Marjorie Taylor Greene demands new House speaker push her anti-trans bill to get her support

As House Republicans work to find a new speaker after Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was removed from the position, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is laying out her demands for someone to gain her vote. And her first is to pass her bill banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth and restricting such care for transgender adults.

“I’m talking with the people that are running for speaker,” she told Fox News when asked about who she’s supporting. In January, Greene’s support for McCarthy was integral to getting him elected to that position. Her popularity on the far-right and her fundraising prowess could prove integral to bringing the fragmented House Republicans together to vote for anyone for speaker.

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

Greene voted to keep McCarthy as speaker but hours later was promising that Speaker Trump would “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

“The issues are important to me. I have a bill that would stop transgender surgeries on children, and that bill has been sitting in the Judiciary Committee for quite some time now,” she said. “And I would like to see it marked up and taken to the floor for a vote. So that’s an issue I’m pushing.”

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She was referring to 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.

Despite Greene’s characterization on Fox News, gender-affirming care for minors almost never involves surgery and instead involves allowing kids to play with the toys they like and wear the clothes they like, as well as use the correct name and pronouns for the child. For older teens, it involves reversible puberty blockers and hormone therapy, which have been shown to reduce lifelong suicide risk for transgender people and are supported by major medical associations in the U.S., including the American Medical Association, the Endocrine Society, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Greene and others on the right often only refer to surgery when discussing gender-affirming care bans because they know that discussing gender-affirming care in a factual manner instead of implying that five-year-olds are getting bottom surgery will not convince as many people to pass their laws.

Greene said on Fox News that her other major demand is that the House end military aid to Ukraine, which she claimed would somehow “push those countries to peace” instead of the more likely result of Russia completing its invasion.

I represent the American people and I want a Speaker that will commit to moving on the important issues I lay out.

We need to protect kids from barbaric genital mutilation surgeries and we need to stop funding the proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/Y9BJNAjqXt

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene