no longer a board member of the organization. Okay, I didn't know that years never taken any money from the organization. He's donated money to it before. But he is still, of course, a big supporter. And I know him a little bit. And I appreciate his support, just like I appreciate the support of all the other volunteers. But I know that there are inaccurate views out there. I about that. And I did want to just clarify. Okay, that's that's good to point out because, yeah, yeah, that's that's good to point out because I've always I didn't know that Jeng was always ever on the board. But I just kind of viewed him as like one of the people who helped get the ball rolling and like a promoter for which I was really valued because, you know, that that platform is really crucial, I think to getting the message out. But I'm sorry to interrupt you. He was on the board initially. But he never was active in a day to day manner. And he hasn't been on the board for several years. Okay. But yeah, to answer your question, though, when Jeng did found it, the philosophy that he, he espoused early on was, you know, give me 20 good activists in every state house, and we'll get these resolutions passed. And that was effective early on. We had we called the Mountain Army in Illinois, we had in a cadre of kids in high school like Walker Green and Selima Casio, who did fantastic work in New Jersey and Westchester. And we had, you know, the line up of people in California that were just going person after person after person, testifying. And that was really effective early on. It stopped being effective when we started getting organized and well funded opposition. And what we found was that kind of at that point, we kind of hit a wall, we had our first five states. And before we had well funded and well organized opposition, we were able to get meetings, we were able to explain the law, we were able to show them these legal things, we had numerous numerous counsel for legislatures and things like that, take a look at the law that we were showing them, and do their own research and check and see that what we were saying was true and come back and say, yes, what they're saying is accurate. That still happens today. Recently in Oregon, the council for the state legislature over there changed his view from being opposed to the convention to being in favor. We had nothing to do with that. He did his research entirely on his own. But he found that from looking into it, everything that we were saying was correct. The difference is that a lot of state legislatures now, that's not enough. Just being right is not enough. We have recisions in New Jersey and Illinois. In New Jersey, you may have heard the truck driver, Ed Durr, the sitting Senate president, President Sweeney. And a couple of days after that election, Senator Sweeney pushed to rescind our Article 5 Convention call in New Jersey. We had a similar effort and we mounted a very strong fight. They were getting a tremendous amount of pressure from the leadership there. And then we saw in Illinois, a couple of months later, they did it even faster. We only had about 24 hours notice or so. Wow. It had already passed the Senate for the notification systems that we had in place even triggered because it went so quickly. And then I heard from one house member who told me that she still wanted to vote for us in the house. And she still agreed with what we were saying. But she was being told by leadership that if she did, her bills would not get hurt. So they're getting now tremendous pressure from the leadership. It is still the case at the state houses that most of the state legislators listen to their constituents and want to help their constituents. Just like we've always said, the state legislature is not like Congress. They do still listen to you. The difference is they're also susceptible to pressure from leadership. So we've decided is that we have to be able to apply greater pressure on the other side. And that's why I want to explain what Wolfpack is. The very first thing I said that we need to do is empower a mass movement. I said that before even said to amend the Constitution. The reason is the mass movement is 100% necessary in order to have that kind of pressure that we can put on the legislators and put on the legislators so that they can once again actually look at the law, look at what all their voters are saying and be responsive. So we're starting to increase our coalition building. We've been going through a restructuring for the past year. And part of that restructuring is increasing our coalition building, giving our teams more autonomy to work in different ways and with different groups in areas where our team in Texas may not agree with our team in Massachusetts and they may do their own thing as long as what they're doing ultimately is ultimately in support of the same overall goal. That's how we're building a large coalition. And we found, you know, we've been able to have really good bipartisan relationships. In that way, I was at an event a few weeks ago called Academy of States where almost everybody there was a Republican and also all of them supported Wolfpack, which was not even I helped plan the event, but I did not only help choose one of the speakers and all of the other speakers I did not help choose also turned out to be Wolfpack supporters, which I love to see. Yeah, the story of Wolfpack is kind of bittersweet to me. I love the organization and I love the progress that you made, but at the same time to see it get rescinded, it's it's it's gut wrenching, right? Because that's so much hours of work that your volunteers did. But at the same time, it's a sign that they're afraid and they wouldn't exert this pressure money forces wouldn't get involved if you hadn't actually made a difference. So it's bittersweet, right? Where it's like you want to continue to make progress and you don't want to go backwards, but at the same time they notice