Nancy Mace tells DC Mayor Bowser to ‘be quiet,’ calls her ‘slick’ in testy exchange over DEI & defining ‘what is a woman?’

U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., got testy with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on Thursday during a House Oversight Committee hearing on crime and safety in the District of Columbia.

On the heels of President Donald Trump‘s federal “crime emergency” in the nation’s capital, which included the deployment of the National Guard and seizing partial control of local police, House Republicans sought to use the hearing to illuminate what they see as ineffective leadership by Democrats.

Mace, a controversial conservative firebrand in Congress, appeared to blame D.C.’s crime on DEI. Introducing a bill entitled “No DEI in D.C. Act,” the Republican congresswoman said, “This bill will rip the DEI and gender-bender nonsense out of the D.C. government root and branch, and restore common sense and equal treatment under the law.”

Mace then posed questions to Mayor Bowser, who testified before Congress alongside D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb, D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson and Gregory Jackson, former deputy director of the now-defunct White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.

“We have some questions for you on the meanings of some of the curious terms we have found in the D.C. code,” said Rep. Mace, who raised issue with various terms in D.C. laws like “structural or institutional racism” and “birthing people.” At one point, Mace asked Bowser, “What is a woman?”

“I’m a woman. Are you a woman?…You’re looking at one,” Bowser replied to a few laughs in the hearing room.

During another exchange, Mace asked Bowser, “What is a birthing person?” to which the D.C. mayor replied, “I would assume it’s someone who gives birth.”

After a series of questions in which Mace cut Bowser off before she could fully answer, Bowser turned to House Oversight Chairman James Comer, seemingly with the intent to allow her time to respond. Mace, however, snapped back, “This is not her time. It’s my time. You can be quiet as I ask you questions, and then you can answer them.”

“Let’s make good use of the time, Ms. Mace,” said Mayor Bowser.

Things got more testy as Congresswoman Mace inquired about a D.C. code that established a commission on reparations to study the potential of a reparations fund and other forms of redress for Black residents in the district.

“Do you believe that government benefits should be given out on the basis of race?” asked Mace.

Bowser, who emphasized that the reparations commission was established to provide a study and not deliver actual reparations, replied, “We have any number of benefits programs and eligibility established.”

“You’re not answering any of these questions. I’ll give it to you, you’re slick,” said Mace.

Bowser faced much political pressure from the White House over Trump’s insistence that D.C. was rampant with crime. As a non-state, D.C. is vulnerable to certain federal control, like the “emergency” Trump declared in August. Most recently, Trump threatened to return troops on the ground after Bowser’s office refused to cooperate with ICE officials to carry out Trump’s immigration agenda.

“I’ll call a National Emergency, and Federalize, if necessary!!!” he wrote on Truth Social.