The Rise of the Trad Wife Movement- and the Renewed Need for the ERA
July 09, 2026
Bradford P. Wilson, the nominee to lead the National Archives, told senators he "would not certify the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment" if he's confirmed as Archivist. That raises a simple question: does the Archivist get to decide whether an amendment is valid, or is the job just to process the paperwork?
At a June 17 hearing before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Wilson answered a question from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) about the ERA. He said he doesn't think the Archivist has the power to certify it, pointing to ongoing legal questions about its ratification.
The ERA has already cleared the bar the Constitution sets for becoming law. Article V requires ratification by three-fourths of the states — 38 states — and the ERA hit that number when Virginia ratified in January 2020. Supporters of the amendment argue this means every requirement has been met, and the only thing standing in the way is a paperwork step the Archivist is refusing to take.
That paperwork step is supposed to be automatic. The law spelling out the Archivist's job doesn't give him room to make judgment calls. It says that once an amendment has been properly adopted, the Archivist "shall forthwith cause the amendment to be published" with a certificate confirming it. That's not a suggestion — it's an order. The job is to check that the amendment was ratified and publish it, not to decide whether it deserves to count. That should happen automatically once the states have ratified.
We know that the ERA is the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The battle right now is making sure that we have people in government who are going to correct this 100-year wrong.
Thirty-eight states have already done their part. What's left isn't a legal question — it's a matter of electing and confirming people willing to follow the law instead of standing in front of it. That means holding every nominee for this office to a clear standard: do the clerical job the statute describes, and physically add the ERA to the U.S. Constitution.