you. And one thing to point out for my viewers who don't know, it's inevitable that at some point you're going to have setbacks in any movement. But the fact that you had so many organized, well funded opposition in each state come out against you, it shows you that you're on the right track, which is really encouraging to see. So I love to hear that Wolfpack is basically going to be better than ever. And it's coming back because this is an organization that I've always really been fond of. I wasn't sure what the status of it was over the past couple of years. But you know, it's good to know that everything is still happening, you know, behind the scenes and whatnot. One reason for talking to you was because I got a little bit of pushback from Wolfpack supporters due to a video that I covered a couple of weeks ago. Now I've currently unlisted that video, but I'll link to it down below if people want to see specifically what I said. But long story short, so I talked about how Republicans are trying to emulate the Wolfpack strategy of getting an Article V convention called so they can ratify their own right wing constitutional amendments. Now what they want specifically, it's really vague, it's really broad, but it seems like a discombobulated movement. Now an article that I shared was from Grace Panetta of Insider. I also talked about an article written by the Center for Media and Democracy by Alex Koch, where he talked about, you know, a 2021 conference with Rick Santorum that became a flashpoint for the, I guess, Republican Wolfpack equivalent. That's maybe a bit of a misnomer, but the Republican movement to get an Article V convention, and it seems like the right is emboldened specifically because they've had so many dubs lately, you know, getting Roe v. Wade overturned and whatnot. But people who support Wolfpack and work within Wolfpack were mad or disappointed, I should say, in my coverage because by, you know, making this, you know, emphasizing the fear of this, perhaps, and you can kind of maybe describe the criticism better. I'm kind of inadvertently pushing this idea that a runaway convention is possible. Like, what did I get wrong specifically? Because I do want to make sure that I don't necessarily inadvertently push any messaging that could hurt Wolfpack, even if I am concerned with the Republican, you know, parallel movement in a way. Yeah, well, it wasn't so much what you got wrong. It's what that article from Business Insider got wrong. And I spoke to the other author of that branch for about an hour, giving an interview for that piece, although it does not appear that they used a whole lot of what I said, and I was not quoted at all in it. They painted a picture that was simply inaccurate in ways that I pretty clearly explained to them. And, you know, you're not the only one to have gotten that wrong. The channel owned by the Young Turks by John Iderola called The Damage Report, which I'm sure many of your viewers also know, also had a video, which they've since taken down that said many of the same things. And I spoke to Jessica Burbank, who was in that video about it, and we went through the article. And one thing that we noticed that that article had done was it mentioned, I told you recently, I told you that I was recently at the Academy of States 3.0, which the article mentioned that event. And they put it immediately after talking about Rick Santorum, which made it sound like those two were connected. It was a complete non sequitur. Rick Santorum has absolutely nothing to do with Academy of States 3.0. And by putting those two things together, which they did twice in the article, it made it sound like this is all part of the same movement. It made it sound like a big grand conspiracy. But the article, the way that Santorum's effort actually goes, and it's completely separate from all of the other groups, including groups that are filled with mostly Republicans. I basically, Mark Meckler founded an organization, it was founded around the same time as Wolfpack, I think a little bit after Wolfpack, but I'm not sure exactly when, called Convention of States. There's some confusion, because the phrase Convention of States is also sometimes used as a generic way to refer to the article of convention. I don't use that term specifically to avoid the confusion with his group. So he founded a group called Convention of States that was seeking an amendment on three different issues. One is fiscal responsibility, another is small government and another is term limits. Or limitation, the second one is limitations on federal power, something like that. I don't remember exact terms. And that group has kind of alternated through the years between a serious effort to try to get a convention specifically for those efforts, and something that's more of a right wing fundraising machine. But in recent years, I've kind of gone all the way toward the right wing fundraising machine. And they're not really taken seriously by the other article five convention groups anymore. The reason being it is impossible. There's a ceiling on how high you can go. It is impossible to get a convention by appealing to one party. And Rick Santorum in the quote that he had, which I believe you read in your video, and that was in that article, he made it very clear that they're trying to basically raise money to fund right wing elections to try to get so many Republicans that they will pass their convention call. Every other convention group out there recognizes the need for bipartisanship. And that includes ones that many consider more right wing like the balanced budget amendment, ones that many consider more left wing like campaign finance one and others like term limits as well. All those groups recognize the need to have that bipartisan appeal and work really hard to do that. More success than others. And that's why I was really glad to see so many Republicans supporting Wolfpack. Since we were founded by Cenk