The National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA) has cited the infamous 1857 Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, which stated that enslaved people weren’t citizens, to argue that Vice President Kamala Harris is ineligible to run for president according to the Constitution.

The group also challenged the right of Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley to appear on Republican primary ballots.

The Republican group’s platform and policy document noted that “The Constitutional qualifications of Presidential eligibility” states that “No person except a natural born Citizen, shall be eligible, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President

“An originalist and strict constructionist understanding of the Constitution in the Scalia and Thomas tradition, as well as precedent-setting U.S. Supreme Court cases … have found that a ‘Natural Born Citizen’ is defined as a person born on American soil of parents who are both citizens of the United States at the time of the child’s birth,” the document states.

The group then cites six cases including Dred Scott v Sandford. The 1857 ruling came a few years before the 1861 outbreak of the US Civil War over the issue of slavery, stating that enslaved people could not be citizens, meaning that they couldn’t expect to receive any protection from the courts or the federal government. The ruling also said that Congress did not have the power to ban slavery from a federal territory.

I thought this was some kind of op, like someone making a fake Republican org and putting out an unhinged policy paper. Citing Dred Scott is crazy, especially since it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the argument that she’s not a citizen.

Archive link: https://web.archive.org/save/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Famericas%2Fus-politics%2Fkamala-harris-president-supreme-court-b2601364.html

  • SSJMarx@lemm.ee
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    The group goes on to argue in the document that a natural-born citizen has to be born in the US to parents who are citizens when the child is born, pointing to the thinking of Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

    Ooh they’re challenging birthright citizenship, I thought they were gonna argue that she was legally considered a slave.

    This has been on the conservative agenda for a while now, but I think it’s still too early to challenge this, even with the current Supreme Court. In order to actually change how this country determines who is and is not a “natural born citizen” you would need buy-in from Democrats, which the Reps don’t have yet. Give it another decade or so when the climate refugees increase in number, then we’ll see.

    • quarrk [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      The way it reads to me is that Kamala’s ancestors were illegally granted citizenship by virtue of being slaves (Dredd Scott) so every subsequent birthright citizenship in her family tree is also invalid as a consequence, including her own.

      So it’s not the institution of birthright citizenship that they are challenging. It’s that her ancestors were allegedly never citizens, so she can’t be a citizen only by virtue of her birth on American soil.

  • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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    I think the argument is that if her ancestors were slaves, then they weren’t citizens, and therefore their descendants could not be citizens because those enslaved ancestors couldn’t give birth to citizens and therefore on and on.

    However, the civil rights act of 1866 gave all freed slaves at that time citizenship.

    But more importantly, the 14th amendment to the Constitution reversed the answer to the citizenship question in Dred Scott.

    • SSJMarx@lemm.ee
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      This definitely isn’t right. Kamala’s father is from Jamaica and her mother from India, she’s not descended from American slaves. They say multiple times that they think a “natural born citizen” has to be born in the US to two American parents, which isn’t how it currently works but the conservative establishment has been trying to change it for a while now, so I think that’s actually their angle.

      Right now Kamala is considered a natural born citizen because she was born in California, but they will argue that because one (or both? I’m not sure) of her parents wasn’t a citizen at the time of her birth that she is actually a naturalized citizen or something like that.

          • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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            I’m not worried about protecting us, I am describing the logic of the way the system works. If you appoint originalists, literalist, federalist right-wingers to the supreme court, an amendment to the Constitution is part of the Constitution and precedent that predates the amendment cannot be used to countermand the constitution. If it did, then the constitution itself would be undermined and we’d revert to English commonlaw.

    • keepcarrot [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      That is a pretty unbelievable reach, and even if everything they said was true would be a reason to change those rules.

      Not to shill for Kamala

      • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        It would just be plainly ridiculous, because it would imply ALL descendants of slaves in the US are not citizens. That’s just absurd. However, if this somehow went somewhere, I’d love to see libs argue with commies about how the sacred democratic institutions of this cursed country are worth anything.

  • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    I think both parties have burned out their normies by this point. It’s been 8 years of normie dems and normie chuds being told they need to pretend to be activists in crisis after crisis. Most people are tired of it and wanna grill. The right has kinda lost the sauce it once had and the dems who weren’t fully bratty/demure/mindful are losing interest now.that it seems Trump is running out of steam and are willing to pack up and go home too. This is a battle of very strange people and other very strange people.

        • Pentacat [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          Yeah, bad word choice on my part. It’s definitely not a job anyone should want at this point, given what the bosses want.

          • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.net
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            I’ll take it. I’d be an amazing US president. I’m slightly too young and from the wrong country but I guarantee that as president I’d be assassinated within a month, but within thar months that month I’d do as much damage as possible, I’d fucking murder the secretary of defense on TV, I’d be such a cool president for s month tops.

  • Thallo [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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    I thought this was some kind of op, like someone making a fake Republican org and putting out an unhinged policy paper.

    100% my first thought

  • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    23 days ago

    Citing Dred Scott is crazy, especially since it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the argument that she’s not a citizen.

    I think the implication is that her ancestors could not have been citizens, therefore the birthright never passed on.