Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is calling for the impeachment of Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Rachel Levine because she’s transgender and because she stood up for gender-affirming health care. Greene’s statement violated Twitter’s ban on “hateful conduct.”
Greene linked a video where Levine called gender-affirming health care “lifesaving, medically necessary, age appropriate, and a critical tool for health care providers,” which is a statement backed by the science on the matter. The linked Republican National Committee tweet says that Levine was talking about “reassignment surgery” even though she doesn’t mention surgery in the clip and gender affirming surgery is not performed on minors.
Related: Marjorie Taylor Greene says Democrats “want to turn your kids gay”
“I’m calling for the impeachment of Dr. ‘Rachel’ Levine,” Greene wrote, then sharing Levine’s deadname for no apparent reason other than to attack her transgender identity.
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“Drugs preventing puberty and genital mutilation is not life saving care, it’s child abuse and extremely dangerous,” Greene continued, taking the RNC’s unfounded insinuation that Levine was talking about surgery and making it specifically about bottom surgery. Puberty blockers have been shown to decrease the lifelong risk of suicide in transgender people who want them as adolescents.
“Leave children alone, let them grow up safely. Impeach Levine!”
Greene’s tweet has been hidden behind a message on the platform calling it “hateful conduct.” The message says that the tweet can still be viewed because “it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible,” possibly referring to how Greene’s constituents should know about her hatred of transgender people.
Greene got her start in political activism by protesting drag queens at libraries. Despite the eclectic issues she campaigned on, she has remained true to her anti-LGBTQ roots during her term in Congress, trying to shut down Congress because it was considering a bill to ban anti-LGBTQ discrimination and displaying an anti-transgender sign outside here office.
Several weeks ago, she told far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, “My husband would’ve beat [a transgender camp counselor] into the ground, and then he’d be in jail…. This is exactly how we need to stand up against this stuff.”
Biden's Assistant Secretary for Health, Rachel Levine, says reassignment surgery and puberty blockers for KIDS is “lifesaving, medically necessary, age appropriate, and a critical tool” pic.twitter.com/OwSOA3cjj8
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 24, 2022
It is unclear whether Dr. Levine even can be impeached by Congress. The Constitution gives Congress the power to impeach “the President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States,” which has been interpreted to include federal judges and heads of agencies but not lower-level executive workers.
Only one executive official – besides several presidents – has been impeached in U.S. history, and that was Secretary of War William W. Belknap in 1876. He resigned before the impeachment vote and was later acquitted by the Senate.
