Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden’s
running mate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) listens to Biden make
remarks at the Alexis Dupont High School on August 12, 2020 in
Wilmington, Delaware. Harris is the first Black woman and first
person of Indian descent to be a presumptive nominee on a
presidential ticket by a major party in U.S. history. Drew
Angerer/Getty Images/AFP
US President Donald Trump has stoked false claims that
Democratic vice-presidential contender Kamala Harris is ineligible
to hold that office because her parents were
foreign-born.
The claims about Harris — who was born in the United States,
making her constitutionally eligible to be both vice president and
president — echo a baseless theory that Trump long promoted about
his predecessor Barack Obama.
“I heard it today that she doesn’t meet the requirements,” Trump
said at a White House news conference on Thursday, referring to an
August 12 opinion piece in Newsweek.
The article by conservative law professor John Eastman says that
“before we so cavalierly accept Senator Harris’ eligibility for the
office of vice president, we should ask her a few questions about
the status of her parents at the time of her birth.”
Trump said that Eastman, of Chapman University “is a very highly
qualified, very talented lawyer. I have no idea if that’s
right.”
Eastman was also an unsuccessful Republican challenger, losing
in the primary for the 2010 California attorney general’s election
won by Harris, who served in that post before becoming a US
senator.
Harris, 55, was born in Oakland, California to a mother from
India and a father from Jamaica. She is the first black woman and
woman of South Asian heritage to be granted the honor of a place on
the ticket of a major US party.
Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden, 77, who on Tuesday
named Harris as his running mate, blasted Trump’s rhetoric Friday,
with his campaign calling the false claim “abhorrent.”
– A historic choice – Eastman’s article followed claims shared
thousands of times on Facebook that Harris could not become
president because her parents hailed from abroad.
Article 2, Section 1 of the US Constitution says that “no person
except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States”
shall be eligible for the presidency. They must also be at least 35
years old.
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And Section 2 of the 14th Amendment says that: “All persons born
or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the
jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
Under that clause and an 1898 Supreme Court ruling, “anyone born
on US soil and subject to its jurisdiction is a natural born
citizen, regardless of parental citizenship,” Cornell Law School’s
Legal Information Institute says.
Harris could not become vice president if she failed to meet
requirements for the presidency.
David A. Super, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law and
Economics at the Georgetown University Law Center, said that “no
person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall
be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States,”
according to the 12th Amendment to the Constitution.
This means, Super said in an email to AFP, that “someone who is
not a native-born US citizen, or someone who is not 35 years old,
could not take office as vice president.”
As Trump parlayed his TV fame into a political career, he
adopted and promoted the “birther” lie that Obama, America’s first
black president, was not born in the United States.
Obama was born in Hawaii to a Kenyan father and a white American
mother. Trump grudgingly acknowledged late in his 2016 presidential
campaign that Obama was American-born.
Since then, Trump has faced accusations of racism, and has
embraced other conspiracies.
Polls show him losing the November vote.
On Wednesday, he praised Georgia Republican congressional
candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene, a follower of the QAnon
conspiracy theory who has called white men the most oppressed group
in America.
-AFP
Read more https://swordpress.com.ng/2020/08/15/trump-fans-false-birther-theory-about-kamala-harris/
Budget Ministry Sets-up Committee on 23rd Annual
ICE, Senior Officials
The Permanent
Secretary, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Olusola Idowu, has
formally inaugurated the Local Organising Committee (LOC) for the
hosting of the 23rd regular Inter-Governmental
Committee of Experts (ICE) and Senior Officials meeting in
Nigeria.
Idowu, while
addressing the LOC said “The committee will be responsible for
planning, organizing and executing all approved activities for the
hosting of the ICE, co-opt any organization(s), person(s)
relevant to the successful hosting of the event and carry out any
assignment as may be required towards the success of the
event”.
According to the
Permanent Secretary, the ICE is a body established by the
United Nations General Assembly for West Africa.
She informed that the
committee met annually to discuss Economic and Social issues and
made recommendations based on the working documents prepared by the
Sub-Regional Office for West Africa (ECA/SRO-WA).
Idowu stated that the
recommendations were subsequently considered by the Annual
Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic
Development.
She noted that the
meeting was initially scheduled for May, 2020 but was
postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In her words, “With
several meetings held between officials of the UNECA and the
Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, the new
date for the ICE meeting will be November, 2020, depending on the
COVID-19 situation”
She charged the LOC to
be committed and bring their wealth of experience to bear, towards
a successful hosting of the conference while assuring them of
the Ministry’s maximum support to enable the committee succeed in
the onerous task.
Responding on behalf
of the Committee, a Deputy Director in the Ministry, Dr. Sanjo
Faniron, said the Committee would put in its best to ensure
adequate preparation and a successful hosting of the meeting.
The last edition of
the Inter-Governmental Committee of Experts and Senior Officials
meeting was held in Robersfield, Republic of Liberia, in 2019.
Victoria Agba-Attah
D(Information) BNP
14/08/2020