South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace said that her proposed resolution to ban transgender women from using the women’s bathrooms on Capitol Hill “absolutely” targets Sarah McBride, while a slew of Republican lawmakers have made hateful remarks about trans people in support of their colleague’s efforts.
McBride is a Delaware representative-elect who, after decisively winning an at-large election, will soon become the first-ever openly trans person in Congress.
Mace, though, on Monday introduced a measure that would prohibit staff of the House, including lawmakers, from using a bathroom in the Capitol that does not correspond to the sex they were assigned at birth, saying that it “jeopardizes the safety and dignity of Members, officers, and employees of the House who are female.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Mace made no effort to conceal the transphobia behind the proposed resolution—or that it was motivated by McBride’s election to the House.
“Biological men do not belong in private women’s spaces,” she wrote in an X post sharing the resolution. “Period. Full stop. End of story.”
Since news of the resolution broke, Mace, who has expressed hope for a similar ban on all federal property and in federally funded schools, has been on a social media tear, making dozens of inflammatory X posts in the last 24 hours.
Asked by reporters on Tuesday whether the move was in response to McBride, Mace was unequivocal.
“Yes and absolutely, and then some,” she said, according to NBC News, and then added, “I’m absolutely 100 percent gonna stand in the way of any man who wants to be in a women’s restroom, in our locker rooms, in our changing rooms. I will be there fighting you every step of the way.”
McBride dismissed the effort as a stunt intended to stoke the flames of a culture war in a pair of Monday night X posts.
“Every day Americans go to work with people who have life journeys different than their own and engage with them respectfully, I hope members of Congress can muster that same kindness,” she wrote, adding several minutes later: “This is a blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing. We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care, and child care, not manufacturing culture wars.”
Throwing support behind Mace, a number of Republicans have made hateful remarks about McBride in particular and trans people in general.
“There’s a man pretending to be a woman coming to Congress in January who expects to use the same restrooms as little girls visiting the Capitol,” far-right Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of Donald Trump’s most fanatic allies, wrote in an X post. “I consider it assault for a man to charge into places that are designated specifically for women. Restrooms are a place where women are vulnerable. It’s mentally ill for a man to think he should be allowed there.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson initially declined to answer a question at a Tuesday press conference about whether he considered McBride a woman or a man, saying, “We welcome all new members with open arms who are duly elected representatives of the people.”
“We’re going to do that in a deliberate fashion with member consensus on it, and we will accommodate the needs of every single person,” he added.
Hours later, after facing online criticism from conservatives for his non-answer, he clarified his position.
“I rejected the premise because the answer is so obvious,” he told reporters. “Let me be unequivocally clear: a man is a man, and a woman is a woman, and a man cannot become a woman.”
Some Democrats have spoken out in defense of McBride, and against the proposed resolution.
“This is not just bigotry, this is just plain bullying,” New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, according to Axios.
She was echoed by Vermont Rep. Becca Balint, who told Axios, “The cruelty is the point.”
The top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, New York Rep. Joe Morelle, told Axios, “I think we have a lot of problems in America, I don’t think spending time worrying about the restrooms is an order of priority here. I think Nancy Mace should focus on other things.”
“She’s a woman,” he added of McBride. “She should use the ladies room.”
Since the Democrats’ lackluster performance this election, though—before Mace began publicly targeting McBride—some Democrats had expressed a desire for their party to walk back its support of transgender people.
“Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face,” Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton told The New York Times two days after the election. “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”
New York Rep. Tom Suozzi expressed a matching sentiment, telling the Times, “The Democrats have to stop pandering to the far left. I don’t want to discriminate against anybody, but I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports.”
