Murphy: Biden finds a way to fumble to the end

Wendy Murphy, Boston Herald -- Biden Finds Way to Fumble to the End
Wendy Murphy, Boston Herald -- Biden Finds Way to Fumble to the End

This article originally appeared in the Boston Herald and is posted here with the author's permission. Photo Credit: Wendy Murphy, Esq.

January 20, 2025. Last Friday, Joe Biden declared the Equal Rights Amendment our Twenty-Eighth Amendment, even though presidents have no authority to declare the validity of amendments.

Under Article V of the Constitution, an amendment becomes law when the last of three-fourths of the states ratifies it. For the ERA, that date was January 27, 2020 — yet when Biden took office in 2021, he said the ERA was not valid, and he fought against it in two federal lawsuits. When he inexplicably changed his mind last week, not one member of the media asked about the lawsuits.

Senator Kirsten Gillebrand gave a press conference to explain why she thinks Biden can declare the ERA valid. She said the states validate new amendments and that Biden was just letting them know that they had done their job. Umm, Okay. She also invoked John Adams and said that he had declared the Eleventh Amendment valid, so Biden could do the same. In fact, Adams spoke to Congress about the Eleventh Amendment being valid in 1798, some three years after it was actually validated by the states.

Curious people wondered aloud on Friday why Biden made a statement on his last day, and why seemingly smart people like Harvard’s Larry Tribe said Biden had authority to validate the ERA when 99% of scholars say he doesn’t. Suspicious people could see what was really going on.

Mission Statement of the Green Alliance for Sex-Based Rights

Mission Statement for the
Green Alliance for Sex-Based Rights

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As the Green Alliance for Sex-Based Rights, we seek to build an explicitly gender critical and profeminist Green political movement, welcoming the participation of both women and men who embrace - as inspiration -- the founding values of the Green Party and particularly feminism, grassroots democracy, respect for diversity, and decentralization. We affirm these values especially, in the face of the recent failure to honor them by authoritarians who have usurped the leadership of the Green Party of the United States; an organization many of us have worked decades to build. We are inspired by the vision these values offer to build a harmonious future devoid of war and violence, grounded in community and economic justice, where we live sustainably and in harmony with Nature, cultivating just relationships with our global neighbors, and respectful of democratic practices which make it possible to embrace respectfully the diversity of the human community.

Towards these ends we intend to pursue as essential tasks:

  1. engaging in outreach to build a broad membership and base of support committed to this Mission;
  2. developing state-based affiliates for the Green Alliance;
  3. conducting political education for our members and for the public;
  4. honoring the leadership of feminist women;
  5. framing a process for the development and periodic ratification by democratic means, of a national platform, building upon the current GPUS platform, as a framework for engagement in organizing political action independent of the corporate parties, addressing the needs especially of women, the working class, people of color, lesbians, gays and other oppressed groups;
  6. framing a process for the democratic development and ratification of governing documents;
  7. and convening a national convention to inaugurate an explicitly pro-feminist, gender critical, women led Green Alliance as a political association, independent of corporate parties and influence, uniting member state organizations to engage in elections and other political activities, whether inside or outside the Green Party of the United States.

 

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