Washington, January 2 (RHC)-- Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) in the United States are leading efforts to impeach President Donald Trump.

The black lawmakers are basing their request on Trump repeatedly stirring racial controversies, from personally attacking two members of the group to casting equal blame on white supremacists and counter protesters for fatal violence in Charlottesville, Va., last summer.

Representative Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), former head of the CBC, said the bitter feelings originated well before Trump arrived in office, when he raised doubts about former President Obama’s birthplace — and, by extension, his authority to be president.

“I don’t know if the people around the country understand that he has launched … an assault against African-American people starting with his refusal to accept the first African-American president, by continuing to declare that he was from Kenya,” Cleaver told the American political journalism newspaper The Hill.

“No other president in history has had to face that kind of criticism,” he added.

According to The Hill, just under two-thirds of the 48-member CBC has backed impeachment in House floor votes forced by Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), himself a CBC member.

The votes forced by Green were procedural and not actual up-or-down votes on forcing Trump out of the Oval Office, but served as the only referendums in Congress to date on impeachment.

CBC members made their disgust for Trump clear at Tuesday night’s State of the Union, where many pointedly refrained from clapping or shaking his hand — or skipped the event altogether.

The articles of impeachment put forth by Green don’t allege Trump has committed a crime; instead, they assert that Trump has “brought the high office of president of the United States in contempt, ridicule, disgrace and disrepute” and “has sown discord among the people of the United States.”

Green’s articles cite Trump’s reported comments in an Oval Office meeting about immigration policy describing Haiti, El Salvador and African nations as “shithole countries”; the president’s equivocating response to the Charlottesville violence; and Trump’s attacks on NFL players kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality.

Green argued that Trump is “legitimizing bigotry” by aggravating such controversies.