Rep Nancy Mace triggered the transgender community by using a controversial slur against someone attending her event at the University of South Carolina (Getty Images, X/@NancyMace)
It looks like Rep Nancy Mace has triggered the transgender community by using a controversial slur against someone attending her event at the University of South Carolina this week.
What was supposed to be a typical speech hosted by the school’s Turning Point USA chapter on Monday, April 21, turned into a testy showdown that went viral on social media.
Nancy Mace barely got through her opening remarks before some students in the crowd bombarded her with questions about everything — from immigration and abortion to her use of a very specific slur.
The room was already tense when transgender student Harley Hicks, 20, approached the stage, asking the congresswoman to apologize for repeatedly using a transphobic term, the South Carolina Daily Gazette reported.
“I would like for you to apologize because it is derogatory, and second of all….” she began, but Mace cut her off before she could continue.
“Is t****y really derogatory?” Mace asked, before repeating the slur multiple times. “T****y. Yeah, t****y, t****y, t****y.”
Hicks then picked up a potted plant off the stage and hesitated before walking off — only to be later accused by Mace of trying to assault her.
Hicks later called the claim laughable and said showing up as a trans person to a Mace event was already one of the bravest things she’d ever done.
“I’m like a shark, more afraid of her than she is of me,” Hicks said. “If I were attacking her, you’d have seen a very different video,” she added.
The event, held at USC’s student life center, quickly went off the rails. Nancy Mace tried to continue her speech but was repeatedly interrupted by students demanding answers — not just on her comments that night, but on broader issues like student debt and abortion.
But this wasn’t new territory for her. The Monday episode comes just months after another headline-grabbing moment back in February, when Mace used the exact same slur during a House Oversight Committee hearing.
That time, she was criticizing USAID funding for global diversity initiatives, calling the programs “some of the dumbest, I mean stupidest, just dumbest initiatives imaginable, all supported by the left”.
Furthermore, she’s been leading a national campaign to ban transgender women from women’s restrooms in federal buildings — a move that came immediately after Delaware Rep Sarah McBride became the first openly transgender member of Congress.
While Mace didn’t mention McBride by name at the USC event, she made it very clear who she was talking about. “I was the first woman last year in Congress when we had somebody who was elected, who was a biological male dressed as a woman,” she said. “It’s not going to happen in South Carolina. It’s not going to happen anywhere, if I decide to put a stop to it.”
Nancy Mace’s eventful week didn’t start at USC. Just days before, she was confronted by by a man named Ely Murray-Quick at an Ulta Beauty store about her lack of in-person town halls. The heated exchange ended with both parties tossing curse words at each other.
A couple of female reporters asked Mace on Monday if it was appropriate for a sitting congresswoman to be shouting obscenities at constituents in public.
“To shame a woman for standing up for herself is completely ridiculous. That’s what you’re doing. You’re shaming a woman for standing up for herself,” Mace responded. “Either of you, how do you think that makes other women feel?”
Minutes later, she hit the stage at USC and mocked journalists for being offended by her language. “I’m like, have you seen my interviews?” she quipped.
At the end of her Q&A, Mace was hit with one final question — and it came from a self-identified Democrat. The question was whether anyone can trust her to have real conversations with people she labels the “lunatic left”.
Mace replied that she’s willing to talk to anyone. But when the question turned to whether that “anyone” included the trans community, Mace doubled down on her message.
“It applies to everybody. But I’m not going to allow some guy in a skirt to be in my bathroom or in my locker room undressed,” she declared.
