Transgender rights activists including Chelsea Manning, a former U.S. army intelligence analyst and whistleblower, took to Capitol Hill on Thursday in protest of a new policy barring trans people from using single-sex facilities on the House side of the Capitol complex that match their gender identity.
More than a dozen transgender individuals and their allies took part in a “bathroom sit-in” in restrooms across from Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) office. The protest was organized by the Gender Liberation Movement (GLM), a grassroots and volunteer-run collective that brings attention to issues around bodily autonomy and gender.
Holding a banner demanding Congress stop “pissing on our rights,” protesters chanted, “Speaker Johnson, Nancy Mace: our bodies are no debate!” Several transgender women, including GLM founder Raquel Willis, entered the women’s restroom near the Speaker’s office.
A video uploaded to the group’s Instagram story shows Willis and others washing their hands and chanting inside the restroom alongside another banner that reads, “Flush Bathroom Bigotry.” A second video shows Capitol Police officers arresting some of the demonstrators, including Manning, who smiled at the camera while being led away in zip ties.
Johnson announced the new bathroom policy late last month, following a similar effort by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) to block trans people from Capitol facilities, a move she said was “absolutely” motivated by the election of Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who is set to be the first openly transgender member of Congress when she takes office in January.
McBride has said she will comply with Johnson’s new policy. “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms,” she said in a statement, adding that she disagrees with the move and considers it a distraction.
Mace last month introduced a separate bill to prohibit trans women and men from bathrooms that match their gender identity in museums, national parks and other federal property, and has posted hundreds of times on her social media accounts about her belief that trans women — whom she calls “men” — should not be permitted to enter spaces meant exclusively for women.
The South Carolina lawmaker, who has said she’s received death threats over the legislation, is fundraising off her efforts, 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.
In a video posted Thursday on the social platform X, Mace referred to the protesters by using an offensive and derogatory slur for transgender people and read the Miranda rule into a bullhorn outside the Capitol Police Department.
On Wednesday, several transgender, nonbinary and cisgender people filmed themselves dancing in one of the Capitol’s women’s bathrooms. They wore shirts that read “Transgender people are not dangerous. You are” — a message they said was meant for Mace.
Johnson’s office declined to comment on Thursday’s protest.
