South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace appeared to threaten a colleague with a fistfight on Tuesday during a contentious hearing about the shape of the incoming Congress.
The confrontation, in which Mace challenged Rep. Jasmine Crockett, Democrat of Texas, to “take it outside,” erupted during a call for a civil rights subcommittee to be reinstituted. That prompted Mace to accuse Democrats of failing to protect women’s rights because of their support for transgender people.
“You’re making women feel unsafe in this country,” Mace said at the oversight hearing. “You’re making the opportunity for women and girls to be raped, to be sexually abused in this country, even greater than they’ve ever, ever been. So don’t come over here with your attitude and talk to me about rights, when you’re trying to take my rights, as a woman, as a rape survivor, away.”
Crockett fired back that Mace was using trans people as a stunt to get attention, and argued elsewhere in the hearing that Mace “fantasizes” about a non-existent threat from trans people using bathrooms that match their gender identity.
“Somebody’s campaign coffers really are struggling right now, so she’s gonna keep saying’ trans trans trans’ so that people will feel threatened and child, listen—” the Texas rep said, before a furious Mace cut her off.
“I am not a child,” Mace said repeatedly, before asking if Crockett wanted to “take it outside.”
Crockett: Somebody’s campaign coffers are struggling right now so she’s going to keep saying trans trans trans.. Child listen
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 14, 2025
Mace: I am no child! Do not call me a child. I am a grown woman. If you want to take it outside pic.twitter.com/o2EBHzcwoT
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer called the committee back to order after the outburst.
Mace and Crockett offered contrasting versions of events after the fact.
“If you want to see the difference between House Dems and House GOP, watch this: Today, I introduced an amendment to reinstate the Oversight Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties,” Crockett wrote on X. “My Republican colleague threatened to physically fight me about it. Bless her heart.”
Mace wrote in an X post of her own: “I’m no child. And if I wanted a physical fight, you’d know it. That’s not what this was,. I won’t be bullied by someone who wants to take away women’s rights while lecturing about civil rights. I won’t be bullied by someone who thinks being scared of rape is a ‘fantasy.’ This ain’t political, it’s personal.”
Rep. Maxwell Frost, a fellow Democrat, critcized Comer in a statement on Bluesky, saying the chair had “ruled that threatening violence against another member is okay, as long as it’s in the form of a question! Wild.”
The sparring in the hearing room came the same day as the House passed a ban on transgender atheletes competing in girls’ and women’s school sports, threatening to pull funding from those who don’t comply.
Mace has been an outspoken critic of equal trans access to facilities and sports, pushing House Republicans to keep transgender people out of bathrooms at the Capitol matching their gender identity, right as Sarah McBridge, the first openly trans member of Congress, took office.
