America at 250: Due Diligence

As America approaches its 250th anniversary, America at 250: Due Diligence turns to one of the most consequential — and least understood — provisions in the U.S. Constitution: Article V, and the question of whether the country should call its first-ever Article V convention. This episode opens in the summer of 1787, inside a sweltering Pennsylvania Statehouse, where George Mason — one of the sharpest minds at the Constitutional Convention — warned that the founders were "building a cage without a key." Mason's insistence on a state-led convention process became Article V's second amendment pathway, a mechanism that has never once been used in 250 years of American history. Today, that mechanism is at the center of a growing political movement. The Convention of States Project has organized more than 20 states behind a push to convene a convention aimed at imposing fiscal restraints, term limits, and jurisdictional limits on the federal government. Supporters call it the founders' intended check on a federal government that won't check itself. Critics warn it's a legal "pig in a poke" — a process with no rules for who attends, what they can do, or how it could be stopped once started. To unpack the history, the strategy, and the stakes, the episode brings together three very different voices: a constitutional law scholar who has spent years studying Article 5's uncertainties, the leader of the nationwide campaign to trigger a convention, and a former U.S. senator whose book lays out why he believes the effort poses a serious danger to the Constitution as we know it. Together, they wrestle with a question that traces straight back to George Mason's "cage without a key": is Article V's convention clause a safety valve the founders wisely built in — or a loophole that's never been tested because it's too dangerous to use? Hosts Steve Herman Steve Herman is a veteran journalist and former White House Bureau Chief for Voice of America. He brings decades of reporting experience to America at 250: Due Diligence, helping guide the series through the historical, political, and institutional questions that have shaped the United States. Website: Steve Herman X: @newsguyUSA Bill Bernardoni Bill Bernardoni is the founder of Bernardoni Media & Marketing and co-host of America at 250: Due Diligence. His work focuses on building, producing, and distributing podcasts and radio programs that bring serious conversations to broad audiences. Website: Bernardoni Media & Marketing Blog: The Bernardoni Brief X: @BillBernardoni Guests Featured in This Episode David Super David A. Super is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law and Economics at Georgetown University Law Center, where his research focuses on constitutional law, administrative law, and the federal budget. He has written and testified extensively on Article 5, including before state legislatures considering convention-related resolutions, and is a leading voice raising questions about the legal uncertainties surrounding a convention's scope, delegate selection, and ratification process. Faculty Page: David A. Super — Georgetown Law Mark Meckler Mark Meckler is the co-founder and president of Convention of States Action, part of Citizens for Self-Governance, and a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots. He leads the nationwide campaign to call an Article V convention of states aimed at imposing fiscal restraints, term limits, and jurisdictional limits on the federal government — an effort that has secured resolutions from 20 states. Website: Convention of States Project X: @MarkMeckler Russ Feingold Russ Feingold is a former U.S. senator from Wisconsin, where he served nearly two decades and was the lone vote against the Patriot Act. He is the co-author, with Peter Prindiville, of The Constitution in Jeopardy: An Unprecedented Effort to Rewrite Our Fundamental Law and What We Can Do About It, which examines the risks of an Article 5 convention and the broader challenges of constitutional change in a polarized era. Book: The Constitution in Jeopardy — Hachette Book Group Listener Question As America turns 250, do you think Article 5's convention clause is a safeguard the founders got right, a loophole too dangerous to use, or something that needs to be reformed before anyone calls a convention? Join the conversation and respond by sending us an email by visiting RadioFreeAmerica.media.

As America approaches its 250th anniversary, America at 250: Due Diligence takes on one of the country's biggest and most enduring questions: What does the government owe the people it serves? Not as a theory. Not as a campaign slogan. But in real life — in retirement checks, health care, food assistance, taxes, debt, and the promises made to working Americans. This episode traces the American social safety net from the Founding era through the New Deal, the Great Society, the Reagan Revolution, and today's debate over Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, federal spending, and the national debt. It begins with Franklin Roosevelt's defense of "social insurance" during the Great Depression, revisits early opposition to Social Security, and then brings the debate into the present through three very different voices: a historian, a former congressman, and a libertarian fiscal-policy scholar. Together, they wrestle with a question that has shaped America for nearly a century: Is the safety net a promise America must keep, a system America can no longer afford, or something that needs to be rebuilt before it breaks? Hosts Steve Herman Steve Herman is a veteran journalist and former White House Bureau Chief for Voice of America. He brings decades of reporting experience to America at 250: Due Diligence, helping guide the series through the historical, political, and institutional questions that have shaped the United States. Website: Steve Herman X: @newsguyUSA Bill Bernardoni Bill Bernardoni is the founder of Bernardoni Media & Marketing and co-host of America at 250: Due Diligence. His work focuses on building, producing, and distributing podcasts and radio programs that bring serious conversations to broad audiences. Website: Bernardoni Media & Marketing Blog: The Bernardoni Brief X: @BillBernardoni Guests Featured in This Episode Julian Zelizer Julian Zelizer is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University and the author or editor of more than two dozen books on American political history, Congress, the New Deal, and the Great Society. Website: Julian Zelizer — Princeton University Substack: The Long View Dennis Kucinich Dennis Kucinich is a former mayor of Cleveland, a former U.S. congressman from Ohio, and a two-time presidential candidate. He spent much of his career arguing for working people, seniors, public services, and the protection of the social safety net. Website: The Kucinich Report X: @Dennis_Kucinich Romina Boccia Romina Boccia is Director of Budget and Entitlement Policy at the Cato Institute. Her work focuses on federal spending, debt, Social Security, Medicare, and entitlement reform. Website: Romina Boccia — Cato Institute Social Security Reform Hub: Cato's Hub for Social Security Reform Book: Reimagining Social Security — Cato Institute Listener Question As America turns 250, what do you think the federal government owes its citizens: a guaranteed safety net, a smaller and more localized support system, or something entirely different? Join the conversation and respond by sending us an email by visiting RadioFreeAmerica.media.

The United States turns 250 this year — but what does the anniversary actually mean? Hosted by nationally syndicated radio host Bill Bernardoni and former Voice of America White House Bureau Chief Steve Herman, America at 250: Due Diligence cuts through the noise to ask the hard questions: What has the Constitution's promise delivered over 250 years, and where has it fallen short? Each episode brings together historians, former lawmakers, policy experts, and advocates to examine the debates that have defined — and divided — American democracy from the beginning. This is the podcast for listeners who want real answers, not hot takes — and who are ready to take an honest look at where America stands as it enters its next 250 years.