US House condemns President Trump over his 'racist' tweets

US Representative Tom Malinowski, Democrat of New Jersey

Washington: In a rare move, the US House of Representatives has passed a resolution to condemn President Donald Trump's "racist" tweets against four non-white Democratic congresswomen who have been critical of his harsh immigration policies.

The vote on Tuesday came days after Trump's tweets about four newly elected lawmakers - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan - triggered widespread uproar. In a series of controversial tweets, he had said the Congresswomen should just "go back" to where they came from.

Moved by Congressman Tom Malinowski, the resolution was passed by the 435-member House of Representatives, the Lower House, on a partisan line of 240-184 votes. It also got the support of four Republicans and an independent in the House where the Democratic Party has a majority. Though the result carries no legal repercussions for Trump, it was an embarrassing one for him. Reproaching a sitting president on record is extremely rare in the US House. "It's not who we are. It is playing with fire because the words that the president used are heard by people with disturbed minds who do terrible things, violent things, and a line needs to be drawn," Malinowski told the House. "So that's what we hope to do," he said. Trump had been accused of racism and xenophobia. He has since tweeted: "I don't have a Racist bone in my body!"

'What's your ethnicity?'

A senior counselor to Trump raised eyebrows after she asked a reporter about his ethnicity on Tuesday. "If the President was not telling these four Congresswomen to return to their supposed countries of origin, to which countries was he referring?" was the reporter's question, in a video of the incident shared by CNN.
"What's your ethnicity?" Kellyanne Conway asked in response.

Raise in merit-based legal immigration?

The Trump administration is proposing 57 per cent increase in the merit-based legal immigration and half of those would be based on family and humanitarian grounds, in an effort to overhaul the outdated system. Senior presidential adviser Jared Kushner, who is also the son-in-law of United States President Donald Trump, said having an immigration policy that would attract talented and meritorious people from across the world would create over $500 billion in tax revenues over 10 years.

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