Democrats are rallying behind the first transgender member of Congress

At a Democratic caucus meeting Tuesday, Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) watched as colleagues reached out and offered their support for Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who will soon be sworn in as the first transgender member of Congress.

“We’ve got your back,” Balint recalled her representatives telling McBride. “We stand with you.”

At a Thursday event where new House freshmen were assigned new offices, McBride’s name was greeted with the loudest applause.

According to Balint, co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, many Democratic members are happy to welcome and meet McBride — not just as a queer history-maker, but as a new colleague whose reputation as an effective state legislator in Delaware preceded her to Washington.

The support has been intentionally loud, Balint said, because they also want to send an unequivocal message to House Republicans, who have targeted McBride with bigotry and bullying in recent days, that Democrats “will not back down” on transgender rights.

“We absolutely have to commit ourselves to this fight to protect the inherent dignity of everyone,” Balint said.

On Monday, Rep. Nancy Mace (RS.C.) a resolution calling for a ban on transgender women using Capitol bathrooms that match their gender identity. On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced a similar policy for Capitol bathrooms, locker rooms and changing rooms. That same day, Mace filed a bill that would extend such bans to federal facilities across the country.

Mace said her measures, which would require approval, are to protect women and girls, then launched a new one product line to take advantage of her attitude. She has previously advocated support for LGBTQ+ rights.

In issuing his bathroom rule, which falls under his purview as a speaker, Johnson said, “Women deserve only women’s spaces.” He also noted that all members have private bathrooms in their offices – although they may be far from the house floor.

The day before, Johnson had responded to a question about the issue by emphasizing the need to “treat all people with dignity and respect.”

Access to bathrooms has long been a problem for women at the Capitol, which initially operated on the assumption that lawmakers were men. Only after more and more women won seats in Congress and said there was a lack of facilities for them, the problem was solved.

With the latest action against McBride, Democrats say they are struggling to fight new discrimination in the same area — a setback they consider particularly egregious for its targeting of a single lawmaker, and extra alarming for its potential to harm other queers -people who visit or work in the Capitol.

“This incredibly vicious and cruel attack directed at (McBride) was certainly intended to dehumanize her before she’s even been sworn in, but it actually doesn’t just affect our first trans member of Congress,” Balint said. “It affects all the people who work on Capitol Hill who identify as trans and non-binary. It affects the reporters who cover the Hill who identify as trans and non-binary. And it also affects every one of our constituents who come into the halls of Congress to meet with us.”

Speaking out in opposition to the measures is about supporting McBride, who is “a serious legislator” and wants to tackle a series of tough issues without having to worry about where she can go to the bathroom, Balint said. But it’s also about “showing the LGBTQ community across the country that we’re standing up for them and pushing back.”

The debate follows an election cycle steeped in anti-transgender rhetoric, in which many Republicans — including President-elect Donald Trump — began mocking Democrats for their support of transgender equality as a central message in the campaign, worth hundreds of millions of dollars in collective advertising expenses.

“The Republican Party has been laser-focused on transgender inclusion as something it wants to roll back, and so the exciting addition of the first openly trans member of Congress has prompted a hideous reaction — which is (for them) engaging in an anno hominem -attacks that take the form of exclusion,” said Kate Redburn, co-director of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School.

Democrats have at times struggled to respond to Republican attacks. But in the past week, they appear to have landed on an approach from McBride’s own playbook in Delaware — where she won a statewide congressional seat not by running away from her transgender identity and support for queer rights, but by contextualizing them together with other important issues such as cost of living and access to health care.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) wrote on X Tuesday that she is proud to serve with McBride and that it was “disappointing to see Republicans pull stunts” attacking her.

“They should take a page out of Rep-Elect McBride’s book,” Pressley wrote, “and focus on actually governing.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (DN.Y.) also questioned Republicans’ decision to begin the next Congress by “bullying” McBride instead of focusing on real issues. “That’s what we’re doing?” he said.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who has a transgender grandson and has been outspoken against past anti-LGBTQ+ measures, struck a similar tone in an interview Thursday, calling the Republican measures attacking McBride “absolutely outrageous” and “completely out of line.”

“What a ridiculous focus this is,” she said. “There’s a need for many, many Americans who don’t have the health care they need, seniors who can’t afford their medications. Those are the things we should start working on, I’m sure that Sarah wants to start working on – and this is right off the deep end.”

In his own remarks, McBride has acknowledged what many see as the bigotry at the root of the Republican measures, but has also tried to focus the conversation on getting things done for his constituents.

“I’m not here to fight about bathrooms. I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to lower the costs that families face,” she said in a statement Wednesday. She said Johnson’s rules were an “effort to to distract from the real issues facing this country,” but that she wouldn’t let them distract her — even as she follows them.

On Thursday, she made it clear that she will work to make sure Capitol Hill is safe for everyone, including her LGBTQ+ constituents, but has no plans to allow “a right-wing culture war machine” to make her identity “the issue.”

Lisa Goodman, a longtime LGBTQ+ activist in Delaware and friend of McBride’s, said the representative-elect’s family and friends back home “are disappointed that this is how people who are supposed to be her colleagues are greeting her.”

But they’re not worried, Goodman said, because they know McBride is uniquely capable of navigating such waters.

“She can handle these attacks and stay focused on what’s the big picture — what’s important in the big picture — like nobody I’ve ever met,” Goodman said.

Goodman said McBride has a rare talent for winning people over, which will serve her well in the coming months as she gets to know her new colleagues — both Democrats and Republicans.

“She’s just a deeply good person, and my hope is that as her Republican colleagues in Congress get to know her, they’ll see her as a person and not as an unknown member of the trans community that they feel is OK to attack.” Goodman said.

Balint said several Republican House members have told her privately that they support the LGBTQ+ community and do not support divisive policies. She said she hopes McBride’s kindness and humanity in the face of such bullying will really bring those Republicans to her side — and maybe even inspire them to take a stand for her.

“It’s their time to finally show some courage,” Balint said. “I ask them to stand up for the basic, inherent dignity of all of us here in this building.”

Times staff writer Andrea Castillo in Washington contributed to this report.