Voters in Delaware elected the country’s first out transgender member of Congress on Tuesday, with NBC News projecting a win for state Sen. Sarah McBride in the race for the state’s only House seat.
At the same time, voters across the United States chose to send Donald Trump back to the White House, NBC News projected, electing a presidential ticket that many advocates warned would be the worst in American history for trans people.
On Tuesday afternoon, prior to either race being called, when asked what she would do in that scenario, McBride said she would be prepared to push back on another Trump term.
McBride said she didn’t want “to downplay the danger that comes with a second Trump administration” for LGBTQ people, but that hope “only makes sense in the face of hardship.”
“It has always been in our community’s biggest challenges that we take our most significant steps forward,” she said after voting in Wilmington.
In a second Trump administration, she said, the country could see what an advocate in Florida described to her as “a slingshot moment.”
“We’re pulled backward, but the force and the pressure of being pulled backwards ultimately propels us to destinations that we’ve not yet been,” she said. “We’re going to have to continue to fight for it, and that means summoning our hope to continue the effort, to open hearts and change minds, to push back on a Trump administration and to do the hard work of democracy, to build our coalition even further, to win the next election, and to install pro-equality elected officials at every level of government across the country.”
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment regarding some advocates’ concerns that a second Trump term would be dangerous for transgender Americans.
McBride will enter Congress on the heels of an election year in which Republicans, including Trump, spent more than $200 million on network television ads targeting trans people, according to data shared with NBC News on Tuesday by AdImpact, an analytics firm that tracks political ad spending.
Trump has promised to reinstate his ban on trans people enlisting in the military and a Title IX policy that prohibited trans students from using bathrooms that aligned with their gender identities. He has also said he would bar transition-related care for minors nationwide, and his platform said he would declare that any clinician who provides transgender care to minors would be terminated from Medicare and Medicaid.
Some trans people told NBC News ahead of the election that they had plans to leave their states or even the country should Trump win another term.
McBride said she didn’t run to be a spokesperson for any particular community other than her constituents in Delaware. Unlike an advocacy organization, she said, she wouldn’t send out a tweet or press release every time an official said something hurtful or offensive.
“My job is to be a damn good member of Congress and through that, hopefully earn the respect of both folks who aren’t yet quite sure what they think about trans people, and yes, people who think that trans people don’t deserve the same dignity and rights as everyone else,” she said. “Ultimately, that’s the only way that I’m fulfilling any obligation, because if I take every single fight, if I take every single poke and prod that they try to push my way, I won’t be there very long. And so my job is going to be to keep focused on the work at hand. When that means defending my LGBTQ constituents, I will do it.”
