• More than 62 percent of eligible voters in 2020 were not born or were too young to vote when Congress sent the ERA to the states in 1972.
• These voters have ot had a chance to consider the consequences of the proposed ERA or to weigh in, through their elected representatives, on whether it should be adopted.
• Adding an amendment proposed in 1972 to the Constitution now would now undermine the right of today’s voters to participate in the amendment process as required by Article V.

By: Jennifer C. Braceras

• We can expand access to paid leave without harming working families.
• Employers are increasingly voluntarily offering paid leave benefits.
• Policies such as creating a voluntary family and medical leave insurance program, advancing Social Security benefits or Child Tax Credits to new parents, permitting employees to accrue paid leave in lieu of overtime pay, and modernizing tax-preferred savings accounts could also support paid leave without burdening employers or increasing taxes on workers.

By: Kristin Shapiro

• China’s regime regards such basic rights as free speech, or freedom of assembly, as threats to its power, and punishes those who try to exercise them.  
• China’s recent experiments in repression include the establishment of brain-washing concentration camps for Uyghur Muslims in the western part of the country, along with the more traditional prisons and labor camps to which dissidents can be consigned. 
• The government uses ubiquitous surveillance, censorship, and a system of “social credit” to help keep people in line. Dissidents sometimes simply disappear.

By: Claudia Rosett

Policymakers should:

• Eliminate unnecessary licenses or scale back onerous licensing requirements.
• Consider alternatives to licensing such as public or private certification, registration, and inspections that can address quality or public health concerns.
• Consider interstate compacts, such as reciprocity agreements, universal licensing recognition, or multi-state licenses with a common set of qualifications, that allow workers to practice across state lines.

By: Patrice Onwuka

• The United States leads the world in environmental stewardship and is the only highly populated nation that meets the World Health Organization’s most stringent air quality standards. 
• Since 2005, U.S. energy-related emissions fell by 14 percent while the rest of the world increased their emissions by 20 percent.
• Even if the United States cuts emissions to zero, the world’s biggest emitters (China and India) won’t cut back.

By: Julie Gunlock

• Threatening to “restructure” the Court if it does not rule in a certain way is “adjudication by extortion.” 
• Packing the Court with justices sympathetic to the political views of the party in power will ignite a judicial arms race where each party seeks to add justices whenever they are in power.
• Adding justices to try to make the Court more responsive to current cultural norms undermines the Court’s institutional legitimacy as a non-partisan branch of government — with unpredictable consequences for the rule of law.

By: Jennifer C. Braceras