Free Republic

Zoom is asking all of its employees to return to the office for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began, when the tech company blew up as one of the main means of communication for people forced to work from home. Zoom, which remains a leader in the post-pandemic remote work trend, is now asking all employees within 50 miles of a company office to go in at least two days a week on a hybrid schedule.

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for AMERICA: For those in Authority in Government, Family, Military, Business, Healthcare, Education, Churches, and the Media. I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone: for kings and all those in authority that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. ~ 1 Timothy 2:1-2 Religion Forum Threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 1 JOHN 5:14

After fifty years, the Equal Rights Amendment is again rearing its ugly head. After a contentious hearing on the ERA in February, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer plans to bring legislation (S.J. Res. 4) to the floor to remove the seven-year deadline on Thursday, April 27. There are 53 co-sponsors for this revival of the ERA, but because the vote will be on ‘cloture,’ 60 votes are needed to advance the resolution. While proponents claim that this amendment will give women “rights,” it actually does the opposite.

After fifty years, the Equal Rights Amendment is again rearing its ugly head. After a contentious hearing on the ERA in February, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer plans to bring legislation (S.J. Res. 4) to the floor to remove the seven-year deadline on Thursday, April 27. There are 53 co-sponsors for this revival of the ERA, but because the vote will be on ‘cloture,’ 60 votes are needed to advance the resolution. While proponents claim that this amendment will give women “rights,” it actually does the opposite. Thanks to the efforts of Phyllis Schlafly and the dedicated women she rallied...

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) will be put to a vote in the Senate this week, according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in an announcement on Monday. […] Schumer argued for the new vote on the ERA by citing the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last year, as well as the ongoing legal dispute over the popular abortion drug mifepristone. […] In 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the ERA after Nevada and Illinois did so in 2017 and 2018. The ERA would no longer have to be ratified by the original deadline under...

Biden this week signed a GOP-led resolution to end the COVID-19 national emergency despite outcry from some lawmakers on the left, priming the country for the end of the pandemic era of the coronavirus outbreak. While the measure was spearheaded by Republican lawmakers, it garnered relatively strong bipartisan support in both the House and Senate before President Biden signed it on Monday.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WSFA) - A federal appeals court has ruled against backers of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment, which would have become the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had it been ratified before a Congressionally-mandated deadline ran out in the 1970s. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall hailed Tuesday’s ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit as “a significant victory for the rule of law” after Alabama and four other states sued to prevent the U.S. Archivist from certifying the ERA as a constitutional amendment. Tuesday’s ruling is decades in the making. Congress submitted the proposed...

On this day 50 years ago, Congress approved the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Within one year, 30 states had ratified it, fueling hopes that the ERA would soon become the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But a half-century later, the ERA is mired in legal uncertainty. The Supreme Court of the United States could ultimately strike it down as unconstitutional. The ERA is short but important. It declares that "equality of rights under law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." The ERA would give Congress the power...

Facilitating the loosening of former President Trump’s iron grip on the Republican Party are cumulative sets of actions and statements emanating from spheres of GOP influence. Meanwhile, elected leaders’ fear of Trump backlash and name-calling is diminishing — signaling the post-Trump era has begun. Trump’s unraveling is akin to a “decline by 1,000 cuts.” Let’s examine it. The players are prospective 2024 presidential candidates, officeholders, the Republican National Committee (RNC), former high-ranking Trump officials, a conservative think tank and a mega-donor kingmaker who owns a jet. We begin on March 4 at the RNC’s major donor retreat in New Orleans,...

Amendments by Acclamation: Democrats Move to Simply Declare the Equal Rights Amendment as RatifiedBelow is my column in the Hill on the Democratic campaign to simply declare the Equal Rights Amendment ratified as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution. The question is whether raw politics is enough to shock the unratified and undead into life.Here is the column:Madison, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin: The names of great constitutional figures are etched in the minds of every schoolchild. But soon, if Democrats in Congress have their way, they will add one more: David Ferriero.Who is David Ferriero, you ask? He is 10th Archivist...

WASHINGTON – Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., is leading a congressional charge for an equal rights amendment to enshrine gender equality in the U.S. Constitution as lawmakers in New York push for a broader measure on the same issue in the state Constitution.

