McBride seemed to address the resolution in a Monday X post, 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 focusing on bringing down the cost of housing, health care, and child care, not manufacturing culture wars,” she continued. “Delawareans sent me here to make the American dream more affordable and accessible and that’s what I’m focused on.”
According to The Hill, a source “familiar with the matter” said that Mace is currently in talks with House leadership about how to bring the resolution to the floor. Although the congresswoman had initially planned to call the measure to the floor as a privileged resolution, which would have forced leadership to vote on it within two legislative days, she ultimately changed course “because of ongoing negotiations with leadership regarding the best way to pass the legislation.” The source added that Mace hopes to include the measure in the rules package for the 119th Congress, which the House will vote on in early January.
Mace has been vocal about her transphobic views on X in recent months. She voiced her opposition to the Biden administration’s new Title IX rules protecting students on the basis of gender identity in an April 19 X post, writing, “By enshrining gender identity as a protected status they are effectively saying that women’s safety is expendable.” In June, she shared a video of herself railing against trans women using women’s bathrooms, adding that “this woke gender-bender mentality is a mental illness.”
Back in 2021, Mace opposed the Equality Act, a federal bill banning anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination in areas like education, housing, healthcare, and public accommodations, claiming that “the legislation explicitly dismantles existing federal laws meant to preserve religious freedom.” Instead, she co-sponsored an alternative bill called the Fairness for All Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity while allowing for exemptions for religious entities. As the ACLU noted when the bill was introduced in 2019, the bill would “give a greenlight” to those who wish to reject LGBTQ+ people from jobs, healthcare, housing, and taxpayer-funded programs due to their identities, upend the current child welfare system in favor of a new voucher system aimed at religiously-affiliated child welfare providers, and exclude people seeking reproductive health care from protections against sex discrimination.
In a statement provided to The Guardian, Human Rights Campaign spokesperson Laurel Powell described Mace’s resolution as “a political charade by a grown-up bully.”
“It is another warning sign that the incoming anti-equality House majority will continue to focus on targeting LGBTQ+ people rather than the cost of living, price gouging, or any of the problems the American people elected them to solve,” Powell added.
Mace’s resolution comes at the tail end of a year in which the Republican party heavily campaigned on anti-trans rhetoric. According to data released by Ad Impact and cited by Washington Post reporter Casey Parks on November 5, Republicans spent nearly $215 million on anti-trans network ads during the 2024 election cycle. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s Cabinet and White House staff picks are already shaping up to be a smorgasbord of right-wing transphobia, from Matt Gaetz to Elon Musk.
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