President Trump will sign a congressional resolution condemning white supremacists that Congress intended to use to urge him to speak out against hate groups, according to the White House on Wednesday.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump will “absolutely” approve the bipartisan measure, which the House passed Tuesday.
The resolution is the first formal response from Congress to the violence that broke out at a white supremacist rally last month in Charlottesville, Va.
While Trump was expected to sign the resolution, some questioned whether he would given that it singles out his administration.
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The measure condemns “the racist violence and domestic terrorist attack” in Charlottesville, where a suspected white supremacist was accused of driving a car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one and injuring 19.It also rejects “white nationalism, white supremacy, and neo-Nazism as hateful expressions of intolerance that are contradictory to the values that define the people of the United States.”
A group of four bipartisan senators introduced the resolution amid concern about Trump’s equivocating response to the violence in Charlottesville, which he said occurred “on many sides.”
Lawmakers urged Trump and his administration to speak out forcefully against white supremacist groups and “use all resources available” to improve data collection of hate crimes and “address the growing prevalence of those hate groups in the United States.”
— Cristina Marcos contributed.