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.”

The same document included former President Donald Trump’s running mate Ohio Senator JD Vance on a list of preferred candidates for vice president.

The group, which adopted the document during their last national convention held between October 13 and 15 last year, 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.

  • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    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

    Jack shit has found this to be the case lmao. The parents don’t have to have citizenship. Every day, immigrants with green cards from all over the world are giving birth on US soil to US citizens.

    Plus, if we follow this group’s logic, most people would not be US citizens, because of how many people trace their lineage to immigrants. Alito, Scalia, and Thomas would thus not be citizens by their logic, and if that’s the case, why are/were they even permitted on SCOTUS?

    Republicans have truly scraped the bottom of the barrel at this point. In a sense we’re blessed that such hateful people are such sheer idiots.

    It also brings up an interesting point though – why hasn’t this Supreme Court, which is prolific in overturning past precedents, not vacated the Dred Scott decision yet? Curious, isn’t it?