Resolution Condemning President Trump for ‘Racist’ Tweets & Parliamentary Rebuke of Speaker Pelosi Mark Historic Day in the House

Tuesday, July 16th will go down as a notable day in the history of the U.S. House of Representatives, as lawmakers cast a vote to condemn comments made by the president as “racist” and the Speaker of the House was reprimanded for engaging in personal attacks for only the second time in more than two centuries.

After President Donald Trump tweeted that four progressive Democratic congresswomen who have been critical of his administration and “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe” should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” All four of the congresswomen are American citizens and only Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN)  was born overseas (in Somalia). 

The resolution (H.Res. 489), introduced by Polish immigrant Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ), condemned Trump’s “racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color” by telling members of Congress who are immigrants (or were wrongly assumed to be immigrants) to “go back” to other countries. Republicans objected, contending that the resolution was editorializing and paraphrasing the president’s full comments to take them out of context, as the only part of the tweets directly quoted by the resolution was “go back”.

GOP members also asserted that the language violated House rules prohibiting personal attacks against other members or the president while speaking on the floor. So when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called the president’s tweets “racist” during her remarks, Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Doug Collins (R-GA) offered a motion to take down her words (ie strike them from the record).

That prompted a delay in floor proceedings as members, staff, and the House parliamentarian huddled to discuss the way forward. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) was presiding over the debate, and after he ruled against a motion Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) to take down the words of Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) earlier in the debate grew increasingly frustrated with having to repeatedly warn members from both sides to watch their words and uphold House rules.

During the parliamentary pause, Cleaver directly addressed the House to decry the partisanship of the day (a rare move by a presiding chair) and then took the perhaps unprecedented action of dropping the gavel and abandoning the chair in protest as shown in the above video. (Cleaver later said the debate was “a very shameful moment for all of us” and that “every person who spoke violated the House rule.”)

When the parliamentary huddle concluded, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) was in the chair and ruled that “the words should not be used in debate” according to House precedent from May 15, 1984 ― the last time a Speaker of the House broke the chamber’s decorum rules. The 1984 incident featured Speaker Tip O’Neill (D-MA) accusing Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-GA) of “the lowest thing that I’ve ever seen in my 32 years in Congress”, which was objected to by Rep. Trent Lott (R-MS). Prior to O'Neill's outburst, the last recorded time a speaker was rebuked for violating decorum was 1798.

After Hoyer’s ruling, Ranking Member Collins requested a vote on his motion to take down Pelosi’s words from the record, which failed on a party-line vote of 190-232. Because members who are found to have broken the decorum rules of the House are barred from speaking on the floor for the rest of the day, the House then voted (again along party-lines) to restore Speaker Pelosi’s speaking privileges. The House then went on to pass the underlying resolution on a mostly party-line vote of 240-187.

Does the House condemn politicians’ speech often?

It’s not unusual for lawmakers to use non-binding resolutions to criticize various policies, like when House Democrats passed a resolution condemning the Trump administration’s healthcare policies earlier this year. But because of the House rules, the chamber has historically avoided direct condemnations of the speech of U.S. politicians.

Tuesday’s vote marks the fourth time in this Congress that the House has voted on legislation to directly or indirectly criticize an American politicians’ speech. Here’s what happened the previous three times this year:

• On January 15th, the House voted 424-1 on a resolution condemning comments made by Rep. Steve King (R-IA) as contrary to American values after King was quoted by the New York Times as asking: “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization ― how did that language become offensive?” King was named in the bill, which didn’t directly accuse him of white supremacy, and voted in favor of the resolution but insisted he was misquoted and only meant to question the offensive nature of “Western civilization” (the lone no vote was a Democrat who wanted King to be censured).
• On February 13th, the House voted 424-0 to adopt a GOP-sponsored motion that added language stating that it’s in the national security of the U.S. to combat anti-Semitism around the world after Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) tweeted that Americans’ support for Israel is “all about the Benjamins baby”, playing to an anti-Semitic trope of Jewish money. Omar wasn’t named in the resolution and voted in favor of it.
• On March 7th, the House voted 407-23 in favor of a resolution condemning anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry after Rep. Omar implied that American supporters of the U.S.-Israel relationship have “allegiance to a foreign country.” The resolution was initially focused solely on anti-Semitism but was broadened to include all forms of hate at the behest of Democrats, which led Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) to say on the floor that “anti-Semitism is worthy of being taken seriously on its own… This shouldn’t be so hard.” Omar wasn’t named in the resolution and voted in favor of it, while some GOP members opposed the “watered-down” resolution.

— Eric Revell

(Photo Credit: C-SPAN via YouTube/ Creative Commons)