Sarah McBride reflects on becoming the first trans member of Congress

Americana: How do you balance the work you want to do – which is broad, and covers a lot of different policies — with the demand to be a spokesperson for trans people?

Sarah McBride: Well, I’ve been a spokesperson for the movement, and there are people doing that work. To do right by the LGBTQ community, I need to simply be the best member of Congress that I can be, and show that when you elect trans people or LGBTQ people or people of any underrepresented background, they can do the job as well as anyone else.

That’s the only way I can actually fulfill that responsibility. If someone goes down there and only focuses on one set of issues, they’re actually going to undermine the capacity to get even more diverse representation down there. That’s because, fundamentally, what voters want is a member of Congress who’s doing the full job.

Americana: That’s an interesting way to put it. There have been some anti-identity politics Republicans — I’m thinking of Marjorie Taylor Greene — who have been much more reactive to things bubbling up online than to any specific policy goals.

Sarah McBride: The reality is that far right-wing MAGA Republicans and the weird dredges of the right-wing internet are the only places that are really talking about identity politics at the expense of everything else. Right? Democrats are out there talking about kitchen table issues. We’re out there talking about the cost of childcare and housing and healthcare and about the threat of gun violence. And at the same time you see these professional provocateurs, who are performing as politicians, focusing on these weird culture warrior wedge issues of the moment.

Look, we have to be clear that there are real differences of opinion on a whole host of issues around LGBTQ rights and abortion rights. But on issues of LGBTQ equality, on trans rights, in particular, this weird obsession with kids and what whether a kid can play on a team with their friends after school, or whether they can get the health care they need, or trying to get between a kid and their family; not only is that out of the mainstream of political thought, but it’s also completely out of the list of priorities that everyday people have.

People are not waking up in the middle of the night, concerned with whether their 10th grade child’s friend, who’s trans, is playing on the team with their friends. I think that’s one of the reasons why when right wing politicians, who clearly live in the dredges of the internet, make these issues central to their campaigns, they lose. We saw it in Michigan in 2022. We just had the Republican primary here, and the only “issue” ads that were run anywhere were focused on trans issues. The candidate who ran those ads lost. So it’s not even working for Republican politicians with Republican voters in Republican primaries.

Americana: Where do you see yourself actually working with Republicans if you win?

Sarah McBride: Look, there are a whole host of issues where you can find common ground. I still think that you can find it on immigration. We had a border security deal that was negotiated between Democrats and conservative Republicans, and the only reason why it didn’t pass was because Donald Trump decided that he wanted the issue to fear-monger around in the election.

Here in Delaware, I worked really closely with my Republican colleagues on expanding access to oral healthcare in rural communities. We worked with dentists, we worked with dental hygienists, we worked with insurers, we worked with hospitals, we worked with advocates, and we worked with one another to craft some solutions around licensure that have resulted in previously closed clinics reopening and serving particularly low-income Delawareans who for too long were unable to access a quality dental care provider.

One of the dynamics we have in our politics right now is recency bias, where we see the chaos of the last two years with a Republican House and go: Well, there’s no way that anything can ever get done on a bipartisan basis in Washington. We forget that during the first two years of the Biden-Harris administration, a lot got done, and a lot got done with bipartisan support.

Americana: What would change for trans people if the Trump-Vance ticket wins?

Sarah McBride: I think it’s clear that Donald Trump and JD Vance would seek to cut off healthcare for millions and millions of people in this country, whether that’s LGBTQ people seeking health care, whether that’s families trying to, or parents wanting to, have a child through IVF, whether that’s a woman who’s seeking an abortion.

But we also have to recognize that LGBTQ people are people, and all of the other horrific things that Donald Trump and JD Vance want to do would also have a horrible impact on their lives. Right? Trans people are also retirees. They’re on Social Security, they’re on Medicare, and we know that Donald Trump and JD Vance would seek to gut those programs. Trans people are starting families, and we know that instead of improving public schools and expanding access to child care, Donald Trump and JD, Vance would seek to defund public schools and child care in this country. The list goes on, but all of this is part of a larger, far right wing agenda that seemed to take this country back, not just in the 1950s but really the 1890s and these attacks are all connected.

Americana: I’m thinking back to 2016. You give a speech at the DNC, and Trump is not talking about trans issues; he’s posing with a rainbow flag. In 2020 and 2024 he’s made this a much bigger part of his campaign. Has there been some backsliding since 2016?

Sarah McBride: Progress happens in fits and starts. Is the policy reality for LGBTQ people in this country better than it was in 2016? In many cases, no. It’s worse. But is it better than it was 30 years ago and 50 years ago? Yes. There has been a backsliding on policy in a lot of places in this country, and here certainly would be a backsliding in policy, on so many issues, should Donald Trump and JD Vance win in November.

