Congress House condemns Trump’s ‘racist’ tweets targeting minority congresswomen The measure helped unify Democrats against a common cause: President Donald Trump.

The House on Tuesday approved a resolution to condemn President Donald Trump's "racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color," in an extraordinary rebuke of the president.

The vote fell largely along party lines, with only a handful of moderate Republicans joining all Democrats after Trump himself worked to contain GOP defections.


The measure comes after Trump's barrage of personal attacks against four high-profile freshman members of their caucus, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), and told them on Sunday to "go back" to where they came from.

But Democrats failed to win widespread support from Republicans on their resolution. Only Reps. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Susan Brooks (R-Ind.), Will Hurd (R-Texas) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) bucked their party to vote with Democrats, and all had a track record of voting against the president at some point this year.

"If we’re going to bring civility back to the center of our politics, we must speak out against inflammatory rhetoric from anyone in any party anytime it happens," Upton wrote in a statement after the vote.

The move to condemn Trump's language resulted in unexpected drama on the floor on Tuesday afternoon as Speaker Nancy Pelosi became embroiled in procedural fight over whether she could use the word "racist" to describe the president on the floor.

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The unprecedented scenario — which forced the House to vote to allow her speech into the record — comes as Republican leaders had already urged their troops to oppose the resolution. Trump also fired off his own warning shot to Republicans as he sought to contain his own party from siding with Democrats.

“The so-called vote to be taken is a Democrat con game,” the president tweeted. “Republicans should not show ‘weakness’ and fall into their trap.”

Tuesday vote marked the first time Democrats brought a resolution to the floor specifically condemning Trump for his words as president.

In a closed-door caucus meeting on Tuesday morning, Pelosi offered another strong defense of the freshmen who have been repeatedly targeted by Trump.

“These are our sisters," Pelosi told the caucus, echoing earlier comments from Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) in defense of the progressive freshmen, according to a person in the room.

Pelosi added that Democrats were looking to get support from Republicans who have already condemned Trump's remarks.

But GOP leaders worked their own caucus to make sure their members stand by Trump, offering a united message: Democrats are just playing politics.

The resolution, they argued, was rushed to the floor without buy-in from the GOP, and Republicans took issue with the measure for labeling Trump’s comments “racist” — language which they claim violates House decorum.

“It was just an effort to embarrass the president. There was no effort to make this bipartisan,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who was critical of Trump's tweetstorm.

And the effort to tamp down GOP defections largely worked: Even some of the Republicans who strongly disavowed the tweets, like Michigan Rep. Paul Mitchell and Ohio Rep. Mike Turner, voted against the resolution — a far more politically perilous step than simply speaking out against the president.

“The resolution is a partisan effort that doesn’t move the ball forward,” said Mitchell, a member of GOP leadership. “If we’re gonna deal with things that people are saying, than we ought to deal with it on both sides of the aisle.”

Hours before the vote, Trump again lashed out at the progressive freshmen on Tuesday, continuing his tirade from the weekend and arguing the House should instead be voting to rebuke "filthy and hate laced things" that progressives have said.

In a follow-up series of tweets, Trump encouraged House Republicans to vote against the resolution, arguing: "I don't have a Racist bone in my body!"

The controversy first emerged on Sunday, when Trump tweeted that the four freshmen — all women of color and all U.S. citizens — should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came."

The progressive congresswomen, who have deemed themselves "the squad," ripped into Trump in a fiery press conference Monday night, accusing him of "launching a blatantly racist attack" that promotes the "agenda of white nationalists."

Democratic leaders say the resolution, which was released Monday night, was intentionally limited in its scope — specifically condemning Trump’s tweets but going no further — with the intent of securing bipartisan support on the floor.

But that more narrow approach also drew criticism from some Democrats, including those freshmen targeted by Trump, who said the current resolution didn't go far enough.

Omar said she's signed onto a censure resolution introduced by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), though it was ultimately not brought up for a vote.

Cohen and a handful of other Democrats pushed for censure resolution — a stronger and more symbolic reprimand — during a closed-door meeting Monday night. Cohen again made a push for censuring Trump on Tuesday morning.

The language in Cohen's censure motion is broader than the resolution condemning Trump's tweets, including addressing the president's controversial comments after a deadly neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.

"Censure would put him in a class with Andrew Jackson, which his what he wants to be," Cohen told reporters, noting he made the same point in the private meeting Tuesday. "And we should put him where he wants to be with a president who was racist, who had slaves, who led the trail of tears against Native American Indians."

But Democratic leaders have resisted, worried it wouldn't garner the same level of support as a resolution condemning Trump's comments and could potentially divide the caucus again just as Democrats are coming together after a messy publicly feud divided them last week.

“We need to move forward with something that can be unifying. And right now what we can unite around is what the president said is wrong, un-American and dangerous," said freshman Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.), a lead author of the resolution.

“Every single synagogue and mosque in my district is wrestling today with a question of whether to get armed security. It’s a reality show for him. The reality for us is that this is causing violence.”

John Bresnahan contributed to this story.

