It was Orion Rummler of the 19th who first reported this story.Learn more about Orion and his coverage of politics, gender, and policy.
Delaware was chosen to be represented by Sarah McBride. However, she is also being asked to advocate for all transgender Americans as the nation’s top transgender elected official. As more and more trans people fear for their rights and look to her to speak out, she must manage how to govern efficiently every day while working with colleagues who don’t accept her for who she is.
However, she thinks that in order to bring about significant change right now, she and the LGBTQ+ community must pick their battles carefully.
We cannot keep fighting every battle on Republican terms and territory. She asserted that this is true for her as a member of Congress, a Democrat, and a transgender person. She believes that the progressive movement as a whole, not only the LGBTQ+ rights movement, needs to alter its approach. She stated that, particularly in the event of a second Trump presidency, they must fight better, not harder.
She believes it will only lead to further attacks, so she won’t fall for the ruse about where she uses the restroom. Additionally, she is not an activist and did not run on a platform of activism, so she will not take up every battle that transgender Americans want her to. McBride thinks that by being committed to the work she was elected to perform for Delaware, she may influence people’s opinions, even those of her Republican colleagues.
According to her, we must restore the public’s perception of transgender people’s humanity and narrative. Being a complete human being and not being limited to just one aspect of who I am, even though I am proud of that aspect, is, in my opinion, the greatest good I can accomplish.
President Donald Trump sent a message to trans and nonbinary Americans on the day of his inauguration: their identities are not American. The 19th interviewed McBride for an hour in her congressional office two days later.
Overlooking the couch and coffee table where she works are framed pictures of her lengthy career in Delaware politics. A picture of McBride with former President Joe Biden is placed next to a picture of her and her late husband, Andy Cray. Her desk is a table that is constantly stocked with coffee and water cups. Behind her recliner is an American flag.
It’s good to have McBride here. And in spite of Republicans’ anti-trans agenda, she intends to concentrate on her own goals.
During the most sensitive political period in the history of the nation for transgender Americans, she was elected as the first transgender member of Congress. In a Republican-controlled Congress that has attacked her personally, anti-trans legislation has resurfaced since she took office at the beginning of January. Concurrently, the Trump administration is reorganizing the federal government to specifically target and eradicate transgender individuals from society.
The House decided last month to prohibit transgender women and girls from participating in school sports with other girls. On the House floor, Democrats ran a campaign opposing the bill, claiming it would target all young women who participate in school sports. Opponents of the measure, which portrays trans women as men, delivered passionate statements. Among them was McBride.
“I will not allow the Republican Conference to dictate my agenda, my focus, or, in this instance, what a transgender person’s first floor speech in Congress will be,” McBride stated. She claimed that this bill is a Republican-made issue rather than a genuine one that requires discussion or legislation. She wants to dictate the wording of her first floor address.
McBride was the first freshman Democrat to file a measure in the 119th Congress, while House Republicans advocated for a ban on transgender sports. She collaborated on a bipartisan bill to combat credit restoration frauds with Young Kim, a Republican from California.
She claimed that almost all of her coworkers treat her with respect behind the scenes, despite the well reported attacks on her by congressional Republicans and the widespread transphobia demonstrated by some members. She is aware that the majority of them would oppose LGBTQ+ nondiscrimination rules, but it is irrelevant at the time of the encounter. She asserted that we must be prepared to cooperate with those with whom we disagree if we want our nation to advance.
She remarked, “I do believe that we have succumbed to strategies that feel deeply reassuring to ourselves, but do not ultimately invite people into our coalition to grow our ranks.” Our leaders, including myself, must act on what is effective rather than what is always enjoyable. Those things can be tense at times.
When McBride consented to abide by House Speaker Mike Johnson’s directive prohibiting her from using the women’s toilets on Capitol Hill, those tensions were evident. She was ridiculed by a lot of trans Americans. She was referred to as a coward online for cooperating rather than objecting. According to some, Republicans will take a mile for trans rights if they are given an inch. Some asked why she would even make her stance on the bathroom ban public.
However, McBridenever had no intention of using Capitol Hill’s public bathrooms. Shortly after winning her election, she had taken that decision in private since she knew it wouldn’t be safe for her. Additionally, she had to publicly address the ban because it was directed at her. Every interaction she had with the hundreds of reporters orbiting the Hill would turn into a question about where she uses the restroom if she didn’t say anything.
“I can see why it is so painful for someone in the community to witness someone else being subjected to that policy, both viscerally and emotionally,” she added. I am aware that when you are initially starting out, people experience your highs and lows viscerally. I can therefore see why people had that reaction.
According to McBride, trans persons must constantly make concessions in order to live and work, even when confronted with laws that violate their dignity. Given the number of people observing them, particularly those seeking any excuse to force them out, transgender persons need to concentrate on the work for which they were employed.
I am a human. “I’m trying my hardest,” McBride stated. Being a martyr is not why I am here. Being a member of Congress is why I’m here.
McBride was more interested in discussing policy than her gender identity during her stint as a state senator and during her congressional race. In the face of a wave of attacks on transgender individuals, she believes that sticking to that strategy is the best way to achieve LGBTQ+ rights. She delivered the message on February 1 at the Human Rights Campaign’s annual dinner in New York, which is attended by the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group.
There is no selling out when you meet them where they are. “This work is what it is,” she said. The larger economic demands of the American people must be linked to this battle and these attacks. We have to pull back the curtain on the fact that they are using trans people as pawns in their broader effort to gut the federal government in order to line the pockets of Donald Trump s best friends, all at the expense of working people.
I’m not going to be a pawn. She addressed the crowd, “I refuse to give them that power, and I refuse to let them get away with it.”
McBride, a transgender member of Congress, is not interested in being categorized. She wants to work on the issues that got her elected: expanding health care and fighting rising costs of living. She is a member of both the Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Committee on Space, Science, and Technology. In recent primetime TV appearances, she denounced the Trump administration not for its attacks on trans people, but for the administration sattacks on federal agenciesthat provide crucial services at home and abroad.
On CNN sNews Central, McBride spoke out against the Trump administration s plans toshutterthe U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, as a gross and unconstitutional power grab that will throw vulnerable women in oppressive regimes under the bus.
If they can get away with this with USAID, they can do it anywhere. And that means that no part of the federal government, including programs like Medicare and Social Security, will be safe from this administration, she told CNN s Brianna Keilar.
Amidreportsthat House Republicans want tocut Medicaid to fund Trump s policy agenda, McBride took to MSNBC sThe Weekendto denounce the proposal as the great betrayal from Republicans that promised to lower costs for families once Trump took office.
In the weeks after Trump returned to the White House, the federal government removed evidence of trans people fromagency websites,deniedtrans Americans new passports, and proposedoverhauling the U.S. education systembased, in part, on the need to prevent kids from learning about being trans. Families of young trans people in Maryland, New York and Massachusetts havelost access to gender-affirming carefollowing Trump s executive orders. Trans people in the military arefightingto keep their jobs.
Before that avalanche of anti-trans policies took hold, McBride acknowledged the fear and exhaustion that so many transgender people are feeling. Their anger makes sense, she said. But in the face of so much vitriol, responding with calmness and compassion can be radical.
Not only does it take the wind out of the sails of those who want to attack and foster conflict and politicize people s very existence, but I think because of the very clear visual contrast, it can serve to open hearts and change minds and help to combat the disinformation, the misinformation and the caricatures that have been fomented by the far right, she said.
That s the strategy she wants to use in Congress. And, during a moment when transgender Americans are under attack like never before, it s the one that she hopes will spark real change.