# Sarah McBride Born August 9, 1990 in Wilmington, Delaware. American politician and activist who in November 2024 became the **first openly transgender person elected to the United States Congress** — winning Delaware's at-large U.S. House seat with 58% of the vote. She is the most-senior openly transgender elected official in U.S. history. ## Pre-Electoral Career McBride came out publicly as transgender in 2012, in an op-ed in *The American University Eagle* (her undergraduate newspaper) as she finished her term as American University student body president — the first openly transgender student-body president in the country. Subsequent positions before her electoral career: - **White House intern** (summer 2012) — the **first openly transgender person to work at the White House** - **National Press Secretary, [[Human Rights Campaign]]** (2016-2020) - **Spoke at the 2016 Democratic National Convention** — the first openly transgender person to address a major-party national convention - **Wrote the 2018 memoir** *Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality* ## State Senate (2020–2024) McBride was elected to the Delaware State Senate in November 2020 — the **first openly transgender state senator anywhere in the United States**. Her four-year tenure focused on healthcare (particularly the Healthy Delaware Families Act, expanding paid family leave), gun-safety legislation, and LGBTQ civil-rights protections. ## U.S. House (2025–present) McBride won Delaware's at-large U.S. House seat in November 2024 with 58% of the vote, succeeding Lisa Blunt Rochester (who was elected to the U.S. Senate the same cycle). Her swearing-in on January 3, 2025 made her the first openly transgender member of the U.S. Congress. ### The Bathroom Controversy In November 2024, before McBride had even been sworn in, Rep. [[Nancy Mace]] (R-SC) introduced a House resolution to bar McBride from using women's bathrooms in the Capitol. Speaker [[Mike Johnson]] formalized the policy in late November, declaring single-sex facilities in the Capitol restricted to "biological sex." McBride responded with a statement that she would **comply with the rule** while continuing to do her work — a measured response widely interpreted as strategic prioritization of her legislative agenda over the bathroom fight. The episode became a defining early-Trump-2.0-era political moment: the first openly trans member of Congress arrived to find the House Speaker had preemptively built a structure to exclude her from basic facilities. ## Place in the Vault McBride's significance is **electoral-political**: she is the first openly trans person to climb the conventional American electoral ladder to its federal-legislative tier. Her continued service in the [[Trump 2.0]]-era House — under conditions designed to be hostile to her presence — makes her the most visible single openly trans American elected official in the country, and a primary public-facing target for the contemporary anti-trans political coalition. --- ## See Also - [[Queer Liberation Ecosystem]] - [[Queer Liberation Timeline]] - [[Human Rights Campaign]] - [[Future Caucus]] — listed member of the bipartisan Congressional Future Caucus (119th Congress)