Rep. Sarah McBride misgendered by Republican colleague during committee hearing
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(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Sarah McBride, D-Del., the first transgender person elected to Congress, continues to face attacks from her Republican colleagues, who have repeatedly misgendered her on the House floor and in committee hearings.
On Tuesday, it happened again during a House foreign affairs subcommittee meeting.
Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, introduced McBride, saying: “I now recognize the representative from Delaware: Mr. McBride.”
McBride then responded, “Thank you, Madame Chair,” hitting back at Self.
However, as McBride started her line of questioning, Rep. Bill Keating, D-Mass., the ranking member of the subcommittee, interjected.
“Mr. Chairman, could you repeat your introduction again, please?” he asked.
Self argued, without elaborating, that he was following “the standard on the floor of the House.”
Keating grew irate with Self, asking him to repeat his introduction of McBride. However, Self doubled down.
“I will. The representative from Delaware: Mr. McBride,” Self said.
McBride sat there as a back-and-forth ensued between the chairman and the ranking member.
“Mr. Chairman, you are out of order. Mr. Chairman, have you no decency?” Keating said.
“We will continue this hearing,” Self responded, attempting to move the committee hearing along.
“You will not continue it with me unless you introduce a duly elected representative the right way,” Keating said.
However, Self still did not change his rhetoric. Rather, he called for the hearing to be adjourned.
In a statement to ABC News Tuesday, McBride said she was “disappointed” by the decision to end the hearing early.
“I was prepared to move forward with my questions for the Subcommittee on nuclear nonproliferation and US support for Democratic allies in Europe,” she said.
This is not the first time McBride has been misgendered or has been the center of policy changes as it relates to transgender people.
Before McBride was sworn into office, Republican members worked to place a ban on transgender women from using women’s restrooms at the U.S. Capitol.
In late November, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., announced as policy that transgender women cannot use women’s restrooms at the Capitol and in House office buildings, as well as in changing rooms and locker rooms.
“It is important to note that each Member office has its own private restroom, and unisex restrooms are available throughout the Capitol,” Johnson said in a statement announcing the policy. “Women deserve women’s only spaces.”
Then, before giving her first floor speech on Feb. 8, McBride was misgendered by Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill.
“The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Delaware, Mr. McBride,” Miller said.
“I don’t concede on something that I believe to be unconstitutional. I can’t. I took an oath to uphold the Constitution. So, we’re going to find a path through this. We’re working on that,” Johnson said Wednesday. “I talked to everybody who voted against the rule, and we’ll work it out. So, we got time to do it, and those conversations continue.”
Earlier this week, nine Republicans sided with Democrats to torpedo a procedural rule that included language to kill Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s bipartisan discharge petition on proxy voting for new lawmaker parents.
The vote has thrown the House into disarray and paralyzed the chamber, leaving Johnson to find a way to break the impasse. The vote also called into question Johnson’s ability to control Republicans’ razor-thin majority.
House Republican leaders, including Johnson, had said they would take the unprecedented step to block Luna’s petition on proxy voting, which gives both mothers and fathers the ability to vote remotely up to 12 weeks after the birth of a child.
After the vote, Johnson said because it failed, “we can’t have any further action on the floor this week.” The rule that lawmakers voted on included language to block proxy voting — as well as other pieces of legislation.
“The reason that I said that the agenda was taken out for the week is because it was, it was all in one rule. We could have run the SAVE Act, but the rest of it would have to have been done in a different rule. And I had a big group of House Republicans who did not want to support a rule until we took care of the proxy voting situation,” he claimed.
Johnson said he is “actively working” to accommodate young mothers serving in Congress.
“While I understand the pure motivations of the few Republican proxy vote advocates, I simply cannot support the change they seek,” Johnson wrote in a post on X on Wednesday. “The procedural vote yesterday was our effort to advance President Trump’s important legislative agenda while disabling a discharge petition that would force proxy voting and open a dangerous Pandora’s box for the institution.”
“To allow proxy voting for one category of Members would open the door for many others, and ultimately result in remote voting that would harm the operation of our deliberative body and diminish the critical role of the legislative branch,” he added.
