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president joe biden He wants people to know that he sees dead amendments. Just before leaving office, Biden declared that we have a 28th Amendment, even though the measure died in the ratification process years ago.
Not since the movie “The Sixth Sense”“Has there ever been a scarier moment? To paraphrase Cole Sear in the film, Biden doesn’t see failed amendments in constitutional coffins but rather “walking around like normal (amendments). They don’t know they’re dead.” Neither does Biden.
President Joe Biden appears in front of the US Capitol. (Getty Images)
Biden waited until shortly before leaving office to please the most delusional elements of the Democratic Party by unilaterally announcing that the Equal Rights Amendment is now part of the Constitution. The ridiculous moment was later amplified by figures like Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), happiness and falsely telling women that they can now go to court and enforce the amendment to restore things like the right to abortion.
This strange group fantasy was triggered by the following statement:
“In accordance with my oath and duty to the Constitution and the country, I affirm what I believe and what three-quarters of the states have ratified: the 28th Amendment is the law of the land, guaranteeing all Americans equal rights and protections under the law, regardless of sex.”
Without naming them, Biden cites dozens of “constitutional experts” to support this absurd claim.
Journalists work outside the US Supreme Court building in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) (Anna Moneymaker)
Biden’s last-minute statement is creepier than the movie because it demands a departure not only from the constitutional process, but also from reality. Despite running as the champion of democracy, Biden is simply brushing aside the fact that the ERA was not ratified, as the Justice Department, several judges, and his own archivist made clear just a few weeks ago.
Even the late United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg declared the amendment dead.
Archivist Colleen Shogan recently explained that neither his office nor the White House have the authority to unilaterally publish the amendment or waive the ratification deadline:
“In 2020 and again in 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel affirmed that the ratification deadline set by Congress for the ERA is valid and enforceable,” he wrote. “OLC concluded that extending or eliminating the deadline requires further action by Congress or the courts.”
“Therefore, the Archivist of the United States cannot legally publish the Equal Rights Amendment. As leaders of the National Archives, we will comply with these legal precedents and support the constitutional framework in which we operate.”
The reason is simple. The underlying argument is absolutely ridiculous.
how do I have previously writtenERA is as dead as Dillinger.
The deadline for ratification of the ERA was set for March 22, 1979, allowing seven years to secure the required approval by three-quarters of the states, or 38 states. He didn’t do it. Worse yet, four states (Nebraska, Tennessee, Idaho, and Kentucky) rescinded their previous ratifications. A fifth, South Dakota, set its ratification to expire if the ERA was not adopted by the 1979 deadline.
Kentucky also had an additional problem because its The Democratic lieutenant governor vetoed the resolution rescinding the ratification when the governor was out of town. However, Article V talks about ratifications by state legislatures.
Notably, during the extended period, not a single state was added. Even assuming that the five states could be counted despite votes to rescind their ratifications, the ERA was still three states short when it missed the second deadline.
President Jimmy Carter addresses a town hall meeting. The American flag hangs in the background.
Democrats then insisted that states could not rescind their votes even before ratification was completed. So Democrats and then-President Carter simply extended the deadline to June 30, 1982. However, in 1981, a federal district court ruled in Idaho v. Freeman that Congress could not extend the deadline for ratification of the ERA. (The Supreme Court later stayed that order, but later declared the matter moot.)
In 2021, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled that it would have been “absurd” for the Archivist to ignore the deadline and unilaterally add the unratified amendment to the Constitution. On appeal, a unanimous panel of the D.C. Circuit rejected Illinois and Nevada’s claims that the Archivist should be ordered to publish the ERA, holding that “the States’ argument that the proposed clause is similar to the inoperative preliminary clause of a bill is not compelling. …because if that were the case, then specifying the mode of ratification in every amendment in our nation’s history would also be inoperative.”
None of this matters to democracy advocates who ignored the votes in these states and disregarded constitutional deadlines and procedures. Harvard Law professors Laurence Tribe and Kathleen Sullivan published a column stating “The ERA is now law!” as if amplification and exclamation points somehow make it happen. (This is the same Laurence tribe that called for Trump be accused of attempted murder of former Vice President Mike Pence and insisted that the law was clear “without a doubt, beyond a reasonable doubt, beyond any doubt”).
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Notably, Biden did not issue an executive order to the archivist as many activists wanted. The reason is simple: The White House knew it could be challenged in court and would quickly collapse under judicial review. They would prefer Biden to declare, like Caesar, that we have a new amendment and treat it as a fact.
With the statement, Biden gave “the last full measure of devotion” to the radical left of his party. It was a complacent and, frankly, pathetic moment for a president who is currently one of the The least popular presidents upon leaving office..
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His action on the ERA is a perfect example of why he is considered a “failed“president. Biden has always sacrificed principle for the politics of the moment. This was a participation trophy awarded to activists who lacked substance or basis. It is also the reason why Voters saw Biden as a greater threat to democracy than Trump..
It’s chilling to think that Biden actually believes this nonsense and sees dead amendments hanging around the White House. However, the truth may be even scarier: he simply doesn’t care. He sees dead amendments in hopes of breathing life back into his legacy. Both, however, now belong to the ranks of the corpus mortuus.
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