The US House of Representatives has voted to condemn Donald Trump for “racist comments” about four congresswomen.
The symbolic vote comes after US president told the women to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came”.
The 240-187 vote in favour of the resolution was largely along party lines, although four Republicans voted in support of it.
During a dramatic session of the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was briefly barred from speaking in the chamber and a Democrat who had been presiding over much of the debate threw his gavel down, abandoning the chair.
Fox News said the “unexpected mayhem in Congress” left commentators and lawmakers “stunned”.
The proceedings “underscored the toxicity between Democrats outraged by Mr Trump’s remarks, and Republicans who have largely declined to condemn him”, The Independent says.
According to CNN, the “midsummer madness” signalled that Trump “might finally have broken Washington”.
The resolution denounced Trump’s “racist comments that have legitimised fear and hatred of New Americans and people of colour” and stated that immigration “has defined every stage of American history”. It added that “all Americans, except for the descendants of Native people and enslaved African-Americans, are immigrants or descendants of immigrants”.
It argued that patriotism is not defined by race or ethnicity “but by devotion to the Constitutional ideals of equality, liberty, inclusion and democracy”.
The resolution also featured quotations from Ronald Reagan, who said in 1989 that if the US closed its doors to newcomers “our leadership in the world would soon be lost”.
During the debate, Democrat John Lewis said that “at the highest level of government, there’s no room for racism” but Republican Dan Meuser called the allegations a “ridiculous slander”.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s statement that “These comments from the White House are disgraceful and disgusting and these comments are racist,” prompted protest from Republicans, who said she had broken rules.
Outside the House, the disagreement continued when senior Trump aide Kellyanne Conway demanded to know the ethnicity of a reporter who asked her which country the four American lawmakers should return to.
“At times,” remarked CNN, “it was hard to believe such scenes – inciting buried hatreds and toxicity that only racial politics can provoke – were taking place one-fifth of the way through the 21st Century”.
Immediately after the resolution passed Democrat Al Green filed articles of impeachment against President Trump.
An opinion poll in the wake of Trump’s controversial tweets suggested support for the president rose among Republicans by 5%.
