Revaluating Sarah McBride

I was an early critic of the Delaware Representative, I've since come around on her actions defending trans rights. Yes, I know this won't be a popular take.

This week, 213 House Democrats sent a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson condemning "the use of anti-transgender rhetoric" by Republican Representatives. The letter asks Johnson to enforce rules of decorum and call on his fellow members to cease demonizing trans people.

The letter, which was signed by nearly every Democrat in the House, including party leadership, is a sign of changing political times when it comes to trans issues. Its lead signer? Rep. Sarah McBride.

This is Transgender Awareness Week, and today is Trans Day of Remembrance, but even still, 6 or 8 months ago and I wouldn't have believed the Democratic party capable of defending trans people this explicitly with a midterm election, and millions of dollars of anti-trans ads, looming large in the near future.

To me, I think McBride should get a large share of the credit for maintaining the Democratic Party's support for trans issues.

Earlier this year, I wrote a piece criticizing McBride's decision to go along with impromptu House rules ordering trans people to use US Capitol bathrooms associated with their sex assigned at birth.

As a former Capitol Hill reporter and a trans woman with vast experience with Capitol Hill bathroom facilities, that decision offended me. As an elected member of congress, McBride has a level of privilege, along with her own private office bathroom facility. Abiding this restriction is not difficult or onerous for her. But for any every day trans person trying to meet with and lobby their representatives, or trans journalists like me who are just trying to do their jobs, this is a huge restriction on their ability to participate in representative democracy.

I stand by my criticism of that decision.

And then there was her call for a "big tent" in the Democratic party. This was a pretty straightforward message to prevent any extreme purity tests on trans issues in order to achieve larger legislative majorities. I understand the instinct here, but I think this is misguided. As I've written repeatedly, and stated again in today's episode of my Cancel Me, Daddy podcast, I don't think voters are moved in any real numbers by trans issues either way.

Like there is a subset of voters on both sides of this issue that care very much about it, but the obsessed transphobes who will base their votes entirely on trans issues are never going to vote for a Democrat and the trans voters and allies who understand the threat from the right will never vote for a Republican. So to me, this type of concession is politically misguided.

Then there is her past support for Israel. I cannot support that either and I understand why others wouldn't support it either. But in July she criticized the Netanyahu government over the Israeli-caused famine in Gaza.

But having said all that, in terms of her actual effectiveness in advocating for trans people in the halls of congress itself, I have to give her relatively high marks. This past year has featured a panic amongst the Democratic party caucus over how the party should handle trans issues. Several prominent party members have showed a willingness to potentially compromise on trans issues and as we as a community are wont to do, we panicked about it.

Rightly or wrongly, trans people saw McBride as the face of a Democratic party starting to crack on the issue of our livelihoods and rights.

But according to sources I've spoken with, McBride has been a driving force behind the scenes in keeping the caucus together on key vote after key vote in this congress. One that has been hellbent on torturing trans people with ever more sadistic restrictions on our freedom.

The biggest fight was over anti-trans provisions in the so-called Big Beautiful Bill. The most significant one was the Crenshaw Amendment, which sought to ban federal funding, including Medicare and Medicaid, from being used towards gender affirming care. The amendment was designed to be very similar to the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funds from being used on abortion-related health care.

This was the biggest test of the Democratic party's willingness to fight for trans people and would have had a much deeper impact on the community as a whole than a Capitol Hill bathroom ban. It was also a mostly symbolic vote, as Republicans had enough votes on their own to pass it, so if there was going to be a provision for a Democrat to break on, this was it.

But the caucus almost completely held together, delivering 214 nay votes on Rep. Crenshaw's amendment. My sources on the Hill all told me that McBride and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) were whipping votes relentlessly behind the scenes on the amendment. It eventually was ruled out of the bill by the Senate Parliamentarian and never made it into law.

As a result, the Trump administration has been forced to try to accomplish a similar goal through executive action, proposing an even harsher HHS rule that would bar federal funds from going to any health care provider that provides gender affirming care for youth. But the difference between legislation and executive action is that the next Democratic president can simply introduce their own rule to wipe Trump's actions from the books, whereas a piece of legislation is much stickier and harder to root out (look at the history of the Hyde amendment for an example to compare with).

There was another vote earlier this year on a House Bill that proposed banning trans women from women's sports. Again, it was an easy chance for Democrats to break on trans issues, but again the caucus mostly held together.

Looking back on the Hill bathroom ban, I see now that McBride was put in an impossible spot. She was a freshman representative with little to no power other than being in the chamber to begin with. She shared a caucus with a couple hundred nervous Democrats facing tremendous public pressure to toss trans people under the bus, and she had very little time to build relationships and trust with her colleagues at that point.

At the same time, many in her party were looking to her as both a source of information and political calculation on trans issues (a story for another day is just how many trans people were interns for these same Reps years ago and then never got another job in politics again, and what that did to hurt the party's ability to message effectively on trans issues). And many trans people looked at her as our trans representative, rather than just an elected official representing Delaware.

It would have been easy to take an immediate stand and reject the bathroom ban, but doing so would have put her at risk of being portrayed as too radical or extreme, which could have potentially hurt her ability to influence the party's positions on the trans athlete ban or the Crenshaw Amendment further down the line.

But here we are today, and House Democrats aren't just playing defense against legislative attacks on trans people, they can now send letters attacking Republican overreach and rhetoric on trans issues in large part because of how McBride has maneuvered behind the scenes as a freshman Representative.

With the 2025 off year election showing anti-trans attack ads falling flat, Democrats are now in position to surge back into office without having to sacrifice trans people at the altar of electability.

That is an unmitigated good for trans people in the US.

I realize this take won't be very popular with all of my readers, and that's okay. You all are allowed your opinion on Democrats and McBride herself. I'm not asking you to change your mind on her, even if I have. But I don't think it's accurate to say she's been trying to sell out the trans community in Congress.

We are better as a community with her there in the room than than we would be if she wasn't, in my opinion. Is she the perfect trans representative? No. But she's a good Delaware representative, and that's good enough for me.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this article has been changed to more accurately reflect McBride's past statements about Israel.

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