Sarah McBride Aims to Be First Openly Trans Member of Congress

Delaware state Senator Sarah McBride on Monday announced she is running for the House of Representatives. If she wins the election next November, she would become the first openly transgender member of Congress, taking office at a time of rapidly escalating attacks on trans and LGBTQ people.

In a campaign video posted to Twitter, McBride highlighted the right’s attacks on teachers and education, the high cost of prescription drugs, and her own work passing paid family and medical leave as a state senator in Delaware.

She told The New York Times she is also looking to use her campaign to talk about gun safety, reproductive rights, affordable early childhood education, and elder care.

McBride is running to replace Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester in Delaware’s at-large House seat. Blunt Rochester, the first woman and Black representative in the state, is leaving the seat to run for Senate and replace Democratic Senator Tom Carper, who is retiring.

McBride, 32, has broken political barriers before. She was the first openly trans woman to intern at the White House in 2012, the first openly trans person to speak at the Democratic National Convention in 2016, and she became the highest elected trans politician in the country when she won her state Senate seat in 2020.

“I think there was a false sense of security that a lot of people had over the last decade. There was a sense that if we simply worked for it, change was inevitable. But the reality is that inevitably is the exception in our nation’s history,” McBride told The 19th about her decision to run for Congress.

McBride’s run comes as the rights of LGBTQ and trans people in America are under renewed attack. The Human Rights Campaign found that the 2023 legislative session was the worst year on record for anti-LGBTQ legislation, and more than 75 anti-LGBTQ bills have already been signed into law. Nearly half of the bills introduced this year target trans people in particular, including bathroom bans, gender-affirming care bans, and transgender sports bans.

Still, McBride told The 19th, she finds hope in the fact that previous generations—including LGBTQ Americans—overcame the seemingly insurmountable odds before them.

“From Stonewall to the steps of the Supreme Court, it has always been in our biggest challenges that we take our most significant steps forward,” she said. “And I truly believe that if we summon our hope, and we persevere, that we can ensure that the story of this moment will not be the story of bigotry and backlash, but of progress and pride.”

We already know that Texas Governor Greg Abbott wants people to be able to make citizens’ arrests of anyone who aids and abets the act of seeking an abortion. You can’t do that in Texas. But if you own a pit bull that tears into a human being’s flesh, all is cool.

According to the San Antonio Report, the GOP governor went on a veto spree last weekend, in part because he was miffed that a property tax relief bill he was pushing failed to pass. He vetoed 77 bills—among them, the Ramon Najera Act, named after an 81-year-old man who was mauled to death in San Antonio in February by two pit bull mixes. Evidently, according to the Report, people letting their vicious dogs roam neighborhoods unleashed is kind of a thing in San Antone.

The bill was sponsored by Democrats, so it probably never had much of a chance. Abbott argued that existing local laws were sufficient, and to be fair, the owners of the killer dogs in question were jailed. Still, it’s funny to hear a very conservative Republican governor complain about the “overcriminalization” of any illegal activity. Proponents of the law argue that the loose dogs are a genuine menace and a stronger message needs to be sent to the owners.

People killed by violent dogs aren’t the only humans who were on the business end of Abbott’s version of compassion in the last few days. He also rescinded two local laws in Austin and Dallas that provided outside workers a right to a certain amount of shade and water breaks.

He did so in the midst of a massive heat wave.

Oh—and a few days after Abbott acted, a 35-year-old lineman in the town of Marshall died after experiencing symptoms of heat illness. The heat index was 100 degrees while the man was working.

These moves come two weeks after Abbott sent a busload of migrants to Los Angeles in his latest let’s-use-human-beings-as-props stunt.

So now we know what you really don’t want to be in Greg Abbott’s paradise: an undocumented immigrant who works outside and who attracts the attention of an unleashed pit bull.

A Florida judge has struck down the state’s extreme anti-drag law, calling it “specifically designed to suppress the speech of drag queen performers.” And with his ruling, public drag is again legal in Florida.

District Judge Gregory Presnell issued a preliminary injunction on Friday, stopping the state from enforcing the law just as Pride Month comes to a close.

Supporters of the extreme legislation claimed that it would protect children, and Presnell directly shut down those arguments in his ruling. “Existing obscenity laws provide … the necessary authority to protect children from any constitutionally unprotected obscene exhibitions or shows,” he wrote. He also called out the “appetite for finding obscenity in drag performances, even where undercover state agents have reportedly concluded none exists.”

Florida’s law, which took effect last month, was so vaguely worded and so broad in scope that experts were worried about how it would be applied.

The legislation sought to ban people under the age of 18 from attending drag shows, but used the term “adult live performance” instead. Republican lawmakers admitted that the unclear language could be used to prevent high school students from attending plays like The Rocky Horror Picture Show or the musical Hair.

The law attempted to enforce the ban by targeting businesses: Any establishment that violated the law could have its license suspended or revoked, in addition to being fined or charged with a misdemeanor. One violation would incur a $5,000 fine, and each incident after that would mean a $10,000 fine.

