Twitter has suspended the official account of Indiana representative Jim Banks and removed a tweet in which the Republican lawmaker intentionally misgendered a transgender Biden administration official.
On Tuesday, Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine was sworn in as an admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commission Corps, making her the corps’ first female four-star officer and the first openly transgender four-star officer in the uniformed services. When the surgeon general congratulated Levine, Banks responded by tweeting: “The title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man.”
Twitter, which in 2018 banned the “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals,” took down Banks’s tweet on Saturday and suspended his account until the tweet is deleted.
Banks, a staunch Trump ally who chairs the Republican Study Committee, responded defiantly to the suspension on Saturday. He used his other, personal Twitter account to both defend what he tweeted about Levine as well as attack “Big Tech,” which he accused of trying to “cancel” him. On Sunday, he then tweeted out a Federalist post that also intentionally misgendered Levine.
It’s not clear if Twitter will take any action against the congressman’s personal account.
