CNN
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A House Republican is calling for a ban on transgender women from the women’s restrooms in the Capitol, two weeks after history was made with the election of America’s first transgender person to Congress.

Nancy Mace of South Carolina introduced a resolution Monday to change the rules of the U.S. House of Representatives, less than two months before Democratic Rep.-elect. Sarah McBride, a senator from Delaware, will be sworn in in January.

‘Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say. I mean, this is a biological male,” the South Carolina Republican told reporters on Monday, adding that the lawmaker “doesn’t belong in women’s spaces, women’s restrooms, locker rooms, locker rooms, period, period.”

Later Monday, McBride wrote in an apparent response to

The congresswoman-elect continued in another post: “This is a blatant attempt by far-right extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing.”

“We should focus on reducing the costs of housing, health care and child care, not on creating 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.”

Mace, who was pressed by reporters earlier in the evening about whether she would go after a marginalized person, told CNN: “This is a biological male trying to insinuate himself into women’s space, and I not going to tolerate that.”

She continued, “I am the first woman to graduate from the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina. If a man in a skirt came by and said, “No, that’s my performance.” I’ll be there and get in the way and say, ‘Hell no.’ I’m not going to allow men to erase women or women’s rights.”

In the wake of the overthrow of the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade In 2022 and her party’s efforts to retain female voters, Mace — the first woman to graduate from the Citadel’s Corps of Cadets — has often said she is looking for ways to show that the Republican Party is “pro- women’.

McBride didn’t lean on the historic nature of her campaign during her run in the reliably blue state to fill the seat vacated by Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester — who was making a successful Senate run. She emphasized that her work was a bipartisan effort to pass paid family and medical leave in the state and touted union support and her work to raise the state’s minimum wage. But along the way, she did allude to a broader theme of respect — specifically that everyone deserves a member of Congress who respects them and their families.

Similar bans against transgender people using bathrooms associated with their gender identity, especially in schools, have sparked controversy in recent years — with supporters claiming the measures protect students, while critics say they are dehumanizing and unnecessary.

In 2023, Republican-led legislatures in several states passed bills to ban transgender students from using locker rooms and bathrooms associated with their gender identity, in what the Human Rights Campaign – the largest LGBTQ advocacy group in the US – reported as the biggest year for “bathroom bills.” The Ohio Senate last week gave the green light to its own measure, which now awaits a signature from the state’s Republican governor.

CNN’s Arit John, Jack Forrest and Karina Tsui contributed to this report.