Yuger, who's obviously on the left, that most of our volunteers came from the left. So it has been a big process for us to demonstrate the appeal to those on the right. But I think we have been succeeding in that as well. But the effort, the convention of states project has simply stopped doing that. And we've gotten quite a few states, but there's a ceiling to how many they could possibly get. And that's seeing as well below the 34 needed to call a convention, and even farther below the 38 needed to ratify anything. So it's really just it's not a serious effort. They were not they were asked to be a part of a previous Academy of States, and they declined. When pretty much every other article five convention group from no matter what their issue is, joined that effort to study the process, even if they disagreed on the goal for why they're using it. They were not even asked to join Academy of States 3.0. So the article made it seem like Rick Santorum and Convention of States was a major part of Academy of States 3.0. They weren't there. They weren't asked to be there. I was a featured speaker there. Every featured speaker there was a supporter of Wolf Pack. So it was completely and utterly misleading. Yeah, it made it seem very nefarious. And, you know, that's why I covered the article because I read it and was horrified. But to be honest, I had to read it actually a couple of times because there was a lot that was there that seemed it was a very convoluted article. Like, I've covered stories by Grace Panetta before. I'm not familiar with the other author. And she's done great work. But it was difficult to get through and, you know, to learn that there was this intermingling of different conferences and like this implication that Rick Santorum was associated with Academy of States. It's a lot. And so what I was really fearful of was and why, unless the video ultimately was that, you know, if it is the case that this is this Republican art, you know, movement to get an article five convention is a thing. I don't want to play into this media narrative that a runaway convention is a possibility because I don't think that that's the thing. That's the case. And I think that you and Wolfpack has done a great job at debunking that myth. So by people rightfully being fearful of the Republican and their Republican party and their nefarious agenda, I don't want them to spend reason and think, wow, this can lead to a runaway convention. Therefore, the conclusion must be that Wolfpack is also bad, which is why I thought, oh, my God, I have to bring on Sam so you can help correct the record because Wolfpack is a good altruistic organization. And it's literally not about partisanship, which is why actually, I think that having the movement overall, not necessarily be so at least aesthetically associated with the Young Turks is good because it gives it that veneer that it's left leaning when this really is not left leaning. And look, I'm leftist, right? But the goal, like this, the reason why this is nonpartisan is because this is beneficial to Republicans and Democrats, specifically their constituents and getting money out of politics allows them to better represent all of their constituents. So with regard to the runaway convention, can you dispel that myth just so that when we kind of have something to point to? Because I know that this will come up again if Wolfpack gains momentum. But I just want like a video that I could share with people and this, you know, a blurb from you explaining how that's not actually a thing with an article five convention. It's very narrow in its scope, and that's the only way you can get it, you know, approved. Sure. Literally every single scholar, every single one who has published a peer reviewed article or the equivalent on this issue has agreed 100 percent that there is no way that a new limited article five convention call could possibly lead to an amendment on any other topic. When you see scholars quoted and op eds written by people who say otherwise, check the source. It's always either an op ed by a scholar who is has some other expertise within constitutional law or or it's a political statement there was testimony that has been printed in law journals, but it was political testimony and not a peer reviewed article. And those things are very, very different or a letter to Congress that was printed in a peer reviewed law journal, which is not the same thing as as an article. Every single article backs up that fundamental point that there is no way a new article five convention call could possibly lead to an amendment on another topic. And the reason why we know this for sure is the convention process is incredibly distributed. There are a few protections specifically written into article five. There's quite a few more protections that just come out of the structure of the Constitution because it gives certain it gives different roles to different entities. There is a role for the courts to play. There's a role for Congress to play. There's a role for the states to play. There's a role for the delegates to play. And I don't trust the courts and I don't trust Congress and I don't trust the states and I don't trust the delegates. But I do trust the process that puts them all together and distributes that power among those different places. And one thing that makes that process extra secure is that should it break down the possible result of one entity trying to run away and another entity failing to restrain them and then this or that happens in a worst case scenario like that, the result would not be an amendment on a topic that is not overwhelmingly popular and approved by the country. The result would be just nothing. My biggest fear out of a convention is not a bad amendment. It's no amendment. And that's why we need to work very hard to make sure that we have power. However, the same power that we need in order to get a convention, that's the same power we need in order