Hello there, I'm Chuck Todd and this is the Chuck Todd cast.

So for years we've reported on two trends, the rising one party control of state houses

across the country and the decline of local news media to report on what those in power

are doing.

We know that state houses often have been the home of what you would call test legislation

that can push federal policy in one direction or the other.

The federal row was overturned for instance, there was a steady stream of very provocative

state laws in red states like that abortion-bounding hunting rule in Texas.

But my guess today says that state houses are actually up to something much bigger than

that than just these incremental policy tests or sort of laboratory experiments, if you

will, for democracy, that they will actually want something bigger, a constitutional convention.

So I'm joined now by Russ Feingold, he's a former Democratic Senator from Washington

and before that he of course was a state legislator.

He was a Wisconsin state Senator representing the area around Madison.

He's the co-author of a new book, it's called this, the Constitution and Jeopardy, an unprecedented

effort to rewrite our fundamental law and what we could do about it.

He wrote the book with constitutional scholar Peter Printaville, Senator Feingold, welcome

to the talk cast.

Chuck, it's good to be on, thanks for considering this talk.

So it's interesting, you know, had Hillary Clinton won in 2016.

I believe it was Texas that was trying and it was Greg Abbott, if I recall, that was desperately

trying to sort of create a momentum for a, let's have a constitutional convention, a convening.

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