Rep. Nancy Mace is taking her bathroom ban tirade to Delaware—the home of Congresswoman Sarah McBride.
Mace will take the stage Friday at the behest of Delaware Republicans, who extended the invitation back in December.
Per Delaware Online, the event page cited the South Carolina Republican as “one of Congress’ boldest conservative voices.” However, the page boasting Mace’s accomplishments has since been replaced with a 404 error.
As Daily Kos previously reported, Mace’s seemingly nonstop X barrage of attacks against transgender people had a goal behind it—to ban McBride, the one trans individual in Congress, from using the bathroom that aligned with their gender identity.
Rep. Sarah McBride
While Speaker Mike Johnson originally supported this idea and announced a rule to follow suit, the ban was noticeably absent from the Republicans’ House Rules Package when it was voted on last week. Mace—who had previously said Johnson told her it would be included in the package—has not publicly commented on its absence.
With that being said, Mace’s spokesperson Sydney Long told Axios that Mace still intends to beat the dead horse that is her anti-trans bathroom ban during her speech on Friday. According to the outlet, Mace will address her transphobic pet project “along with other key women’s issues, including her Preventing Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act.”
Daily Kos reached out to Long for additional comment but did not immediately hear back.
The once “pro-transgender” Mace has been on a McBride offensive since she got word that the congresswoman would be joining her in Washington, D.C., spewing vile attacks via X and even selling merch to try to fuel the hatred.
While Mace is at her podium yelling about who can pee where, McBride will be busy doing her job. In a statement provided to Axios, McBride’s spokesperson Michaela Kurinsky-Malos said, “This weekend Congresswoman McBride will attend a bipartisan meeting with her colleagues from the House to discuss solutions to the most pressing issues facing her constituents.”
The Delaware congresswoman hasn’t given much airtime to the Republicans arguing over bathroom politics. In a single statement, McBride made it clear that she was in Congress to better the lives of Delawareans and not to fight with her colleagues.
“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,” McBride wrote via X in November.
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. Delawareans…— Sarah McBride (@SarahEMcBride) November 19, 2024
Mace’s anti-trans bathroom ban is a piece of a bigger picture overlooking the anti-trans efforts in the Republican-led Congress and incoming administration.
While her personal vendetta didn’t make the cut on the House Rules Package, Republicans managed to tee up a bill that would require student athletes to compete in sports that align with their gender assigned at birth.
Other attacks targeting the transgender community looming over the country include the Supreme Court case of U.S. v. Skrmetti, which challenges a widely debated Tennessee law banning medical care for transgender youth.
At the time of the SCOTUS case, Gillian Branstetter, a spokesperson for the ACLU, told Daily Kos that this sort of medical care access boiled down to an issue of “bodily autonomy” and drew connections to the Republican-backed reversal of Roe v. Wade.
Transgender minors were also targeted in the defense spending bill—noticeably signed off on by President Joe Biden.
“If you are somebody who cares about individual liberty and bodily autonomy and pluralism and freedom and these really bedrock liberal principles, then I think you too should be alarmed by the swiftness of these bans, and you, too, should be invested in the outcome of this case,” Branstetter said.
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