Congress
Sarah McBride’s strength on full display in Congress
Trailblazing lawmaker spoke at Politics and Prose at the Wharf on Feb. 12
Congress has been in session fewer than 30 days but already its first out transgender member has attracted more animus and admirers than a typical freshman in the U.S. House of Representatives.
In her first one-on-one interview with an out trans journalist, U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.) told the Washington Blade on Feb. 12 she seeks to emulate the example of another trailblazer who came face to face with hate and oppression as he broke barriers: Baseball icon Jackie Robinson. But she started with a caveat.
“I, in no way would compare what I’m going through with what he went through, what our community is going through, with what people of color have gone through in this country,” McBride said before making her point. “I think that Jackie Robinson, like so many trailblazers throughout history, understood the microscope that a ‘first’ is under, understood that strength is often in being dignified and graceful under attack.”
McBride, 34, was born two decades after Robinson died. She, like many of her generation, came to know the story of the first Black player in Major League Baseball from the 2013 film, “42,” starring the late Chadwick Boseman and Harrison Ford.
“And in that movie, one thing that is said to Jackie Robinson as he prepared to become the player with the Brooklyn Dodgers is that if you respond to a slur, they’ll only hear your slur. If you meet a punch with a punch, they’ll say you’re the aggressor. And I think that is true in a lot of circumstances, and it has informed the way I and others have conducted ourselves, I think, in the position of being a ‘first.’”
McBride spoke to the Blade following an event at Politics and Prose at the Wharf in D.C., to celebrate “Cleavage,” the new memoir by bestselling author Jennifer Finney Boylan. McBride served as Boylan’s interviewer, posing questions about the book, just as Boylan did for McBride when she promoted her first memoir in 2018, “Tomorrow Will Be Different.”
Both Boylan and activist Mara Keisling are models for the congresswoman, she said, in “the compassion and care and thoughtfulness and the calmness” that they exude in their approach to the work they do. McBride said she knew throughout her campaign and in now serving her constituents in Delaware that she would come under attack from the right, and that trans people in particular would feel just as wounded by those attacks.
“They’re going to throw things at me and my job will be not to give them a response they seek,” she told the Blade. “They will misgender me and my job will be not to respond in the way that they hope I will respond. And people seem to understand that in the abstract. I think it’s harder in the reality when you’re seeing it, because when you are a ‘first,’ people viscerally feel your highs, but they also viscerally feel the lows. And I think it’s understandable that when people see behavior toward me in Congress, they feel it themselves.”
“And so it hurts. And I get that. And I am sorry that that there is that effect.”
“But it doesn’t change the need for me to, I believe, not give them the response they need, they want, not incentivize that behavior by giving them that response,” said McBride. “And to give an alternative view of who trans people are to the public, because we have been caricatured by the right as self-obsessed, as hysterical, as the ‘pronoun police.’ And I think it is important for us to have a broader diversity of messages, messengers, and images of who trans people are.”
McBride was asked who inspired her to choose Jackie Robinson as a role model, instead of someone like Rosa Parks, the Black woman arrested in Alabama for refusing to give up her seat on a crowded bus to a white person. She cited the support of her parents, acknowledging that not every trans person is so fortunate.
“My journey coming out to my parents and walking with them to not only coming out publicly, but just this entire journey, I have seen the power of grace in opening hearts and changing minds and moving people,” she said. “My parents were wonderful from the start. I was very lucky from the start, but there is no question that they’ve experienced growth during the course of the last decade to 12 years since coming out.”
“And I think part of that has been because I’ve been willing to walk with them at their pace,” said McBride. “Sometimes I’m pulling them a little bit, but I’m always holding their hand. I’m always within arm’s distance.”
McBride is a widow, a life-changing experience that followed by four days the joy of being a newlywed. Her husband, Andrew Cray, a trans man, succumbed to oral cancer on Aug. 28, 2014. A decade later, she said Andy is never far from her thoughts.
