Congresswoman-elect Sarah McBride became the first openly trans person ever elected to the House this November, marking a historic milestone for the body. Her arrival, however, is being met with a targeted — and anti-trans — attack by Republicans in Congress that rejects the existence of trans people. 

On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that he is barring trans women from women’s bathrooms in the Capitol, following a proposal from South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace (R) to do just that. 

“I want to make sure that no men are in women’s private spaces, and it’s not going to end here,” Mace told reporters on Tuesday. “This kind of thing should be banned.”

When asked if the action was in response to McBride coming to Congress, Mace was clear, noting, “Yes and absolutely and then some.” Mace’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and Johnson’s office pointed to statements he’s made about his belief in treating everyone “with dignity.” 

The new rule is the latest extension of ugly attacks Republicans have levied on trans people during the recent campaign cycle and in the past few years. Dozens of states have introduced anti-trans bills that restrict children’s access to gender-affirming care, that limit athletes to playing on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, and that prevent trans women from using women’s bathrooms. All of these policies are based on — and advance — a rejection of the idea that trans women are women.

As Vox’s Aja Romano has explained, Republicans have used their focus on this subject to rally their base against a “common enemy,” framing trans people as threats, including to other women’s safety in bathrooms. A 2018 UCLA study on the issue found no evidence that trans people using bathrooms that match their gender identity has increased safety risks, but that data has not changed GOP rhetoric. Instead, the GOP has kept investing in anti-trans attacks and channeling more harm toward trans individuals, who are already the disproportionate subjects of violence and who already experience high rates of self-harm. 

Now, House Republicans’ push highlights how central such ideas have become to the GOP agenda — and how open they are to singling out a colleague to prove a point. 

Capitol Hill’s new, anti-trans bathroom policy, briefly explained

Because the speaker of the House has wide-ranging jurisdiction over facilities in the House, Johnson has significant say in imposing rules like the new bathroom regulation. 

In a press release he issued on Wednesday, Johnson said, “All single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings — such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms — are reserved for individuals of that biological sex.” In practice, this means that trans women are not able to use women’s bathrooms. 

Johnson noted that each Congress member has a bathroom in their office, and there are also unisex bathrooms available in the Capitol that could theoretically serve as an alternative. “Women deserve women’s only spaces,” he said in a statement. 

In addition to discriminating against McBride, the rule poses serious practical obstacles: The Capitol complex is a massive set of buildings, and lawmakers are often dashing from the main chamber to committee meetings to other events. By depriving McBride of access to the women’s room, the policy is effectively asking her to run back to her office, which is located in a separate building, use the men’s restroom, or find a unisex bathroom.

Limiting a member’s access to bathrooms simply makes their job much harder and more inconvenient. 

The Hill’s new bathroom rules are part of broader Republican anti-trans attacks

McBride responded to Mace’s initial proposal in a post on X on Tuesday, calling it “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,” she added. In a post on Wednesday, McBride reiterated this message and said that while she’ll abide by Johnson’s rule, she found this whole fight to be a diversion from other policy concerns.

Republicans have made anti-trans policy a focus on par with the sorts of economic concerns McBride highlighted. During the 2024 campaign, President-elect Donald Trump invested millions in ads criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris’s past support for funding gender-affirming care for prisoners. And it wasn’t just Trump: Republicans and their allies spent at least $215 million on anti-trans ads last cycle. Those ads appear to have resonated with some swing voters, and the GOP now seems further emboldened when it comes to going after trans people. 

Ahead of the election, as Vox’s Nicole Narea and Fabiola Cineas wrote, there was an explosion of anti-trans bills in state legislatures in 2023, with at least 19 states approving such laws. As Narea and Cineas explained, those bills were fueled in part by right-wing evangelical members of the Republican base (and by lawmaker attempts to pander to that faction). But more recent actions — from the election ads to Johnson’s new rule — show an attempt to take anti-trans policy into the mainstream. 

Overall, Republicans’ actions signal that they plan to double down on the anti-trans culture war in the years to come. 

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