Indian-American Congressman Ro Khanna asks Trump to end government shutdown

US Congressman Ro Khanna has slammed president Donald Trump’s plans to declare a national emergency to build a wall along the US-Mexico border.

The California Democrat took to Twitter to urge the president to end the ongoing government shutdown, pointing out how Americans were being affected by the shutdown,

"Trump may want to declare a 'national emergency' to sidestep Congress and build a border wall. The real 'national emergency' is that young Americans are drowning in student debt, families are forced into bankruptcy due to health costs & millions of our citizens are left behind," Khanna, who represents California's 17th district, said in the tweet.

"Not only did Trump leave hundreds of thousands of federal workers without pay for the holidays due to the shutdown, but he's also frozen their 2019 pay increase. Can someone please tell me how this will grow the economy?... End this shutdown now," Khanna said in another tweet on Wednesday (9).

Khanna is not the only Indian-American to slam the president for the ongoing shutdown. Indian-American senator Kamala Harris, in an interview on Wednesday, called the shutdown a "crisis of the President's own making".

She also spoke about her presidential ambitions and said she believes the country is ready for a woman of colour as president.

"We have to give the American people more credit, and we have to understand that the American public and the people of our country are smart people, who will make decisions about who will be their leader, based on who they believe is capable, who they believe has an honest desire to lead, to represent, to see them, to be a voice for them even if they have no power," Harris said in an interview.

"Those are the kinds of people who we are as a country. And so the pundits can talk all day, and all night, and there's a lot of chatter about which demographic will do this or that. It has been my life's experience that the American people are smart and they make decisions about what's in the best interest of their household, their family and their community. And I have faith that in 2020, and in any other election, that will be their motivation when they vote."