Johnson said that he wants a room for mothers to nurse right off the House floor even though there is currently one in the basement of the Capitol. He said leaders are also looking at allowing the use of government money for members to fly their infant babies to D.C. with their mothers and fathers.
“We want to accommodate mothers who want to serve in Congress, and we’re the pro-family party, so we’ll do that, but we can’t do something that violates the Constitution or destroys the institution you serve,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — Senate Democrats sparred with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Wednesday over whether Kilmar Abrego Garcia will be returned to the United States, as well as the Department of Homeland Security’s spending.
During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who traveled to El Salvador to meet with Abrego Garcia, asked if the Trump administration would comply with the Supreme Court’s decision that the U.S. government must facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, Noem replied that the government is following the law but didn’t say yes or no.
“What I would tell you is that we are following court order,” Noem shot back. “Your advocacy for a known terrorist is alarming.”
Van Hollen said he isn’t “vouching for the man” but rather due process.
“I suggest that rather than make these statements here, that you and the Trump administration make them in court under oath,” he added.
Van Hollen then accused Noem of a political speech, and Noem said she would suggest Van Hollen is an “advocate” for victims of illegal crime.
Last month, after Abrego Garcia’s family filed a lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the U.S. The Supreme Court affirmed that ruling on April 10.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., pressed Noem on whether she read the Supreme Court decision, noting that the court ruled 9-0 that the U.S. must facilitate his release.
“Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador. It is up to the president of El Salvador to make the decision coming back,” Noem replied. “It’s been a big topic of conversation between all of us. … The president has been very clear on this issue, as the secretary of state and I have as well. Abrego Garcia is not a citizen of this country and is a dangerous individual.”
Earlier in the hearing, Murphy blasted Noem, saying, “Your department is out of control.”
“You are spending like you don’t have a budget. You’re on the verge of running out of money for the fiscal year. You are illegally refusing to spend funds that have been authorized by this congress and appropriated by this committee,” he said. “You are brazenly violating the law every hour of every day. You are refusing to allow people showing up at the southern border to apply for asylum. I acknowledge that you don’t believe that people should be able to apply for asylum, but you don’t get to choose that.”
He added that DHS will run out of money by July on immigration and argued that the department isn’t giving migrants due process.
“What you are doing both the individuals who have legal rights to stay here, like Kilmar Abrego Garcia or students who are just protesting Trump’s policies is immoral, and to follow the theme, it is illegal. You have no right to deport a student visa holder with no due process, simply because they have spoken in a way that offends the president. You can’t remove migrants who a court has given humanitarian protection from removal,” he said.
Noem also noted that the Biden administration let in upward of 20 million people into the country illegally.
Noem was also asked about the Trump administration’s plan for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Noem has said she wants to get rid of FEMA and return the funds to the states.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.V., asked Noem to “tread lightly” on dismantling FEMA, marking the first time a Republican has raised caution about the president’s plan to dismantle FEMA. Moore Capito said she is “concerned” that there could be issues with small states “subject to a lot of natural disasters, flooding,” in providing relief.
“I think it’s [a] vital function, and I’m concerned, if you turn it all over to the states, capacity for the state to really handle this is something that — so I would ask you to tread lightly,” she added.
On CISA, she said previously it was operating as the “ministry of truth” during the Biden administration and that the Trump administration is returning CISA to accomplish the stated goals of DHS.
“They were out doing election security missions where censorship and deciding what was truth and what wasn’t truth, and we have eliminated those functions within CISA,” Noem said. “CISA was created to be an entity that supported small and medium businesses and also critical infrastructure, our electrical grid, our water systems that are vulnerable to hacking attempts and influence from foreign countries but enemies of the United States of America.”
Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., noted that there were 15 employees out of 3,000 who were working on misinformation.
(WASHINGTON) — Michigan is set to face a competitive primary and fierce race for the battleground state’s open U.S. Senate seat in 2026.
Three major Democrats have already entered the contest, while Republicans eye flipping the seat, which will be vacated by retiring Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich.
The battleground state had mixed results for both parties in 2024, with President Donald Trump snagging a win in the presidential race and then-Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat, prevailing in the Senate race. Democrats hope to keep the open seat in their hands, while Republicans hope to flip it and add to their majority in the Senate.
