Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) during a Wednesday evening appearance on MSNBC’s “The Reid Out” denounced Rep. Nancy Mace’s (R-S.C.) frequent targeting of transgender Americans after the two lawmakers traded barbs on the issue this week in a fiery exchange on Capitol Hill.
During a Tuesday House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing, Crockett asked for the reinstatement of the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which disbanded in 2023 after Republicans took control of the House.
Mace, the subcommittee’s former ranking member, called Crockett’s proposal “hypocritical” because of Crockett’s support for policies that allow transgender women to use women’s single-sex facilities, which Mace said is detrimental to the rights of cisgender, or non-transgender, women.
“I don’t want to hear about you talk about rights, individual rights, civil rights, because you can’t find the courage from the ’60s to fight for women all around America,” Mace said Tuesday in a response that referenced her experience as a survivor of sexual assault and denigrated transgender women through offensive language.
In response, Crockett said, “I don’t even know how we got there … but I can see that somebody’s campaign coffers really are struggling right now, so she’s going to keep saying ‘trans, trans, trans’ so that people will feel threatened.”
“And chile, listen,” Crockett began before Mace interrupted her, asking the Texas Democrat if she wanted to “take it outside.”
Mace, who previously supported transgender rights, became a vocal adversary of them in the last Congress, filing roughly half a dozen pieces of legislation threatening to restrict trans Americans’ access to gender-affirming health care and bathrooms, changing rooms and sports teams that best align with their gender identity. She said a November resolution to bar transgender women from women’s restrooms at the Capitol was a direct response to the election of Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.), the first transgender member of Congress.
Mace, who said she received death threats over the resolution, in November began fundraising off the effort, promising T-shirts with the phrase “come and get it” printed below an image of a women’s restroom sign with every $35 donation to her campaign.
“This was about money,” Crockett told MSNBC’s Joy Reid Wednesday, “and the idea that you would do it at the expense of children, or the idea that you would do it at the expense of one of your colleagues, is a problem.”
“This was an organizational meeting; this was not a hearing about trans folk, I do want to be clear,” Crockett said, referring to Tuesday’s hearing and her exchange with Mace. “But every single hearing, she is going to talk about trans people.”
Earlier on Wednesday, during a hearing on federal telework policies, Mace asked Martin O’Malley, a former Social Security Administration commissioner and candidate for Democratic National Committee chair, if he could “define what a woman is.” She later claimed the Democratic Party platform is one that allows “men in women’s bathrooms” and forces “women and girls to undress in front of men in the locker room.”
“She’s going to keep doing it because, for some reason, she’s making money,” Crockett said Wednesday. “But I’m telling you, she not even making good money off of it. Like, you probably could find something else to do.”
“Maybe start serving your constituents, maybe actually come up with legislation that will help them so that they know that they will be safer when the next storm comes through on the East Coast,” Crockett said. “Maybe figure out how to bring some jobs to your constituents in South Carolina, maybe figure out how you can have worker protections for the people that are working in factories in South Carolina. I got a long list of stuff she could do that would actually be helpful to not only her coffers but also her constituents.”
The Hill has reached out to Mace’s office for comment.
—Updated at 1:07 p.m.
