WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – Republican U.S. Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas confronted Illinois Democrat Gov. JB Pritzker over past comments urging all Americans to use opposite-sex restrooms just to protest President Donald Trump.

The New York Post reported that Pritzker was on Capitol Hill to appear before a House Oversight Committee hearing grilling governors who have adopted “sanctuary state” immigration non-enforcement policies, during which Gill took the opportunity to ask the governor about a tweet he had posted in February 2017, early in Trump’s first term, declaring that “As a protest against Trump’s rescinding protections for trans kids, everyone should use the other gender’s bathroom today!”

As a protest against Trump’s rescinding protections for trans kids, everyone should use the other gender’s bathroom today! #protecttranskids

— JB Pritzker (@JBPritzker) February 23, 2017

“Do you think men should be allowed in women’s restrooms?” Gill asked. Pritzker replied, “I’m not sure why this has come to this issue,” to which Gill brought up the 2017 tweet and repeated the question. 

“Not that I can recall ever, sir, no,” the governor answered. “I do not advocate that, no.”

“I can tell you that you are politicizing this in a way that what we ought to be focusing on is (crosstalk) and the Congress to deal with immigration reform,” he went on as Gill repeated the question. “So you’re admitting that this is just a political circus?” Pritzker added.

Should men use women’s restrooms?

JB Pritzker apparently thinks so. pic.twitter.com/embWyr5IcC

— Congressman Brandon Gill (@RepBrandonGill) June 12, 2025

Critics have long warned that forcing girls to share intimate facilities such as bathrooms, showers, and changing areas with members of the opposite sex violates their privacy rights, subjects them to needless emotional stress, and gives potential male predators a viable pretext to enter female bathrooms or lockers by simply claiming transgender status. 

In Virginia, for example, former Loudoun County Public Schools superintendent Scott Ziegler set off a national firestorm for allegedly covering up the rape of a female student by a “transgender” classmate in a girls’ bathroom due to its damaging implications for the LGBT movement. He was convicted in 2023 of “using his official position to retaliate against someone for exercising their rights” by firing a teacher who testified about the situation before a grand jury, but prosecutors eventually dropped charges relating to allegedly lying about having no knowledge of the situation at a school board meeting.

Yet Pritzker has signed numerous pieces of radical pro-LGBT legislation during his tenure, including decriminalization of knowingly spreading HIV, mandatory in vitro fertilization insurance for same-sex couples, adding “gender identity” and puberty blockers to sex education, and defunding libraries that take steps to keep sexually explicit material away from children.