Leaked ALEC Call Reveals Plan To Fight Biden On Climate: Nullification, Constitutional Convention
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On a one-hour call with ALEC members in late February, former Utah state representative Ken Ivory claimed that each directive in the president’s January executive order on climate action unduly entrenched federal power and stripped authority from the states. He surfaced fears that Biden will declare a national “climate emergency” that “unlocks more than 130 unilateral executive actions.” (It’s unclear how Ivory, who did not respond to Grist’s request for comment, arrived at that figure.) Ivory also faulted the Democratic administration for promoting climate-focused policies within federal agencies through executive orders, rather than routing all proposals through Congress. “We’re seeing something that they’re identifying as a new age in climate federalism,” Ivory said.
The call was the first of two that have taken place so far as part of ALEC’s new Functional Federalism Working Group, which exists separately from a longstanding ALEC task force on federalism and international relations. The new group hasn’t been publicized on the ALEC website beyond two brief mentions in blog posts penned by Ivory. Its name suggests that the group is meant to redress what Ivory described as an imbalance of power between Biden’s presidency and state governments, a majority of which are dominated by conservatives.
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While it’s still too early to tell exactly what shape opposition to the Biden administration’s climate proposals will take, the ALEC calls provide a few indications. On the calls, Ivory floated three potential ways for state lawmakers to present a united front against the Biden agenda: nullification, or passing state legislation to invalidate federal actions that states believe are unconstitutional; the initiation of a constitutional convention that would pass amendments giving states more power; and the passage of non-binding resolutions reaffirming the U.S. Constitution’s Tenth Amendment, which declares that powers not explicitly granted to the federal government belong to the states, in state legislatures. “The states have to be able to speak with one voice,” Ivory said. “As John Adams said, ‘The clocks all have to strike at one.’”
Political scientists who spoke to Grist doubted the likelihood of a constitutional convention or nullification actions, but they cautioned against underestimating the effects of passing resolutions at the state level and discussing ways to wrest power from the federal government. “They’re providing the intellectual scaffolding for this elite movement,” said Jacob Grumbach, a University of Washington political science professor who has studied ALEC closely. The moves are symbolic and help unify disparate camps within the conservative movement — from anti-abortion groups to pro-gun groups and fossil fuel interests — by highlighting the shared benefits of more power at the state level, he said.
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https://grist.org/politics/alec-biden-climate-republicans/
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