Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina has introduced legislation which would require the House sergeant-at-arms to enforce segregation of bathrooms on the Capitol, preventing transgender members of the House from using the bathroom of the gender they identify with.
Mace’s resolution was made in response to the recent election of Delaware’s Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender member of Congress in U.S. history.
The actual job of the sergeant-at-arms is to protect the Capitol and maintain order in House facilities. Traditionally this has been in response to attacks like the Jan. 6 insurgency, backed by conservatives that share Mace and Donald Trump’s ideology. But now Mace wants bigoted bullying added to the office’s portfolio, part of a wider Republican attack on equal rights and in support of open bullying and harassment of minority groups.
“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 in response to the resolution. “We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care, and child care, not manufacturing culture wars.”