“I think about it every day,” said McBride. “You know, he was both principled and pragmatic in the way he sought to create change. And I have always sought to emulate that and reflect that approach … Andy was my sherpa into change-making.”
A change in her own self-confidence followed her election to Congress, she said. As she struggled, she considered, “What would Andy do?”
“This has been the first time where I’ve wondered, I’ve questioned whether I’m hitting the right note, and what he would think. I think he would agree. I think he would approve. But I’ve struggled with it.”
But amid the struggle, McBride still finds joy.
She recounted a recent experience with a man she described as one of her late husband’s best friends, an advocate working to expand access to healthcare for the LGBTQ community.
McBride said he paid her a visit in her office on Capitol Hill, wearing a tie that had belonged to Andy. He provided validation that, she said, “Andy would have completely approved of what I have done and what I am doing.”
“What was amazing in that moment, as I was getting that validation from my friend and Andy’s best friend, was I thought I had lost my wedding ring. And it’s a miracle that I had been able to keep it for a decade,” she recalled. “I just came to the conclusion that I would never get it back and that it was lost for good. We’re having this conversation—and I talk with my hands—and I hit my purse and it falls over and the wedding ring falls right out. So, it’s this beautiful, beautiful moment.”
(VIDEO BY DAWN ENNIS)
Congress
Ogles faces bipartisan backlash over anti-gay social media post
Tenn. congressman blamed the comment on staffer
U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), who represents Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District, is facing backlash from LGBTQ advocates and fellow Republicans after a social media post declared that “homosexuality has no place in America.”
“Homosexuality has no place in America. Happy Nuclear Family Month,” the congressman wrote in a post on X that was later deleted.
According to the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, an estimated 6.3 percent of U.S. adults identify as LGBTQ.
Following widespread criticism, Ogles removed the post and blamed it on a staff member.
“The post was stupid, hurtful and a complete distraction from my America First focus. The employee has been reprimanded,” Ogles said in a statement.
The Washington Blade reached out to Ogles’s office for comment but did not receive a response by press time.
Among those condemning the message was U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), who called it “absolutely idiotic” in a social media post.
“Homosexuality exists. In America,” Lawler wrote on X. “In fact, Andy, you have family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and constituents who are gay and lesbian. It doesn’t make them less than or somehow unworthy of being an American.”
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) also criticized Ogles’s remarks.
“For all of recorded history, homosexuals have been a part of humanity,” Cruz told TMZ DC. “I think the behavior of consenting adults is their business.”
Chris Sanders, the executive director for the Tennessee Equality Project and Tennessee Equality Project Foundation provided a statement to the Blade about Ogles’s comment.
“The Tennessee Nuclear Family Month resolution has really backfired on conservatives by ensnaring Congressman Ogles in scandal. He used the resolution as a pretext to say that our community doesn’t belong in America, resulting in incredible backlash from across the partisan divide,” Sanders said. “It is a good opportunity for him to pause and reflect on whether it’s time for him to resign. Fighting one’s own constituents is not the purpose of serving in Congress.”
Human Rights Campaign Senior Press Secretary Jarred Keller provided a statement to the Blade regarding Ogles’s comments.
“LGBTQ+ people are woven into the fabric of America, and any politician who questions that is severely out of touch with reality. When so many people are worried about whether they can afford gas to get to work or groceries for their families, the last thing we need is right-wing Republicans targeting marginalized communities with hateful attacks,” Keller said. “Representative Ogles should spend less time attacking LGBTQ+ people and start addressing the issues that actually matter, because last I checked, our community isn’t the reason families are struggling to make ends meet.”
The controversy comes as Tennessee continues to advance legislation affecting LGBTQ residents. The state already has several laws on the books that LGBTQ advocates have criticized, including the Adult Entertainment Act, enacted in 2023, which restricts certain “adult cabaret performances.”
