Chelsea Manning, trans rights activists protest at Capitol, GOP lawmaker uses slur [View all]

Source: USA Today

Published 6:33 p.m. ET Dec. 5, 2024


Chelsea Manning, the former U.S. Army Soldier and WikiLeaks whistleblower, joined a group of transgender rights activists staging a sit-in protest Thursday at a bathroom near Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) office, objecting to the Republican-led effort to ban transgender women from using the Capitol women’s bathrooms.

The protest was headed by the Gender Liberation Movement, a volunteer activist group, and ended more than a dozen arrests for illegal protesting, Capitol Police representatives told Axios and CNN, including Manning. The former Army intelligence analyst was sentenced to 35 years in prison in 2013 for her role in leaking a cache of classified government material to WikiLeaks. President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017.

“Speaker Johnson, Nancy Mace,” the protestors chanted in the corridor outside the bathroom. “Our genders are not a debate!”

South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace posted a video on social media in which she referred to the transgender rights activists as a slur, telling the camera they “showed up at the Capitol today to protest my bathroom bill, but they got arrested, poor things.” She then recited the Miranda rights into a bullhorn aimed at the Capitol police building, where she said the protesters were held, calling it a message for the activists.

Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/12/05/chelsea-manning-protest-trans-rights-slur/76805521007/