Republican bathroom bill targets first transgender member of Congress | US Congress

After Delaware elected the first openly transgender member of Congress ever earlier this month, a Republican introduced a bill to ban her from using the bathroom that corresponds to her gender identity.

South Carolina Republican Nancy Mace introduced the bill, which comes a little less than two months before Sarah McBride is to be sworn in as the first openly transgender member of Congress. The measure would charge the sergeant-at-law with enforcing the bill, though it’s unclear exactly how, according to Bakken.

“Sarah McBride doesn’t get to say anything. I mean, it’s a biological male, Mace told reporters Monday. according to CNN. She added that Mace “doesn’t belong in the women’s room, the women’s bathroom, the dressing room, the dressing room, period, period”.

McBride responded to X by saying the problem was a distraction.

“Every day Americans go to work with people who have different life journeys than their own and engage with them respectfully, I hope members of Congress can muster the same kindness.” she wrote on X.

“This is a blatant attempt by far-right extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing. We should focus on reducing the cost of housing, health care and child care, not on producing culture wars . Delawareans sent me here to make the American dream more affordable and accessible, and that’s what I’m focused on.”

Mace’s bill comes as Republicans have attacked transgender people as part of a broader political culture war strategy that limits which bathrooms they can use and the youth sports teams they can play on. Fourteen states currently have laws that prohibit transgender people from using the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ rights group.

Many of Donald Trump’s ads in the final stretch of his 2024 campaign focused on transgender rights, including one that flooded the airwaves highlighting Kamala Harris’ 2019 support for gender-affirming care. The campaign spent at least $17 million on the ad, according to NPRwhich included the slogan “Kamala is for them/them President Trump is for you.”

Mace was once a moderate Republican from a competitive district in South Carolina. In 2021, she supported a bill that would have offered some limited protections for LGBTQ+ people in public life.

“I strongly support LGBTQ rights and equality,” Mace told the Washington Examiner then. “No one should be discriminated against.”

But after state Republicans redrawn the district to be much more safely Republican, she moved significantly more to the right.

The US Supreme Court said earlier this year that the gerrymandering of her district was legal, although a lower court found that Republicans had carried out an “effective bleaching” by removing 30,000 black voters from the district.

Also on Monday, Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene repeatedly misgendered McBride in a now viral video where she was asked about Mace’s bill.

“I support a resolution that keeps all biological men out of women’s bathrooms, changing rooms and private places. Not just here in the Capitol complex, our office buildings, but all taxpayer-funded facilities,” Greene responded.

She was also asked how one would “check if someone is qualified to use the women’s room? Obviously, there’s a new openly transgender member of Congress.”

“Which is a man,” Greene said. “He’s a man. He’s a biological man. So he’s not allowed to use our women’s restrooms, our women’s gym, our locker rooms and spaces specified for women. He’s a biological man,” Greene said. “He’s got lots of places , he can go.”