On the night Donald Trump won the presidency, Delaware sent Sarah McBride to Congress. An experienced and effective state legislator, McBride ran for office on pocketbook issues and the needs and concerns of her state. She won by a resounding margin of more than 15%. Voters saw her skills and experience, as well as her easy way with people, and sent her to Washington to work on their behalf.
Rep.-elect McBride hasn’t even been sworn in yet as a member of Congress, but already many of her future Republican colleagues are making it harder for her to do her job. Already, they have gone as far as using their time in Congress to tell her which bathroom she should be allowed to use. This is bad for McBride, for Delawareans and for our country.
This is a clearly targeted attack, not only on the first trans woman in Congress, but also on all trans people who work in and visit the Capitol.
What’s going on here? Well, Sarah McBride is transgender. That’s it. She’s just living her life, doing her job. But Reps. Nancy Mace and Marjorie Taylor Greene have decided that McBride’s mere presence in the U.S. Capitol is a crisis. They have demonized her with their crusade to police which bathrooms she can use at the Capitol, with the support of Speaker Mike Johnson. Greene even threatened her with physical violence if she ever saw McBride in a women’s bathroom.
Amid all the hate thrown McBride’s way, she’s remained steadfast in her commitment to the needs of Delaware. This is a clearly targeted attack, not only on the first trans woman in Congress, but also on all trans people who work in and visit the Capitol. Mace’s bill and the speaker’s support for it have created a hostile work environment. How exactly would this be enforced without violating the privacy of anyone entering a bathroom? While House Republicans claim to protect women and girls, this invasion of privacy would put all women at risk.
And what is the response from the rest of the Republican conference to this disgusting targeting of a future colleague? I have seen exactly zero pushback against their cruelty and fear mongering. The silence of the so-called “moderate, governing-minded” Republicans has been deafening. As the saying goes, silence is complicity. And while Speaker Johnson claims to be a deeply Christian man, true Christian values would not allow the treatment of a new colleague with such disdain and disrespect, not to mention their direct threats of violence.
As McBride observed last week, “this is a blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing.” Mace and Greene’s cruel antics don’t change the fact that they are part of the Republican conference that led the least productive Congress in modern history. That is not hyperbole. They literally have nothing to show their constituents about how they lowered costs, increased wages or improved their health outcomes. Democrats are working to give actual economic relief to working people. And the Republicans hope to get people to look away while they prop up a system of gross economic inequality, like when one pickpocket bumps into you so the other can grab your wallet.
And Greene and Mace have an additional incentive beyond the distractions: they are as ever trolling for dollars. The more outrageous you are, the more TV time you receive and the more likes, shares and donations you get from the GOP base. This is the extremely sad and sorry state of affairs in politics today, and people such as Mace and Greene will only stop serving this garbage if we stop consuming it.
The truth of this moment is that there is no bottom to the cruelty MAGA Republicans will use.
Unfortunately, we know this same playbook will come directly from the Oval Office in 2025. Earlier this year, Republican strategist Sarah Longwell called the Trump campaign “the most vicious, despicable, lie-filled campaign I’ve ever seen.” It was. From disgusting attacks on women, to nasty racist rhetoric about immigrants and migrants, to the denigration of Puerto Ricans and Black Americans, to cruel assaults on transgender Americans, the fearmongering and scapegoating were breathtaking in their depth and breadth.
The truth of this moment is that there is no bottom to the cruelty MAGA Republicans will use. They will not stop scapegoating and demonizing other Americans because they seem to have nothing else to offer. And if their GOP colleagues won’t stand up to them, we have to do it. We must push back against the inhumanity, while also holding them accountable for all the work they are not doing while carrying out their witch hunts.