About 40 years ago, America dodged a bullet. Women, in particular, were spared. The United States declined to ratify the inaptly named Equal Rights Amendment as part of the U.S. Constitution by letting the deadline lapse without the requisite number of states adopting it. In doing so, the states rejected a Trojan horse, disguised in the language of equal rights, destined to lead to extreme policies that a majority of Americans oppose—like mandatory taxpayer funding of elective abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. Thankfully, the case for the ERA closed when the proposed amendment expired by its own terms...

Washington (CNN)Recent controversies over the certification of the Equal Rights Amendment and improper record-keeping of Trump-era documents have pushed the nation's chief archivist, whose typical pro forma responsibilities render him unknown to all but the most knowledgeable Washingtonians, into the middle of several high-profile political dramas.

House Democrats voted unanimously Wednesday, along with four Republicans, to "resuscitate" the ERA, even though the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who long advocated the plan, admitted it was dead and gone. "This was ERA’s poorest showing in the House in 50 years," said Douglas D. Johnson, senior policy advisor to the National Right to Life Committee and director of its ERA Project. "Only 52% of voting House members supported ERA today, compared to 94% in 1971, and 56% in 2020. Today’s tally was 62 votes below the two-thirds margin that the Constitution requires to perform grown-up constitutional amending, as...

A federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit filed by three Democratic state attorneys general that had sought to force the federal government to recognize Virginia’s vote last year to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment and add it to the Constitution. Shortly after Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the amendment that supporters say will guarantee women equal rights under the law, the archivist of the United States declared he would take no action to certify the amendment’s adoption, citing an opinion from the Department of Justice under the Trump administration. Constitutional amendments must be ratified by three-quarters of...

It was a huge step forward for American women when, exactly 100 years ago, they finally gained the guaranteed right to vote with ratification of the 19th Amendment. But to Alice Paul, the step wasn’t nearly large enough. Paul, a suffragist who’d waged hunger strikes and endured forced feedings in jail so women could get the vote, equipped herself with a law degree and got to work writing another constitutional amendment — one that would guarantee women equal rights under the law. She introduced that amendment — now known as the Equal Rights Amendment — in Congress in 1923. Of...

'Mrs. America' tries to paint Phyllis Schlafly as cold and unforgiving, but the conservative icon my grandmother and I knew was nothing of the sort. My grandmother was in a Daughters of the American Revolution Chapter with Phyllis Schlafly from 1965 to 1990. A few years before she died, I had the privilege to intern for Mrs. Schlafly. So, during quarantine, as we watched the FX series “Mrs. America” together, we became filled with growing frustration and disgust at seeing the woman we had known misrepresented and defamed. What is most striking about “Mrs. America,” however, is how little it...

As the inevitable, real-life defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment neared, Mrs. America focused on the made-up defection of a devoted conservative woman. It also used a host of negative characterizations against the same woman (Alice, played by Sarah Paulson). The next to last episode, “Houston,” was about the Women’s Convention that took place in 1977, but focused almost entirely on how the convention affected fictional characters Alice and Pamela, bringing them a kind of liberal enlightenment. By focusing mostly on Alice, who was not a real person, show creators were able to invent a story of her coming to...

Just as has happened in our economy dominated by finance capitalism, feminism brought outsized benefits to a few in exchange for the suffering of many. Starring Academy Award Winner Cate Blanchett as conservative firebrand Phyllis Schlafly, Hulu series “Mrs. America” has been getting awards buzz. While the writers are too skilled to give a one-dimensional portrayal of Schlafly, nonetheless the broader agenda of the show is clear: to anathematize Schlafly, build up the feminists who opposed her, and ultimately, to push for a new Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). “Mrs. America” is effective propaganda against Schlafly and conservative ideas because it...

Even amid an all-consuming global crisis, Mrs. America, the new series from FX on Hulu, was guaranteed to become a media event. After watching six of the nine episodes—the only ones available as of this writing—I can attest that the attention is warranted. It’s a lively, superbly acted, cleverly structured ensemble piece about the 1970s battle royal between feminists and Middle American housewives over the Equal Rights Amendment. It has timeliness going for it, too, illustrating the straight line between the populist forces mobilized by ERA foe Phyllis Schlafly and those that sent Donald Trump to the White House 40-odd...