House Speaker Mike Johnson weighed in Tuesday on incoming Congresswoman Sarah McBride’s gender identity, saying that “a man is a man, and a woman is a woman, and a man cannot become a woman.”
Johnson made the statement after initially dodging a question from a reporter who asked him whether McBride, who is transgender, is a man or a woman.
“Look, I’m not going to get into this,” Johnson said earlier in response to the reporter’s question. “We welcome all new members with open arms who are duly elected representatives of the people.”
He added: “I believe it’s a command that we treat all persons with dignity and respect, and we will, and I’m not going to engage in silly debates about this. There’s a concern about the uses of restroom facilities and locker rooms and all that. This is an issue that Congress has never had to address before and we’re going to do that in deliberate fashion with a member consensus on it; and we will accommodate the needs of every single person. That’s all I’m going to say about that.”
Johnson clarified his comments later Tuesday during a press gaggle with reporters.
“Let me be unequivocally clear: a man is a man, and a woman is a woman, and a man cannot become a woman,” he said. “But I also believe that we treat everybody with dignity. We can believe all those things at the same time.”
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Johnson was asked about McBride in connection to South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace’s controversial proposal to ban lawmakers and staffers from “using single-sex facilities other than those corresponding to their biological sex.”
Some House Republicans have expressed support for the measure; Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said she backed Mace’s proposal and referred to McBride as “a man” and “he” several times in a video posted to X.
Mace told Axios on Tuesday that Johnson “said to me last night that he would include it in the House Rules.”
The outlet also reported that Greene said during House Republicans’ closed-door conference on Tuesday that she would not use the same bathroom as McBride. Two Republicans who were at the meeting told Axios that Johnson assured Greene that she and McBride would not have to share a restroom.
McBride weighed in on Mace’s resolution on Monday, 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. “Delawareans sent me here to make the American dream more affordable and accessible and that’s what I’m focused on.”