Beyond all of that, we’ve seen the rhetoric become coarser and crueler over the last few years. I think that that’s one example of a larger coarseness and cruelty that has only increased in our politics. But I also think the backsliding we’ve seen is the last gasp of a dying movement that knows that the clock is ticking on the long term political efficacy of these types of attacks. Eventually, tragically, they will move on to a new bogey-person, once they realize that the country doesn’t hate us. They’re probably going to start realizing that pretty soon. I keep waiting for them to realize it, election after election, when it doesn’t work.

Americana: One way I’ve seen this play out in the presidential campaign is that Tim Walz signed transgender “sanctuary” legislation, and Republicans have attacked that, saying that this is going to steal kids away from parents. What’s the response when Republicans split up this issue, and say they’re focused not on adults but on protecting minors?

Sarah McBride: They realized in 2016, with the backlash [to the bathroom bill] in North Carolina, that going after adults didn’t work. So, now they’re going after young people. I think that the movement needs to realize that there are still conversations to have with people that can open hearts and change minds. There are a lot of people who are still just entering this conversation, and we need to educate people on the diversity of experience that exists in our country, in humanity and, yes, within the LGBTQ community.

The bigger picture here is that we’ve lost the capacity to have conversations and bridge disagreements. We have lost the capacity to have to meet people where they are in too many instances. The community and the movement is going to have to have some important and difficult conversations itself about the balance between in-community conversations and conversations with the rest of the country

Americana: What do you mean?

Sarah McBride: I think that right now, in advocacy, there’s a lot of signaling to your existing chorus that you’re saying and doing exactly the right thing, and not as much intentionality about reaching people where they are. Change-making is the art of addition. You have to have conversations. You have to allow people to grow. You have to create space for people to grow. And the fact that there is still room for growth for some people does not make them evil.

As elected officials, we should be modeling the kind of approach to citizenship that we need. That’s a willingness to recognize that diversity of thought is going to exist, that people are going to hold positions that might be very, very, very, personally hurtful to some of us. Maybe we’re going to have to actually get some people who don’t start out agreeing with us to agree with us. That’s what I’ve done in the General Assembly, on a whole host of issues. The larger progressive movement, the larger movement for social change in this country, probably has to have similar conversations amongst itself, about whether it is engaging in the most effective change-making strategies.

There is a growing fear that you’re going to be shouted down on the internet if you use terminology that’s not acceptable, right? I’m talking even about people on our side fearing that if they use, for instance, pro-business language to articulate support for equality, or if they use the language of faith to articulate support for equality, or if they use the language of patriotism to articulate support for equality, that they will get shouted down by our own side. Too often, we give up tools for change in order to show our own side that we are the purest and the most up-to-date on every every bit of terminology. That’s what I mean.

Americana: You’ve known Joe Biden well for a long time. He was out very early on trans rights; as long ago as 2012, he was calling it the civil rights issue of our time. What’s your sense of why?

Sarah McBride: A couple of things. One, I think Joe Biden is where most people actually are on this issue. He just wants people to be treated with dignity and respect. He wants people to feel loved and be seen, to live and thrive in our society. When you present Joe Biden with a question about whether a person of any background should be guaranteed equal rights and equal opportunity, the man is going to say yes, absolutely, because that’s just who he is.

Two, Delaware’s a small state. You get to know people who are different than you, and it builds up a level of empathy and compassion. Joe Biden is a product of Delaware and that state of “neighbors mentality” that we have. Two, I think that Joe Biden is carrying on Beau Biden’s legacy. He watched Beau become one of the first statewide elected officials in Delaware to endorse marriage equality, and watched him champion the gender identity nondiscrimination bill. Would Joe Biden be in the right place on these issues without Beau’s legacy? I think so. But that legacy makes it that much more personal for him.

Americana: The flip side here is that there are Republicans in Congress, who’d be your colleagues next year, who do not buy into this. I covered Marie Newman, who has a child who identifies as trans and had a trans flag outside of her office; Greene responded by putting up a sign that said “there are two genders.” How would you respond to that sort of attack?

Sarah McBride: I’m just going to keep walking forward and doing what I’ve done here in Delaware: Roll up my sleeves, dive into the details, bring people together, deliver real progress. And those folks can go off with their weird, childish political antics. Yeah, they’re going to be weird about me, but these are also the Republicans that are never going to work with any Democrat on any issue. They’re there as professional provocateurs, to sow discord and chaos, and get likes on whatever social media platform the big boss tells them they’re allowed to be on today. Sadly, that has just destroyed their capacity to be a responsible governing caucus. But I know there are Republicans in Congress who are willing to work with Democrats, who will be willing to work with me.