Rep. Jim Banks’ Twitter account was suspended on Saturday after he purposely misgendered Assistant Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine, the nation’s first openly transgender four-star officer and government official confirmed by the Senate.
Levin became the first female four-star admiral in the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps when she was sworn in on Tuesday.
Last week, Banks tweeted from his official account, “the title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man.”
According to Twitter’s hateful conduct policy, it prohibits “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.”
Before the account can be unlocked, a spokeswoman for the platform informed Axios that the tweet must be deleted.
On Saturday, Banks said that he had been suspended for “posting a statement of FACT” and that “Big Tech must be held accountable.” He stated that he would not back down and that for the time being, he would be posting from his own personal page.
Following Levine’s historic appointment, several other Republican lawmakers made transphobic remarks. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was also reported for violating Twitter’s hateful conduct policy, but her tweet wasn’t deleted because the platform decided it was “in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”
