Listener supported, WNYC Studios.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

Sarah McBride was just elected to the House of Representatives from the state of Delaware.

She's a Democrat, and it's currently serving in the state Senate.

And McBride is the first transgender person elected to Congress ever.

She'll take her seat in the Capitol in January.

But during the orientation for new members, some of McBride's future colleagues already

mobilized attacks against her. Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina introduced a bill

targeted at McBride, requiring her to use the men's bathroom.

It's not going to end here. This shouldn't be going on any federal property.

If you're a school or an institution that gets government funding, this kind of thing should be banned.

I think it's sick. It's twisted.

Speaker Mike Johnson chimed in, making remarks that denied trans identity altogether

on what he called

scriptural grounds.

A man is a man, and a woman is a woman.

And a man cannot become a woman.

This is a very different environment from the one McBride is leaving in the Delaware Statehouse.

In Delaware, McBride talked mainly about working across the aisle,

and she campaigned on access to health care or increasing the minimum wage.

She didn't talk all that much about her gender identity.

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