Parting shot
This is an act so silly, I’m going to assume it was a 26-year-old comms intern who came up with it.
To recap, the ERA (born in 1923(!)) made it through the House and Senate in the early Seventies and was sent to the States for final approval. There was a hard deadline of 1979 built in to the text (later extended with dubious legitimacy to 1982).
It need 38 and it got there, but only after both deadlines had passed. The last one was Virginia in 2020. Some states that voted to ratify it voted to rescind after the deadline passed (nobody knows if they can do that). It’s a mess. The one certain thing is that constitutional amendments have nothing to do with the president.
The irony is, one of the questions that soured women on the ERA was the possibility it would make separate bathrooms unconstitutional (the big one, of course, was the draft).
This executive flourish is so stupid, I don’t think the Supreme Court will even bother. I wonder if he’ll try any other foolishness on his way out the door.
January 17, 2025 — 5:34 pm
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