Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.), the first transgender person elected to Congress, is bashing Republicans for focusing on her gender instead of issues that affect the American public at large.
“I appear to live rent-free in the minds of some of my Republican colleagues,” McBride told reporters during the Democrats’ annual retreat in Leesburg, Va.
McBride, who was the recent target of a Republican lawmaker who repeatedly referred to her as a man during a public hearing, said the GOP’s attacks on her gender are part of broader Republican fixation with the culture wars at the expense of issues of more universal importance, like rising costs. She urged her GOP colleagues to shift their focus to the latter.
“I wish that they would spend even a fraction of the time that they spend thinking about me, thinking about how to lower the costs for American families,” McBride said. “I wish they would spend a fraction of the time that they spend thinking about me, figuring out how to make government actually work better, rather than making it work worse in order to prove that government can’t work.
“The Republican Party is obsessed with culture war issues,” she continued. “It is weird, and it is bizarre. And the American people deserve serious legislators, serious elected officials who are focused on bringing people together to deliver real results for the American people. Not to play games, and not to engage in schoolyard taunts.”
McBride has been a target of Republicans since she first arrived on Capitol Hill in January. Most recently, Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas), who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee’s subpanel on Europe, referred to McBride as a “congressman” during a hearing on Tuesday.
The remarks sparked an outcry from Rep. Bill Keating (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the subcommittee, who demanded a correction. Self adjourned the hearing instead.
The spat came amid a broader debate over decorum on Capitol Hill, prompted largely by Rep. Al Green’s (D-Texas) heckling of President Trump during his speech before Congress last week.
Many Democrats were furious with Green’s demonstration, not least because it defied the counsel of party leaders to act dignified during the speech.
Still, Democrats are also furious that Republicans are up in arms with Green’s protest, while at the same time allowing Trump and Elon Musk, the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, to gut the federal government.
“Their focus on our decorum, or our behavior, while they are burning down things for people at home just makes me livid,” Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), the Democratic whip, said Thursday.
McBride was even more terse.
“We will not take a lecture on decorum from a party that incited an insurrection,” she said.
