How a manual written by Thomas Jefferson sparked a battle over Trump and racism

The US House of Representatives voted decisively July 16 to condemn US president Donald Trump’s racist insults toward four freshman Congresswomen. Before the House passed a measure rebuking Trump for legitimizing “fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color,” chaos broke out on the floor over whether members of Congress could even use the word “racist” to refer to Trump’s tweets. The debate broke down over familiar lines, with Republicans insisting that speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was breaking rules by using the term, Democrats excoriating Trump, and everyone else wondering what exactly was going on in Washington, DC.