to make a convention successful and the same power we need in order to ratify what comes out of it. So that can only happen if it's popular. There was James Madison is often misquoted here. He was involved in a lot of different types of conventions over the years. One that is almost always forgotten that he was involved in. And he was in favor of some and opposed to others for different reasons and never because of a fear of the Article 5 convention process. If you break down his quotes, there's all kinds of different reasons. But one that's often forgotten in 1930, I believe it was 1830 rather, there was an effort to amend the Constitution to allow states to nullify federal law. Madison knew that this was not a popular idea. And so he encouraged John C. Calhoun who was behind the idea to try to use the Article 5 convention process to get it rather than just declaring the power to nullify state law. He said, you know, if you think this is a power that the states should have, there's a process in the Constitution for getting the states to insist that they must have this power and that's the Article 5 convention process. And after working behind the scenes, he got South Carolina to go ahead and try to use the Article 5 convention to seek nullification. And he did that even though he was opposed to nullification because he knew that there is no way that an amendment can enter the Constitution through this process without being overwhelmingly popular. And indeed, he was right. Only two other states followed suit. One of them said that they agreed with South Carolina on the problems, but they didn't want nullification to be one of the solutions. And the other one was a little bit more vague overall. And the other states just completely ignored it and the effort to amend the Constitution to allow nullification simply disappeared because it lacked the support. You can't get an amendment to the Constitution without overwhelming popular support. There's no loophole in there. Article 5 is not one. It's simply misinformation that we see when people are afraid of a tactic being successful. They often find it more convenient rather than attacking the policy that they oppose to attack the tactic. And that's what we're seeing here. And that's what we've seen in the history of Article 5 Convention efforts that has led to this kind of misinformation becoming so commonplace that most people hear it from somebody who they trust. And that person heard it from somebody they trust. And that person heard it from somebody they trust. You heard it from a business insider article, the business insider article heard it from that of the Center for Budget and Policy priorities. This kind of thing is so in the zeitgeist because there have been efforts for decades now to fight the tactic rather than the policy when people disagree that now people assume the tactic is dangerous when it absolutely 100 percent is not. That's a really, really good point because when you think about it, how like what arguments would you even formulate against, you know, the Wolfpack amendments? That money in politics is good and politicians should be bribed? I mean to make that argument you sound like a clown. And I'm sure that there's some people in mainstream media that will do that, obviously. But you know, I hope brothers tried it in New Jersey. In New Jersey, that was the only time that the Koch brothers actually openly opposed us. They sent to a lobbyist from Americans for Presparity to testify against us in New Jersey. And we won. New Jersey passed and became one of our states. Then when we were rescinded in New Jersey, Americans for Presparity did not testify, but the head of the Provisional Policy Priorities, who I mentioned, did. And he testified about the Runaway Convention, which is not true. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah, that's it's probably more persuasive of an argument because it's complicated. A lot of people don't know these details. And as you said, you know, it can be something that was printed in a journal that was testimony from Congress. It's hard. So that's why I think that like your effort here is really important. Any lasting words that you want to leave us with? And also, can you tell us what we can do if we want to support Wolfpack? Yeah, absolutely. Well, those are the words that I want to leave you with. I want to make sure, you know, this is not something that Wolfpack is doing to to help, you know, make our country what it should be and what it has been promised, what I promised to my kids. This is something that we are all doing together. I'm not Wolfpack. You are Wolfpack. We need help from everybody, whether it's donations or volunteers. We need both very much, especially as we're rebuilding right now. Wolfpack.com slash go or Wolfpack dashpack.com slash volunteer. We need everybody that we can get in this fight. It that's the only way that we're going to be able to put the kind of pressure to fight back against the larger interests. If you're part of other organizations and other volunteer efforts, that's fantastic. We need you to join Wolfpack also, not instead. We need you to join Wolfpack also because whatever pisses you off, the the root of that problem is the corrupting influence of money and politics. Think about why you can't make progress on environmental issues. Think about why you can't make progress in in regulation. Think about whatever the issue is that pisses you off most. Think about why you cannot win on that issue and it always comes down to the corrupting influence of money and politics. And that's why you need to work with Wolfpack and with that issue together in order to solve it. Yeah, well, we'll leave that there. Thank you so much, Sam, for coming on the program. I'd love to keep in touch to get further updates about Wolfpack because I think this is really important and the more people that we can get involved, the better off we'll all be. So I really appreciate it.