Speaker Mike Johnson said he’s working on a solution to address GOP concerns about transgender women using women’s restrooms on the House side of Capitol Hill, as Rep.-elect Sarah McBride is poised to assume office as the first openly transgender lawmaker in January.
“This is an issue that Congress has never had to address before and we’re going to do that in a deliberate fashion … and we will accommodate the needs of every single person,” Johnson said at a press conference Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the leader of the effort to bar transgender women from women’s bathrooms, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-N.C.), said Johnson has committed to including her language in the House rules.
“He has told me he’ll include it in the rules package and if he doesn’t, then I’ll file a privileged motion to force a vote on it,” Mace told reporters. “This is the left’s war on women, and I aim to stop it.”
She added: “There are female members who are deeply concerned about the policy up here.”
Johnson wouldn’t go that far on whether he’d committed to including the language in the rules.
“I’m not going to engage on that,” he said.
Separately, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) threatened during a closed-door GOP conference meeting Tuesday morning that she would fight a transgender woman for using women’s restrooms in the Capitol, according to two sources.
Greene said after that meeting that Johnson has backed her up on the point that “biological men” shouldn’t be using women’s bathrooms.
The full House will vote to approve a rules package in early January, which only requires a simple majority to pass. That means Republicans will be able to clear a rules package without Democratic support.
Mace’s resolution, announced Monday, is clearly aimed at McBride (D-Del.), who brushed aside the Mace-led effort as a distraction by Republicans in a statement on Monday.
Democrats vowed to defend McBride against the GOP effort.
“This is [Mace] just trying to cry out for getting [Donald] Trump’s approval, and it’s sort of pathetic. So we’ll deal with it when it comes up,” said Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus.
“It’s extraordinarily unfortunate that Mace brings this up,” added Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.). “I don’t think it was ever brought up in Delaware. Nobody had any problem. [McBride’s] a woman, and I think Mace is simply demagoguing this issue for her own political ends.”
Olivia Beavers, Daniella Diaz and Nicholas Wu contributed.