U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) will continue her efforts to disrespect freshman Congresswoman Sarah McBride, the first transgender person elected to Congress, with a visit to McBride’s congressional district where she will trumpet her anti-trans views.
McBride, Delaware’s at-large congresswoman, was elected in November, taking over the seat once held by U.S. Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.). Since then, she has been relentlessly attacked by Republicans over her gender identity.
Mace, a right-wing hardliner, has sought to cast herself as a crusader for women’s rights by campaigning against transgender rights with what might be called pathological obsessiveness.
Mace is expected to address the Delaware Republican Party at a reception in Newark, Delaware, where she will speak about her efforts to institute transgender restroom bans on U.S. Capitol grounds and federal properties nationwide.
Since McBride’s election, Mace has pushed her fellow Republicans to impose a ban restricting access to women’s spaces to people who were assigned female at birth.
She had sought to introduce a resolution banning transgender women from female-designated spaces as part of the rules package for the new Congress.
While Mace’s proposed bathroom ban was not included in the rules package, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has imposed a policy prohibiting transgender individuals from using single-sex facilities, including restrooms, changing rooms, and gyms, that align with their gender identity on U.S. Capitol grounds.
The House Sergeant-at-Arms will enforce the bathroom ban, but it is unclear how the sergeant-at-arms will determine whether a person is a “biological woman.”
Mace has since proposed legislation to ban transgender women from accessing female-segregated spaces on all federal properties across the nation, casting it as needed to protect the privacy and bodily safety of women and girls.
She has sought to cast herself as a victim, claiming to have been assaulted by a “pro-trans man” as a result of her efforts, even though witnesses have since cast doubt on the veracity of her claims.
McBride has agreed to abide by the ban at the U.S. Capitol while noting her disagreement with it. Instead of using male-designated restrooms, she will either use unisex restrooms or a private restoom in her office.
However, critics of the policy note that other transgender people who visit the Capitol complex do not have the same degree of privilege or access.
McBride has cast Mace’s grandstanding — and her incessant need for the spotlight — as an attempt to “distract from the fact that [Republicans] have no real solutions to important issues facing Americans.”
In a November statement, McBride said, “I’m not [in Congress] to fight about bathrooms.” She has not commented on Mace’s visit to her district.
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