With weeks to go until President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office with a Republican trifecta in the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives, more that 120 Democratic lawmakers on Sunday called on President Joe Biden to take a crucial step toward protecting millions of Americans from Trump’s far-right MAGA agenda by ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment.
The ERA was passed by Congress in 1972, and met the requirement for it to be ratified by three-fourths of U.S. states in 2020, when Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the amendment.
Yet during his first term, Trump and the Republican party blocked the implementation of the ERA, claiming that since nearly 50 years passed in between the amendment’s passage and the meeting of the ratification requirement, the threshold was not achieved by the deadline set by Congress.
“No Republican would care about” the deadline, said journalist Emma Vigeland, “if roles were reversed.”
There is no argument for Biden not to do this, except for a 1982 deadline that no Republican would care about if roles were reversed.
The House and Senate overwhelmingly passed it in 1971 and 1972. You need 3/4ths of the states (38) to ratify. In 2020, Virginia became the 38th. https://t.co/q73aF9a3F4
Citing the U.S. Code, Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.) — co-chairs of the Congressional Caucus for the Equal Rights Amendment — led their colleagues in telling Biden that the national Archivist, Colleen Shogan, is required to certify an amendment “when the National Archives and Records Administration receives official notice that a proposed amendment to the Constitution has been approved by enough states.”
All Biden has to do to ratify the amendment, which would explicitly outlaw sex and gender discrimination, is direct Shogan to publish the ERA, said the lawmakers.
“Solidifying your legacy on equal rights with a final action on........