Congress is set to send Trump a bill denouncing Charlottesville violence, white supremacy

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Congress sent a resolution to the White House Tuesday condemning the violence at the white nationalist rally in Virginia last month and urging President Trump to speak out against racist hate groups.

The legislation, which passed by unanimous consent in the Senate on Monday and in the House on Tuesday, will be presented to Trump for his signature in an effort by lawmakers to secure a more forceful denunciation of racist extremism from the president.

Trump was roundly criticized by lawmakers of both parties last month after he blamed "both sides" for the Aug. 12 violence that resulted in the death of counterprotester Heather Heyer, as well as his suggestion that some "very fine people" were among the white-nationalist marchers.

The text of the resolution was negotiated on a bipartisan basis by the members of Virginia's congressional delegation, overcoming early differences between Republicans and Democrats about how to characterize the events in Charlottesville and whether to explicitly criticize Trump's response.

It calls Heyer's killing a "domestic terrorist attack" and denounces "White nationalists, White supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and other hate groups" but does not single out left-wing counterprotesting groups such as Antifa for equivalent opprobrium in the way Trump did.

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