House condemns racist comments
The US House of Representatives formally condemned Donald Trump on Tuesday for xenophobic attacks on four minority Democratic lawmakers and hostile language targeting immigrants, as the president denied accusations of racism.
Top Republican leaders rallied around Trump, but four members of the president’s party voted with the 235 Democrats to condemn him for “racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color.”
One independent lawmaker also supported the measure, which takes aim at Trump’s weekend tweets telling a group of progressive Democratic congresswomen of color to “go back” to other countries.
The resolution also takes the president to task for “referring to immigrants and asylum seekers as ‘invaders.’”
Trump has a long history of pandering to white suspicions about other ethnic groups, and the resolution criticizes him for “saying that Members of Congress who are immigrants (or those of our colleagues who are wrongly assumed to be immigrants) do not belong in Congress or in the United States of America.”
Democrats hold a majority in the 435-member House but are outnumbered by Republicans in the Senate, where the resolution is unlikely to be considered.
The four congresswomen -- all but one of whom were born in the US -- are of Hispanic, Arab, Somali and African-American descent.
Trump has stuck by the provocative comments. “Our Country is Free, Beautiful and Very Successful. If you hate our Country, or if you are not happy here, you can leave!” the president tweeted Tuesday.
Democratic leaders denounced Trump’s remarks, and rallied around the lawmakers -- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley. Omar is the only one born outside the United States.
Trump’s repeated attacks appear to be aimed at galvanizing his mostly white electoral base ahead of the 2020 presidential vote. They would seem to have borne fruit, with his approval rating among Republicans rising five percentage points to 72 percent, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted on Monday and Tuesday.
TRUMP ADMIN OVER ASYLUM RULE
Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups filed a lawsuit on Tuesday challenging a new rule by the Trump administration barring most immigrants from obtaining US asylum if they pass through Mexico.
The new rule redefining asylum eligibility was to take effect Tuesday. It is the latest attempt to stem the flow of undocumented migrants into the United States and comes with the White House frustrated at Congress’s failure to toughen immigration laws.
The lawsuit against the government argues that the new rule was in violation of immigration laws that clearly state that asylum could not be denied based on a person’s route to the United States.
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