Marjorie Taylor Greene begs for Donald Trump to be made Speaker of the House to pass anti-trans bill

While Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) didn’t vote to oust ally and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) in last night’s vote to remove him from the speakership, she’s not one to let an opportunity like this pass her by. Greene is already lobbying for Donald Trump to take McCarthy’s place as speaker of the House, and she included anti-LGBTQ+ policy as a reason to support Trump.

Last night, a small group of eight far-right Republicans led by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) voted to remove McCarthy from the speakership. Since Republicans only have a razor-thin majority in the House and McCarthy has spent his months as speaker building a bad relationship with House Democrats, all it took was the eight Republicans to join all the Democrats to take away his title. He has already said that he won’t seek the speakership again.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene says GOP’s Ken Paxton shouldn’t be convicted because he fought “Transtifa”

Paxton faces an impeachment trial on corruption charges, but convicting him would give liberals a “great victory,” she argued.

While the speaker of the House has always been a member of Congress, the Constitution doesn’t require it. So Greene’s proposal that Trump take the position – despite his lack of familiarity with the legislative process – is technically feasible.

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“The only candidate for Speaker I am currently supporting is President Donald J. Trump,” Greene declared on X, formerly known as Twitter, last night. She claimed that he would end the Russian invasion of Ukraine, “secure the border,” create energy independence for the U.S., and “end the politically weaponized government,” many things that he didn’t manage to do as president for four years but that he will somehow accomplish in about a year as speaker.

She only referenced one specific piece of legislation in her encomium to Trump: her “Protect Children’s Innocence Act,” which would ban transgender youth from accessing gender-affirming care and make it harder for trans adults to get such care by banning government insurance programs from paying for it and banning medical schools from teaching about it.

“He will pass my bill to stop transgender surgeries on kids and keep men out of women’s sports,” Greene said optimistically. It’s unlikely any House Democrats would vote for such a bill if Speaker Trump put it up for a vote and some moderate Republicans may vote against it. Beyond that, it has little chance of passing the Senate, and it goes against President Joe Biden’s position on gender-affirming care, which is that it is a decision to be made by families with their doctors.

It’s unclear what she was referring to with the reference to sports; the House already passed a bill this past April to ban trans girls from participating in school sports. The House passing the same bill again in the same session won’t do anything to get it through the Senate, where it’s currently languishing.

“He has a proven 4 year record as President of the United States of America,” she wrote. “He received a record number of Republican votes of any Republican Presidential candidate!”

“We can make him Speaker and then elect him President! He will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

While Greene’s suggestion is unorthodox, she’s not the only person who believes that loyalty to Trump is one of the few defining characteristics of the GOP at the moment. This past Sunday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said on CNN’s State of the Union that all of her House Republican colleagues remain loyal to Trump.

“This is not a moderate party, period,” she said. “There are not moderates in the Republican party, there are just different degrees of fealty to Donald Trump. But it starts with a lot of fealty and then it grows to extreme fealty.”

Gender-affirming care for trans minors almost never includes surgery and for younger children it’s mostly just letting them dress how they want and play with the toys they want to play with and referring to them with the right pronouns. For teens, it can include puberty blockers – which have been shown to reduce lifelong suicide risk among trans people – and hormone therapy. Some older teens can access some forms of non-genital surgery if they meet the stringent requirements, which is rare.

A 2021 review of 27 studies involving 8,000 trans people who underwent gender-affirming surgery found that only 1% expressed regret. A 2017 study found that patient regret is, on average, 14.4% for surgery in general.

Gender-affirming care for trans minors is supported by the American Medical Association (AMA), the Endocrine Society, and other leading medical organizations. The AMA issued a resolution just last month reaffirming their support for gender-affirming care based on scientific evidence.