South Carolina GOP Rep. Nancy Mace doubled down on her push to prohibit transgender women from utilizing female private spaces on Capitol Hill by introducing legislation to bar it on all federal property, even as she claims critics are “threatening to kill me over this issue.”
Mace, 46, announced the “Protecting Women’s Private Spaces Act” on Wednesday to restrict “individuals from accessing or using single-sex facilities on federal property other than those corresponding to their biological sex.”
“Oh you thought threatening me would silence me? No. I just doubled down and filed a new bill to protect women and girls across the entire country on all federal property everywhere,” she defiantly declared on X.
Her bill comes on the heels of a political firestorm after Mace demanded House Republicans ensure women’s spaces be protected amid the arrival of Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.), the first-ever openly transgender woman elected to Congress.
Mace demanded GOP leadership keep women’s spaces in the Capitol reserved for biological women during a caucus meeting this week and introduced a resolution to that effect.
“Do women have rights or not is the question at the end of the day,” Mace told the DailyWire’s Michael Knowles. “Are we going to allow these men to bully us into submission? And I say no.”
Democrats have roundly condemned her and tried to defend McBride even as some of them have privately fretted that GOP attack ads over liberal transgender policies may have harmed them politically in the 2024 elections.
The Palmetto State lawmaker also claims that she was subjected to death threats for her legislative push, telling NewsNation Tuesday: “Men that want to use women’s restrooms are threatening to kill me over this issue.”
Alluding to her history as a survivor of rape, Mace told the network’s “On Balance” that “I use the gym when I’m up here in DC, the women’s gym, and a man shows up, and his genitalia, his penis is in the room, no! Like I’m not — it’s not OK.”
Mace added that such an action would “trigger” her past trauma as a survivor of rape and abuse.
“I have PTSD from the abuse that I’ve suffered, and I’m gonna do everything I can to protect women and girls,” she told the outlet.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) danced around questions publicly during a press conference Tuesday when asked about whether he gave her assurances during that meeting that
“I’m not going to get into this. We welcome all new members with open arms who are duly elected representatives of the people,” Johnson told reporters when asked if McBride is a man or a woman.
“There’s a concern about the uses of restroom facilities and locker rooms and all that. This is an issue that Congress has never had to address before, and we’re going to do that in deliberate fashion.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) hit back at Mace and other Republicans, lamenting, “This is the lesson you’ve drawn from the election in November … that you want to bully a member of Congress?”
McBride, 34, was born a man and now identifies as a woman. The representative-elect for Delaware’s at-large district interned in the Obama White House back in 2012 and has been privately advising Democrats on how to respond.
“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,” McBride chided on X.
Mace has garnered some support from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), with whom she’s clashed in the past.
Greene responded to a transgender flag hung by a Democratic member’s office across the hall from her own congressional office by putting up a sign declaring: “There are two genders: Male & Female.”
“Instead of making a trans bathroom, we should make a Republican women’s bathroom and a Democrat women’s bathroom, so all the Democrat women who agree with men using the women’s bathroom can share their bathroom with the mentally ill trans biological men that they support,” Greene suggested Wednesday.
