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
Five HIV/AIDS activists arrested outside Susan Collins’s D.C. office
Protesters demanded full PEPFAR funding
U.S. Capitol Police on Tuesday arrested five HIV/AIDS activists who protested outside U.S. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine)’s office in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.
A press release that Housing Works, Health GAP, and Disability Voters of Maine issued notes 30 HIV/AIDS activists “carried out an act of civil disobedience” at Collins’s D.C. office and “delivered mock ‘bodybags'” to her office in Portland, Maine.
“Activists were reacting to deadly harms caused by Collins’s unwillingness to hold Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought accountable for illegally obstructing the release of already appropriated funding for lifesaving HIV treatment and prevention,” reads the press release.
Elizabeth Koke, senior director of brand strategy for Housing Works, told the Washington Blade that Housing Works CEO Charles King is among those who were arrested in D.C. The press release notes 30 HIV/AIDS activists participated in the protest.
Activists since the Trump-Vance administration took office in January have demanded full PEPFAR funding.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio Jan. 28 issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the 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, has severely impacted their work. (The State Department last month announced PEPFAR will distribute lenacapavir, a breakthrough HIV prevention drug, in countries with high prevalence rates.)
The New York Times in August 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 in July withdraw a proposal to cut $400 million from PEPFAR’s budget. Vought on Aug. 29 said he would use a “pocket rescission” to cancel $4.9 billion in foreign aid that Congress had already approved.
The federal government has been shut down since Oct. 1.
“In July, we applauded Collins’s willingness to fight for people with HIV which resulted in a temporary reprieve from further unlawful cuts,” said Health GAP Executive Director Asia Russell. “In response, Vought has gone behind Collins’s back. Why isn’t she fighting back? We cannot allow Collins to refuse to take action now — just because Vought is violating the law doesn’t mean she can break her promise to people with HIV.”
Collins chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee.
“Collins has said that PEPFAR funds are not reaching people in need, yet she refuses to use the full power of her position to end the political obstruction and lawlessness while people continue to die,” said Marie Follayttar of Disability Voters of Maine. “The consequences of her inaction, and of her votes, will be measured in body bags around the world.”
The protesters’ press release notes two specific demands for Collins:
• Fully restore PEPFAR programming by directing Vought to release withheld PEPFAR funding consistent with Congressional appropriations
• Include the release of withheld PEPFAR funding as part of her 6-point plan to re-open government
“Senator Collins has been the Senate champion for PEPFAR and was responsible for saving the program from $400 million in cuts just three months ago,” Blake Kernen, Collins’s press secretary, told the Blade on Wednesday. “It was difficult to understand what the protesters wanted or their message.”
“Many entered the office, sat on the ground, and used a loud noisemaker, which made it impossible to hear,” said Kernen. “A member of Sen. Collins’s staff offered to speak with the group, but they continued to shout over her and refused the offer.”
Congress
Mike Waltz confirmed as next UN ambassador
Trump nominated former national security advisor in May
The U.S. Senate on Sept. 19 confirmed former U.S. Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) as the next U.S. ambassador to the U.N.
The Florida Republican had been the national security advisor until President Donald Trump in May tapped him after U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) withdrew her nomination in order to ensure Republicans maintained their narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Senators approved Waltz’s nomination by a 47-43 vote margin.
“Thank you President Trump and the U.S. Senate for your trust and confidence to Make the UN Great Again,” said Waltz on X.
The U.N. General Assembly is taking place this week in New York. Trump is scheduled to speak on Tuesday.
Congress
State Department urged to restore LGBTQ-specific information in human rights reports
Congressional Equality Caucus sent Secretary of State Marco Rubio a letter on Sept. 9
The Congressional Equality Caucus has called upon the State Department to once again include LGBTQ and intersex people in their annual human rights report.
U.S. Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), Julie Johnson (D-Texas), and Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who co-chair the caucus’s International LGBTQI+ Rights Task Force, spearheaded a letter sent to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sept. 9.
The 2024 human rights report the State Department released last month did not include LGBTQ-specific references. Jessica Stern, the former special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights under the Biden-Harris administration who co-founded the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice, described the removal of LGBTQ and intersex people and other groups from the report as “deliberate erasure.”
“We strongly oppose your decision to remove the subsection on Acts of Violence Criminalization, and Other Abuses Based on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity or Expression, or Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC Subsection) from the State Department’s Annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices (Human Rights Reports),” reads the letter. “We urge you to restore this information, or else ensure it is integrated throughout each human rights report.”
Congress requires the State Department to release a human rights report each year.
The Congressional Equality Caucus’s letter points out the human rights reports “have been a critical source of information on human rights violations and abuses against LGBTQI+ persons around the world.” It specifically notes consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized in more than 60 countries, and the 2017 human rights report included “details on the state-sponsored and societal violence against LGBTQI+ persons in Chechnya, including extrajudicial killings.”
Immigration Equality in response to the 2024 human rights report said the reports “serve as key evidence for asylum seekers, attorneys, judges, and advocates who rely on them to assess human rights conditions and protection claims worldwide.”
“The information in these reports is critical — not just for human rights advocates — but also for Americans traveling abroad,” reads the Congressional Equality Caucus’s letter. “LGBTQI+ Americans and their families must continue to have access to comprehensive, reliable information about a country’s human rights record so they can plan travel and take appropriate precautions.”
The caucus’s full letter can be read here.
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