Lawmakers have also introduced additional measures this legislative session, including the “No Pride Flag or Month Act,” which would prohibit state employees, volunteers, and agents from displaying Pride flags or participating in Pride observances while acting in an official capacity.
Another proposal, the “Banning Bostock Act” would seek to limit the application of state anti-discrimination protections based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. Tennessee lawmakers have also passed other measures restricting LGBTQ rights and access to gender-affirming health care.
Congress
10 HIV/AIDS activists arrested on Capitol Hill
Protesters interrupted Secretary of State Marco Rubio during hearing
U.S. Capitol Police on Tuesday arrested 10 HIV/AIDS activists who protested Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
The activists from Housing Works, Health GAP, the Treatment Action Group, and ACT UP held signs and chanted “Rubio’s Cuts Kill People with AIDS, PEPFAR Saves Lives!” before officers removed them from Dirksen Senate Office Building room where the hearing took place.
A media advisory the Washington Blade received before the protest noted “mounting evidence of Rubio’s attempts to sabotage PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, U.S. bilateral AIDS program) and vital global health programs.” The press release specifically highlighted three specific points:
• Eliminating Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) lifesaving PEPFAR programs, which currently support approximately 12 million people on HIV treatment across 51 countries. Instead, Rubio intends to dismantle CDC’s current PEPFAR role and stamp out their global footprint in disease outbreak and surveillance for pandemics beyond HIV. Experts including eight former CDC Directors under Republican and Democratic administrations have spoken out against this effort to dismantle PEPFAR. Recent PEPFAR data showed sharp decreases in the numbers of people newly tested, diagnosed, and treated for HIV, but these data would have been even worse if not for CDC’s PEPFAR programs.
• Withholding $2 billion in Congressionally appropriated FY25 funding, including $330 million to combat HIV, $250 million to fight malaria, $320 million for maternal and child health programs, and nearly $650 million in global health security programs.
• Negotiating secret bilateral deals blackmailing African governments by demanding access to critical mineral wealth as a condition of access to HIV treatment and prevention funding.
The groups have staged several protests against the Trump-Vance administration’s HIV/AIDS policies since it took office.
Rubio on Jan. 28, 2025, issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during a freeze on nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending. HIV/AIDS service providers around the world with whom the Blade has spoken say PEPFAR cuts and the loss of funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which officially closed on July 1, 2025, has severely impacted their work.
The State Department last September announced PEPFAR will distribute lenacapavir in countries with high prevalence rates.
The New York Times last summer reported Vought “apportioned” only $2.9 billion of $6 billion that Congress set aside for PEPFAR for fiscal year 2025. (PEPFAR in the coming fiscal year will use funds allocated in fiscal year 2024.)
Bipartisan opposition in the U.S. Senate prompted the Trump-Vance administration last July withdraw a proposal to cut $400 million from PEPFAR’s budget. Vought a few weeks later said he would use a “pocket rescission” to cancel $4.9 billion for HIV/AIDS prevention and global health programs and other foreign aid assistance initiatives that Congress had already approved.
The White House in January expanded the global gag rule to ban U.S. foreign aid for groups that promote “gender ideology.” President Ronald Reagan in 1985 implemented the original regulation, also known as the “Mexico City” policy, which bans U.S. foreign aid for groups that support abortion and/or offer abortion-related services. Advocacy groups insist the expanded rule will adversely impact HIV prevention efforts around the world.
“Congress must stop Secretary Rubio before he dismantles PEPFAR,” said Treatment Action Group’s Kendall Martinez-Wright. “Rubio continues to defy the will of Congress and the American people who want this program restored and repaired. Under his leadership he is diverting funding and trying to eliminate the essential role of technical experts in global HIV and global health, while program performance is flailing.”
Congress
Eight Democrats break with party as House advances ‘Don’t Say Trans’ bill
Measure not expected to pass in Senate
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a federal “Don’t Say Trans” bill on Wednesday, attempting to force teachers to out transgender students nationwide.