Rep. Haley Stevens, a Democrat who represents Michigan’s 11th District, revealed on Tuesday that she will run for Senate, with an announcement focused on the state’s automobile industry and how it may be affected by tariffs imposed by the White House.
“Growing up in Michigan meant being surrounded by innovation, ingenuity and pride in hard work. And from our farmers to our nurses to our manufacturers, Michigan has the best workers in the world,” Stevens said in an announcement video posted on social media on Tuesday.
“But Donald Trump has a much different plan for Michigan,” she added.
“His chaos and reckless tariffs are putting tens of thousands of Michigan jobs at risk,” she said, adding that costs are rising “but all we’re getting is more chaos. What the heck are they doing?”
Stevens, first elected to the House in 2018, is a member of the House Education and Workforce Committee and the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. She also served as chief of staff of the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry during the Obama administration.
In 2022, she endured a competitive member-on-member primary against then-Rep. Andy Levin, although she was bolstered by outside support from pro-Israel groups. (The U.S.-Israel relationship is a hot-button issue in Michigan and became a wedge issue during the 2024 elections.)
She is set to face a competitive Democratic primary, which includes two other high-profile figures. (One key name took himself out of contention already: Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg ruled out a Senate bid in March.)
Abdul El-Sayed, the former director of the Wayne County, Michigan, health department and a former Michigan gubernatorial candidate, announced on Thursday he will run for the seat — and he netted a quick endorsement from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
“I’m running for U.S. Senate because in the state that built the ‘American dream,’ it shouldn’t be this hard just to get by,” El-Sayed said in an announcement video that opened with a fictional, old-style cartoon talking about his background.
“We’ve got to fight back hard against Trump and [Elon] Musk with a hell of a lot more than paper paddles and broken promises. … The disease is the corruption of our politics by billionaires and corporations, while the workers who built this country are forgotten,” he added in the announcement in clips that appear to be from a podcast taping.
Sanders, who has received renewed national attention in recent months as he attracts crowds on his nationwide “Fighting Oligarchy” speaking tour, endorsed El-Sayed the same day.
Earlier in April, Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow announced her own Senate bid.
In an announcement video, which opened with a montage of news clips about Trump and a clip of Musk’s viral moment in February holding a chainsaw, McMorrow said, “There are moments that will break you. This is not that moment. This moment will challenge us, test us. And if it all feels like too much? That’s they’re plan. They want to make you feel powerless. But you are not powerless.”
McMorrow entered the national spotlight after being baselessly accused of aiming to “groom and sexualize kindergartners” in a 2022 fundraising email sent out by a fellow state senator. She struck back in a now-viral floor speech, saying, “I am the biggest threat to your hollow, hateful scheme.”
In her announcement video, McMorrow framed the Trump administration as creating a fearful moment in time and said new leaders are needed — echoing a debate within the Democratic Party about whether it needs generational change at the top of the party.
“There’s a lot of fear and anger and uncertainty right now about people in power who frankly have no business being there. So you know what won’t fix it? The same old crap out of Washington,” McMorrow said, “We need new leaders because the same people in D.C. who got us into this mess are not going to be the ones to get us out of it.”
On the Republican side, the primary is still taking shape, but one major name has entered the fray.
Former Rep. Mike Rogers, who ran for Senate in Michigan in 2024 and narrowly lost to Slotkin, announced in mid-April that he would enter the race.
“The lessons I learned working on a factory floor, serving as an officer in the United States Army, and then as a federal agent protecting our communities, taking down drug dealers and gangsters — it taught me about grit and sacrifice,” Rogers said in an announcement video.
“I’ll stand with President Trump,” he added. “And we will deliver on the mandate given to him by the American people. … For me, it will always be America and Michigan first.”
Rogers also spoke about cutting costs and prices while bringing manufacturing jobs back to Michigan.
“I guarantee we’ll protect Social Security for our seniors,” Rogers added.
Notably, Rogers has received some key support from establishment Republicans — even though the primary field is not fully set. In a pair of statements released through the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of Senate Republicans, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who is chairman of the NRSC, both endorsed Rogers.
