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"If you want to take it outside", Mace challenges Rep. Jasmine Crockett at a House Oversight meeting

At the House Oversight Committee's January 14, 2025 organizational meeting, Rep. Nancy Mace told Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) 'if you want to take it outside, we can do that' after Crockett said 'and chile, listen' while criticizing Mace's rhetoric on transgender people. A Democratic member moved to have Mace's words taken down as inciting violence; Chairman James Comer said the remark could just mean stepping out for a coffee. Mace said she meant a conversation, not a fight; Crockett's office called it a threat of physical violence.

Reps. Nancy Mace and Jasmine Crockett, The Hill
Photo: The Hill. Source

"If you want to take it outside, we can do that." With those words, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) cut across a House Oversight Committee hearing on January 14, 2025, turning an amendment debate into one of the more combustible floor exchanges of the new Congress.

Reporting credit: Coverage of the exchange was reported by NBC News, "Nancy Mace challenges Jasmine Crockett to 'take it outside' at House hearing", and The Hill, "Crockett, Mace get into heated exchange over trans rights: 'If you want to take it outside'". The exchange and its aftermath quoted below draw from both outlets' accounts.

The occasion was the 119th Congress's organizational meeting of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Rep. James Comer (R-KY). Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) had offered an amendment to reinstate the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. During debate on the amendment she criticized Mace's remarks about transgender people and bathrooms, Mace had made provocative comments on that theme during her own time at the podium.

Crockett's critique ended with the line that sparked the confrontation:

"…campaign coffers really are struggling right now, so she's gonna keep saying 'trans, trans, trans' so that people will feel threatened. And chile, listen, ", Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX)

"Chile" is a Southern/AAVE exclamation, but Mace took it as being called a child. She came back directly:

"Do not call me a child. I am no child. I am a grown woman. I am 47 years old. I have broken more glass ceilings than you ever have… If you want to take it outside, we can do that.", Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC)

Chairman Comer gaveled for order. A Democratic member raised a point of order and moved to have Mace's words "taken down", the parliamentary procedure for words deemed to incite violence against another member. Comer later offered a more relaxed reading of the remark, saying it could simply mean going outside for "a cup of coffee, or maybe a beer."

The two principals offered sharply different accounts afterward. Mace said she had meant taking the conversation off the floor for a more constructive discussion, not a physical confrontation, and that there was never any intention to cause harm to anyone. Crockett's office said the opposite: that Mace had threatened physical violence. Crockett herself publicly called Mace a "Karen" and referenced an earlier incident in which, as Crockett characterized it, Mace had called Capitol Police on an activist who had merely shaken her hand (a contested account of the December 2024 incident; see the FAFO dispatch).

Watch the exchange

Video: NBC News, footage of the January 14, 2025 House Oversight Committee exchange between Reps. Mace and Crockett.

In their own words

Rep. Mace on X, January 14, 2025.

Mace on X, January 14, 2025.

Mace, on her official account, said the remark was not a threat of violence, January 14, 2025.

Rep. Crockett on X, January 14, 2025.

Sources & related coverage

"If you want to take it outside", Mace challenges Rep. Jasmine Crockett at a House Oversight meeting: image 1
"If you want to take it outside", Mace challenges Rep. Jasmine Crockett at a House Oversight meeting: image 2
"If you want to take it outside", Mace challenges Rep. Jasmine Crockett at a House Oversight meeting: image 3