Blueprints from the Ashes ...
How Blue and Purple States Must Meet the MAGA Convention Offensive with Overmatching Constitutional Action.
By Dr. Ike Wilson, for Compound Security, Unlocked
“The Constitution was never meant to be sacred. It was meant to be lived—and rewritten if necessary.”
—Thurgood Marshall, adapted
“If you’re not at the table, you’re probably on the menu.”
I. From Alarm to Action
In yesterday’s dispatch—"The Convention Trap”—I laid out the real-time, real-world threat posed by the far-right Convention of States (CoS) movement: a procedurally legitimate, ideologically weaponized Article V convention that, with just 15 more states, could hand the Trump Administration and its MAGA loyalists the power to rewrite the U.S. Constitution.
Not incrementally …
Not figuratively …
Literally.
And while the Right has legal blueprints, model legislation, delegate pipelines, and synchronized messaging across 19 state legislatures, the progressive ecosystem—still shaken, still scattered, from the outcomes of 2024 National Elections—lacks the coordinated firepower to respond in kind.
We are now six months into Trump II. The Federalist-aligned right has turned its focus from culture war to structural war. They’re not trying to win debates anymore. They’re trying to win the rules of debate for the next century.
And unless Blue, Purple, and progressive states rapidly activate blueprints of their own, the post-constitutional order will be delivered—not by coup, but by quorum.
II. What the Far Right Already Has—and Why It’s Working
Let’s review what the MAGA-right Convention of States project has already locked in:
19 State Resolutions Passed: Coordinated, templated legislation pushed via ALEC and Heritage.
Pre-drafted Amendments: Balanced budget, congressional term limits, anti-regulation measures, religious liberty expansions, and federal power rollbacks.
Convention Infrastructure: Candidate delegate slates, legal advisory teams, media echo chambers, and procedural roadmaps.
White House Backing: Trump’s second-term administration has installed a State Sovereignty Council explicitly designed to push the CoS over the finish line.
They are not just moving with urgency. They are moving with intent to dominate.
This is not about returning power to the people. It’s about locking down a permanent, constitutionalized, minority-rule ethno-corporate regime.
III. Why Blue and Purple States Can No Longer Afford to Be Reactive
The progressive coalition has spent decades operating in a defensive posture: fighting court rulings, protesting legislation, responding to right-wing media cycles.
But we are now in a new phase of American Political Development: the foundational reordering of the Union itself.
You don’t survive a constitutional crisis by defending policy planks. You survive it by fighting for the architecture that makes democratic governance possible.
If progressive states and movements do not move now—with boldness and coherence—the window will close. And when it does, we won’t just lose policy. We’ll lose the civic operating system.
IV. Blueprints from the Ashes: What a Progressive Response Must Look Like
Let’s stop hand-wringing and start drawing plans.
Here is a minimum viable blueprint that Blue/Purple/Progressive-aligned states and movements must begin implementing now, at the speed of need:
1. Establish State-Level Constitutional Defense Commissions
Every non-CoS state—especially battlegrounds like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada—must immediately establish bipartisan commissions to:
Draft public-facing reports on CoS threats
Monitor constitutional convention legislation
Propose defensive state statutes to regulate delegate behavior and scope
Explore counter-resolutions to block participation if a convention is triggered
This is about building state-level constitutional readiness. Because in a post-CoS reality, state constitutions will become the last firewall of civic legitimacy.
2. Draft and Circulate Counter-Amendments
If the Right is drafting amendments to entrench minority rule, the Left must begin drafting constitutional language that does the opposite:
Affirm the right to vote as a positive constitutional guarantee
Enshrine bodily autonomy and equal protection regardless of gender or sexual orientation
Codify climate sustainability obligations at the constitutional level
Establish public funding for elections as a democratic baseline
Require national standards for redistricting and anti-gerrymandering
Call it the Democracy Defense Amendment Package. Treat it as a living civic document—not a manifesto, but a governing plan.
3. Convene a “People’s Convention Pre-Assembly”
Before the MAGA Convention of States meets, progressive leaders—governors, legislators, Indigenous leaders, civil society orgs, and movement scholars—must convene an open national civic assembly that:
Establishes democratic norms and redlines for any constitutional amendment process
Begins building an alternative constitutional imagination based on pluralism, equity, and post-carbon civic economics
Elevates community-driven visions of sovereignty, consent, and justice beyond Washington gridlock
This pre-assembly would have no formal power—but enormous legitimacy.
If we are heading toward a new constitutional order, we must make clear: the Right does not own the future. Not unchallenged.
4. Build a Civic Mobilization Pipeline
Too many Americans have never heard of the Convention of States. Fewer still understand what’s at stake.
Progressive-aligned states and organizations must invest now in a counter-narrative ecosystem:
Podcasts, explainers, youth-targeted social campaigns
Co-branded messaging with unions, climate justice groups, reproductive rights advocates
A digital dashboard tracking every CoS-affiliated state, bill, and delegate
Town halls, civic teach-ins, and simulation conventions across campuses and communities
This is not about panic. It’s about preparedness. People don’t fight for institutions they don’t understand. It’s time we explained what’s being stolen.
5. Prepare for Legal and Political Resistance in a Post-CoS Landscape
If the Right succeeds in triggering a runaway constitutional convention, progressive states must be ready to:
Reject participation in an illegitimate constitutional order
Invoke state constitutional rights to resist implementation of federal amendments that violate human and civil rights
Establish regional compacts for democratic governance, civil protections, climate coordination, and reproductive autonomy
Begin long-term planning for confederal models of sovereignty and governance, should the U.S. cease to be a functional liberal democracy
This is not secessionism. This is civic continuity planning. We must start imagining governance beyond federalism as we knew it.
V. Conclusion: From Convention to Covenant
The Convention of States is not just a legal maneuver. It’s a worldview: a belief that American democracy must be gutted and re-forged in the image of white grievance, evangelical dogma, and corporate power.
We cannot meet that worldview with centrist nostalgia or procedural niceties.
We must meet it with blueprints of our own—rooted in democratic renewal, civic dignity, and constitutional evolution worthy of the twenty-first century.
Our choice is not whether to fight.
It is whether to build a future before the Right writes it for us.
This is the moment for clarity. For courage. And for action at the speed of need.
Let’s draw the blueprints—and get to work.