Thread by @GeneralMCNews

Every living President is a descendent of slaveholders - except Donald Trump | Thread

A staggering fifth of the country’s lawmakers, living presidents, Supreme Court justices, and governors can directly trace their lineage back to ancestors who enslaved Black people.

This finding includes Joe Biden and every living former U.S. president, with the single exception of President Donald Trump, are direct descendants of individuals who once enslaved Black people.

Connections to slavery also reach to the highest court in the nation, with two out of nine sitting U.S. Supreme Court justices – Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch – being direct descendants of slaveholders.

Governors of 11 out of 50 U.S. states in 2022 were direct descendants of slaveholders. Strikingly, eight of these governors held office in the 11 states that once formed the Confederate States of America.

536 members of the most recent sitting Congress, had found at least 100 are the descendants of slaveholders.

A significant proportion of these belongs to the Senate, with 28 members – more than a quarter of the Senate – able to draw direct links to at least one slaveholding ancestor.

Figures include Republican senators Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham as well as Democrats Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Duckworth, Jeanne Shaheen, and Maggie Hassan from the 117th Congress.

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