US Republican sparks outrage with racist post attacking Haitian immigrants | US politics

A Republican congressman sparked outrage after posting a racist attack on Haitian immigrants on social media, later deleting the post amid calls for him to be reprimanded.

Clay Higgins used his Congressional X account to repeat the accusations spread and debunked by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump that Haitians eat pets. He escalated the attack by calling them “criminals” and branding Haiti “the nastiest country in the Western Hemisphere.”

“These Haitians are savage. They eat pets, Vudu, the nastiest country in the Western Hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters,” the Louisiana congressman posted, reportedly in response to a lawsuit filed against Trump and his vice president, JD Vance, by a nonprofit organization representing Haitians in Springfield, Ohio.

“But damn it if they don't feel completely sophisticated now and bring charges against our president and vice president. All these thugs had better change their minds and get out of our country before January 20th.”

The vitriolic post followed a promise by Trump – who has reiterated his baseless accusations that Haiti eats pets, first made at the debate with Kamala Harris this month – to get Haitians “to hell with Springfield,” even though most members of the city's community are legally in the U.S.

This sparked widespread opposition from Democrats in the House of Representatives, and the party's black caucus in Congress filed a motion to censure Higgins.

“Representative Clay Higgins' vile and hateful comments about Haitians are unacceptable. Today it's the Haitians, but who will it be tomorrow?” the group posted on its X account.

Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the House of Representatives, called Higgins' post “repugnant… abhorrent, racist and beneath the dignity of the House of Representatives of the United States.”

Higgins is “an election-shy, conspiracy-theory-spreading racist arsonist who is a disgrace to the People's House of Representatives” and who “must be held accountable for dishonorable conduct unworthy of a member of Congress,” Jeffries wrote.

Higgins deleted the post after Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House and fellow Louisianan, called him out on it. But the congressman did not apologize and later told CNN he stood by it.

Johnson, who appointed Higgins to a task force trying to assassinate Trump, told reporters that after speaking with him, Higgins “prayed about it and regretted it and resigned the post.”

“That’s what you expect from the Lord,” Johnson added.

House Republican Majority Leader Steve Scalise rejected the censure motion, saying it was unnecessary because the post had been deleted.

Higgins, a former captain of a Louisiana sheriff's office, was forced to resign in 2016 after he called members of a predominantly black gang “animals” in a viral video. Months later, he won his seat in the House of Representatives.

A Washington Post report at the time described him as a “God-fearing man of the law with a strong Southern accent” whose no-nonsense, tough approach earned him the status of a folk hero.