As GOP lawmakers single out incoming trans lawmaker, Speaker Johnson offers tepid response

WASHINGTON (CN) — House Speaker Mike Johnson did little to temper rhetoric coming from Republican lawmakers on Tuesday as he addressed a GOP resolution aimed at keeping an incoming Democrat — the legislature’s first openly trans member — from using a restroom conforming to her identity.

South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace offered the resolution, which if approved by the House would update the chamber’s rules to prohibit members, officers and other congressional employees from using restrooms “other than those corresponding to their biological sex.” The prohibition would extend to bathrooms, changing rooms and locker rooms in the Capitol as well as in the nearby House office buildings.

Mace told reporters Tuesday that the legislation was specifically targeted at incoming Delaware Representative Sarah McBride, who was elected this month and will become Congress’ first openly trans lawmaker when she is sworn in come January.

The South Carolina representative has referred to herself on social media as a trans-exclusionary radical feminist, or TERF, a term which refers to a feminist school of thought which opposes transgender rights and identity.

“If being a feminist makes me an extremist or a bigot or a monster, I am totally here for it,” Mace said in a video message posted to X. “I’m going to fight like hell for every woman and every little girl across this country to protect you and keep you safe.”

McBride, for her part, has slammed Mace’s resolution as a distraction by far-right political extremists.

“We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care and child care, not manufacturing culture wars,” she wrote on X Monday night. “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.”

Whether the Republican-controlled House will ultimately vote on the bathroom resolution remains unclear.

While Punchbowl News and others reported Tuesday morning that Speaker Johnson had told Mace that the resolution could be included in a House ruled package in January, the GOP leader was less forthcoming in public statements.

“I’m not going to address plans on any of that,” Johnson told reporters during a news conference Tuesday. “I’m not going to engage in this.”

The speaker acknowledged that there was a “concern” about the use of restrooms in Capitol facilities, adding that it was an issue that Congress has never had to address before. He also refused to address questions about whether he considered McBride to be a woman, saying he would not engage in “silly debates.”

And though the Johnson did not rule out a future vote on Mace’s resolution, he said that Congress would treat its members with “dignity and respect.”

“We will provide accommodations for every member of Congress,” Johnson said.

But the speaker later clarified his position.

“I want to be unequivocally clear: a man is a man and a woman is a woman,” he told reporters several hours after Tuesday’s news conference. “A man cannot become a woman — that’s what Scripture teaches.”

Johnson added that he believed people should be treated with “dignity” and that “we can do and believe all those things at the same time.”

But despite his attempt to inject dignity into the discourse around Mace’s resolution, the speaker’s comments did little to tamp down rhetoric from his party’s right flank.

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has repeatedly made anti-trans statements, took things a step further than Mace, saying that her colleague’s resolution doesn’t go far enough.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Greene — who repeatedly referred to McBride using male pronouns and called her by a name she no longer uses — said she asked Johnson during the House GOP’s weekly conference meeting to take more binding action.

“He committed to me in the conference that Sarah McBride will not be using our restrooms,” the Georgia congresswoman said.

Greene also addressed reports that she had said she would get in a “physical altercation” with a trans woman using a women’s restroom on Capitol Hill.

“I shouldn’t have to do that,” she said. “No woman should have to, but look at what men have been doing to women … don’t advocate for mentally ill men pretending to be women invading our spaces.”

House Democrats, meanwhile, slammed Republicans for singling out one lawmaker with their proposed resolution.

“This is not a great start for how we start to turn the focus to the American people,” House Minority Whip Katherine Clark told reporters during a news conference Tuesday. “What they’re talking about there on day one is where one member out of 435 is going to use the bathroom? That is their focus?”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries accused Republicans of “bullying” a fellow lawmaker rather than welcoming her to Congress. He and Clark both argued that GOP lawmakers were more focused on “far-right extremism” than on policy issues.

“The American people say: mind your business about where people do their business,” said Clark.

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