The bill, House Resolution 2616, also called the “Stopping Indoctrination and Protecting Kids Act,” would require schools to get parental consent before allowing students to use their preferred, rather than originally assigned, gender markers, pronouns, or preferred name on any school form, and to use any sex-based accommodations, including locker rooms or bathrooms.
The bill amends Section 8526 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, legislation that allows for federal aid to help elementary and secondary education programs — particularly those under its lowest-income Title I-A program — to stop allocating funds to any education that teaches concepts “related to gender ideology.”
This is directly related to Executive Order 14168, also known as the “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” order, one of President Donald Trump’s first executive orders of his second term. It requires the federal government to recognize only sex assigned at birth and dismiss gender identity rather than sex.
The bill was sponsored by U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) and passed by a 217-198 margin. The vote fell mostly along party lines; however, eight Democrats voted for its passage. They were U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), Donald Davis (D-N.C.), Cleo Fields (D-La.), Laura Gillen (D-N.Y.), Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas), Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), and Eugene Vindman (D-Va.).
Proponents of the bill argue a child’s gender identity should be directed by parents at home rather than in public schools.
Critics say this is dangerous and will force students to be outed by their teachers to parents — some of whom may not be supportive of their gender identity — which could lead to violence or possibly conversion therapy.
California Congressman Mark Takano, chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, spoke on the House floor while the bill was being debated.
“Republicans claim to be the party of small government, but they have no problem bringing the full force of the federal government down against children. The GOP thinks they can legislate transgender people out of existence with this inhumane Don’t Say Trans bill, but all they’re doing is making life worse for a small minority of already-vulnerable children,” Takano said. “I spent 24 years as an educator where I worked with hundreds of high school students and their parents. Most children go to their parents when they need help or are struggling — including transgender children — but not all parents are accepting. The forced outing provision of this bill puts teachers in an impossible situation by requiring them to out trans kids to their parents in certain situations — even if the teacher knows the student will likely face physical abuse. Students like these are who Republicans want to put in immediate physical danger with this bill.”
The Washington Blade talked to Tyler Hack’s, founder and executive director of the trans advocacy organization and Christopher Street Project PAC, following the bill’s passage.
“Most queer kids go to their families when they are figuring out who they are, and then not all queer kids have that option,” Hack told the Blade. “If this became law, it would harm those already vulnerable kids who rely on school as a safe place and might not have a safe place at home.”
They explained this is not about protecting parents’ rights to know what is going on with their children, but rather the weaponization of trans identity that has become a mainstream Republican ideal pushed by the Trump-Vance administration.
“Young people deserve the space to figure out who they are without the federal government interfering in their lives,” they said. “It is beyond the pale, or rather it should be beyond the pale, and has become a norm for Republicans in Congress to villainize kids, because I mean, this bill targets kids, it’s in the name of the bill, and it’s in the implications.”
Hack continued, saying that amid the rising cost of everyday necessities — from gas to groceries — and while the Trump-Vance administration continues to defund programs intended to help the most vulnerable Americans while creating slush funds for political allies, this is not what Congress should be focusing on.
“At a time when people are really struggling, and politicians need to be focused on lowering costs, they’re using queer and trans kids as political pawns,” Hack said. “They want to divide and conquer this country, and we need to stand up against them and unite behind values of inclusion and of trust in our teachers.”
David Stacy, the Human Rights Campaign’s vice president of government affairs, provided a statement to the Blade.
“Trans kids are not a political agenda — they are students who deserve safety and affirmation at school like anyone else,” Stacy said. “Despite the many pressing issues facing our nation, House Republicans continue their bizarre obsession with trans people. HR 2616 does not protect children. It targets them. This bill is cruel, and we’ll continue to fight to ensure it never becomes law.”
The bill will move to the U.S. Senate in the coming days and weeks, but it must first be reviewed by a Senate committee before leadership schedules it for a floor vote, where it will need 60 votes to pass.
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