Group also challenged right of Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley to appear on Republican primary ballots

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.

  • ChlkDstTtr@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 month ago

    “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.

    They’re kinda forgetting about the whole 14th Amendment thing which changes the constitution to ban slavery. An amendment is very different than a law banning slavery.

    • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
      1·
      1 month ago

      Their interpretation isn’t “originalist” or “strict” at all. It’s just what they want to say, at any given moment. History would be very different if both of your parents had to be US citizens. The president of the US is required to be a “natural born citizen”

      Of the 45[a] individuals who became president, there have been eight that had at least one parent who was not born on U.S. soil.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural-born-citizen_clause_(United_States)

      For one, Donald Trump might not be president because his mother was born in Scotland.

      https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/donald-trumps-immigrant-mother

      For those (uninformed) Trump supporters who claim she was a citizen when little Donny was born, that’s true but her immigration process was much easier than it is today. This is it, in its entirety:

      On May 2, MacLeod left Glasgow on board the RMS Transylvania arriving in New York City on May 11 (one day after her 18th birthday). She declared she intended to become a U.S. citizen and would be staying permanently in America.

      Though the 1940 census form filed by Mary Anne and her husband, Fred Trump, stated that she was a naturalized citizen, she did not actually become one until March 10, 1942.[1][6][7] However, there is no evidence that she violated any immigration laws prior to her naturalization, as she frequently traveled internationally and was afterwards able to re-enter the U.S.

      [She] became a naturalized citizen in March 1942

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anne_MacLeod_Trump