Nancy Mace’s Capitol Bathroom Bill Is a Reprise of 2024 Election Fearmongering

Republican Representative Nancy Mace said Tuesday that she was “absolutely” targeting her incoming colleague, Democrat Sarah McBride, with the anti-transgender bathroom bill she introduced earlier this week.

Mace, an ally of Donald Trump, introduced a resolution Monday “prohibiting Members, officers, and employees of the House from using single-sex facilities other than those corresponding to their biological sex” at the Capitol. She framed the measure—which she wants included in the rules package for the next Congress—as a matter of “women’s security.” When asked Tuesday if she introduced it specifically in response to McBride, who won her race for the House this year, becoming the first openly transgender person elected to Congress, Mace said, “Yes and absolutely, and then some.”

​​https://x.com/RepNancyMace/status/1858659671910817924

McBride, a Delaware Democrat, was already the highest-ranking transgender elected official in the country, serving as a state senator. Her historic victory this month also came in an election in which Republicans ran on an aggressively anti-transgender agenda. Trump’s campaign even ran ads against Kamala Harris with the language, “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

Shortly after the election, McBride reacted to Trump making his opposition to rights for transgender people a centerpiece of his campaign, telling NPR that the president-elect clearly spent a lot of money scapegoating and fearmongering around a very small and vulnerable segment of our country. “I think the reality is that we’re going to see attacks on freedom for so many vulnerable people across this country,” McBride said. “And it’s going to be our job in Congress to defend the rights and to defend the freedoms of all of the people that we represent.”

This week in Washington is orientation for new members of Congress, and Republicans have already continued to target transgender rights. “What they are talking about there on day one is where one member out of 435… is going to use the bathroom,” said Representative Katherine Clark, a Democrat. “That is their focus.” Mace, in particular, has occupied herself by attacking McBride. But, of course, she’s not the only Republican doing so: Marjorie Taylor Greene reportedly threatened to fight McBride if she used the women’s bathroom at the Capitol. “It’s pretty aggressive for biological men to be invading our spaces,” Greene told Politico. House Speaker Mike Johnson hasn’t publicly taken a stand on the resolution, telling reporters Tuesday that “this is an unprecedented matter, so we’re going to…find a resolution that solves the problem.” While he said he “will accommodate the needs of every single person,” Mace told Axios she had Johnson’s support—and even more moderate Republicans indicated they would back the measure. “I mean—a presidential election may have been decided on this issue,” one House Republican told the outlet.

Several prominent Democrats have called out Mace for her proposal. McBride, Monday, condemned the resolution as a “blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing”: “Delawareans sent me here to make the American dream more affordable and accessible,” she said, “and that’s what I’m focused on.”