Pelosi Announces Resolution Condemning Trump’s Attacks on Progressive Congresswomen
House speaker Nancy Pelosi seized an opportunity Monday to repair the recently exposed rifts in her caucus, extending an olive branch to a group of progressive freshmen with whom she has feuded by announcing a House resolution condemning President Trump’s weekend attacks on the group.
“The House cannot allow the President’s characterization of immigrants to our country to stand. Our Republican colleagues must join us in condemning the President’s xenophobic tweets,” Pelosi wrote in a letter to House Democrats. She added that a resolution sponsored by Representatives Jamie Raskin andTom Malinowski as well as other lawmakers who were born outside the country would be “forthcoming.”
Trump attacked the group of freshmen, all women of color, over the weekend on Twitter, telling them that they should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.”
Of the group of four congresswomen — Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar — only the Somali-born Omar originally hails from outside the U.S.
“These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough,” Trump wrote. “I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”
“Mr. President, the country I ‘come from,’ & the country we all swear to, is the United States,” Ocasio-Cortez responded on Twitter. “You are angry because you can’t conceive of an America that includes us. You rely on a frightened America for your plunder.”
Pelosi clashed with the group of congresswomen last week after all four lawmakers voted against the $4.6 billion emergency-disaster-aid bill signed into law last month, which included funding for more resources to address the increasing flow of migrants over the southern border. The four congresswomen said it did not contain strong enough protections for migrant children.
“All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi said at the time. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”
Ocasio-Cortez responded by calling Pelosi’s “singling out” of women of color “outright disrespectful.”