The bill also targeted Pride celebrations specifically by preventing a government entity from issuing permits to an organization that may host an “adult live performance.” If a violation occurred, the text said, the person who issued the permit could be charged with a misdemeanor—effectively targeting all LGBTQ people by scaring government employees from issuing permits for Pride.

Republican lawmakers, again, did not seem to have a big problem with that; targeting Pride celebrations, rather, seemed to be a feature of the bill as opposed to a bug. One politician admitted on the floor in April that the bill was needed even “if it means erasing an entire community.”

The legislation had its intended effect: LGBTQ organizers in Florida began canceling Pride celebrations even before the bill was signed into law, citing fear of the state’s new political climate.

Presnell’s ruling on Friday is yet another blow for the Republicans and far-right activists nationwide who have made drag performers their new favorite target. Earlier this month, a judge also struck down Tennessee’s anti-drag law, deeming it unconstitutional. The defendant in that case has vowed to appeal the ruling, and a lengthy legal battle may also be in store for Florida.

Some members of the House Freedom Caucus would reportedly like to liberate themselves from Marjorie Taylor Greene.

At least two legislators in the hardline group have floated the idea of ousting members for insufficient ideological purity, Politico’s Olivia Beavers reported Friday. “While the members suggesting a purge did not specify the people they want to remove, they are signaling that [Greene is] one target of any ejection push,” Beavers writes.

Greene, of course, is a representative from Georgia by way of QAnon. She has embraced and spread lunatic conspiracy theories, including that various mass shootings have been hoaxes, that there’s no evidence a plane crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11, and that Jewish space lasers started the 2018 California wildfires. House Democrats, along with 11 Republicans, voted to remove her committee assignments almost as soon as she arrived in Congress for her threats of violence against Democratic lawmakers. Just this week, she made headlines for calling fellow QAnon devotee Lauren Boebert a “little bitch” while on the floor of the House, apparently the result of a disagreement over who might get the credit for forcing a pointless vote on impeaching President Joe Biden.

So what transgression prompted some of her fellow Freedom Caucusers to finally conclude that Greene is beyond the pale and not deserving of membership in their band of bothers?

“Some in the Freedom Caucus have focused on Greene, who’s become a close ally of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, to illustrate their fears that certain group members are too aligned with GOP leaders and too outwardly critical of the group when it splits on certain issues,” Beavers reports.

The Freedom Caucus comes from the knee-jerk-no, poseur wing of the Republican Party, perpetually more interested in policing political purity than in governing or actually advancing conservative causes. They’re more likely to primary wayward Republicans than actually flip Democratic seats—and in fact their favored issues tend to give swing-district GOPers the politically toxic choice of angering primary voters or general election voters. In 2021, its members wanted then-Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger tossed out of the Republican Conference for daring to sit on the January 6 committee.

But if they’re able to expel Greene it would mark a new level of conservative cannibalism. Hey, maybe QAnon, from whom Greene finally distanced herself earlier this year, will take her back. As for her hardline colleagues, their conception of freedom increasingly evokes Thomas Hobbes. Maybe they should change their name to the Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish, and Short Caucus.

Progressive Democrats boycotted Narendra Modi’s speech to Congress Thursday, citing the Indian prime minister’s terrible human rights record.

Modi met with President Joe Biden earlier in the day to discuss strengthening the relationship between their two countries. Democrats in both the House and Senate had urged Biden to press Modi on human rights issues. In a letter to the president on Tuesday, 75 lawmakers cited “the shrinking of political space, the rise of religious intolerance, the targeting of civil society organizations and journalists, and growing restrictions on press freedoms and internet access.”

Modi’s speech to Congress, though, was widely attended—minus several prominent progressive Democrats. Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar had said Wednesday that they would boycott the address. They were joined a few hours later by Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.

Tlaib, Omar, Cori Bush, and Jamaal Bowman released a joint statement ahead of the speech Thursday explaining their intention to boycott the address, which they called an “embarrassing spectacle.”

“When it comes to standing up for human rights, actions speak louder than words,” the statement said. “By bestowing Prime Minister Modi with the rare honor of a joint address, Congress undermines its ability to be a credible advocate for the rights of religious minorities and journalists around the world.”

The group called Modi “complicit” in the 2002 Gujarat riots that killed more than 1,000 people. They noted that his government has targeted Muslims and other religious minorities, journalists, and dissidents; suppressed criticism through internet shutdowns and censorship; and enabled Hindu nationalist violence.

“It is shameful to honor these abuses by allowing Modi to address a joint session of Congress,” the statement said. “We must never sacrifice human rights at the altar of political expediency and we urge all Members of Congress who profess to stand for freedom and democracy to join us in boycotting this embarrassing spectacle.”

The authoritarian tendencies that progressive Democrats spoke out against are coming to bear against Indian Americans. U.S.-based Modi critics told HuffPost that they are experiencing government intimidation, online trolling, and legal harassment, as well as essentially being banned from traveling to India.

The activists said it might be tricky for Indian American lawmakers to speak out against Modi’s visit, lest they face the same kind of pushback.