‘A Bounty on My Head’: Congress’s First Transgender Member Faces the Trump Era

Representative Sarah McBride, Democrat of Delaware and the first openly transgender member of Congress, realized shortly after she won her race that going to the bathroom on Capitol Hill was going to pose a problem in her new job.

“The more I thought about it, I realized that it would not be safe for me to use the restrooms,” she said Monday over coffee, after attending President Trump’s inauguration.

That morning, she sat on her hands in the Capitol Rotunda as Mr. Trump received a standing ovation for stating that “there are only two genders: male and female.” On her way out, Ms. McBride ended up walking next to Pete Hegseth, the embattled defense secretary nominee who has railed against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the military.

“Surreal,” was all she had to say about that.

But such awkward interactions are a reminder of the complicated position Ms. McBride occupies in Washington. She has entered Congress as a barrier-breaking representative of a small and vulnerable population at a time when L.G.B.T.Q. rights are under assault and Republicans, who now hold a governing trifecta, see political gains to be made in rolling back the rights of transgender people in particular.

It has already given Ms. McBride more of a spotlight than the average freshman lawmaker in the minority — and prompted her to be very careful about when and how she uses her singular position.

Two months ago, when Ms. McBride came to Washington to attend congressional orientation and had yet to be sworn in, Representative Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican saw an opening and marked her arrival by introducing a measure to bar transgender individuals from using women’s restrooms and changing rooms in the Capitol complex.

(Ms. Mace has since tried to keep the issue and herself in the news, attacking Ms. McBride on social media and traveling to Wilmington, where Ms. McBride lives, to accuse transgender individuals of trampling on women’s rights.)

The bathroom gambit was not a particularly novel move; such bans are already in place in 13 states under Republican control. Still, it was a notable way to welcome Ms. McBride to Congress.

Ban or no ban, Ms. McBride said she was never going to use the public restrooms in the Capitol, because she realized long ago that “there would be a bounty on my head.”

The move against her may have come faster than she anticipated, “but it was hardly a surprise,” she said. “This was an attempt to gain attention at the expense of a brand-new member of Congress.”

On Monday, Mr. Trump signed an executive order making good on his promise that the federal government would only recognize two sexes and that they were not changeable. One of the first bills that House Republicans brought to the floor in the opening days of the new Congress was to bar transgender women from participating in school athletic programs designated for female students.

Those issues hit close to home but had little to do with why Ms. McBride ran for Congress. During her campaign, she focused on paid family and medical leave, reduced child care costs and a higher minimum wage. She barely spoke about her identity and would like to continue the same approach in Congress, if possible.

Ms. McBride chose not to speak on the floor about the bill targeting transgender individuals in sports.

“I want my first speech to be about the issues I campaigned on: the economic issues this country is facing,” she said.

Over coffee, Ms. McBride said that “there are absolutely legitimate questions that need to be answered around what are the rules of the road for participation in different athletic programs.”

It’s just not an issue for Congress, she argued. The groups that should be making those decisions, she said, are athletic associations, not federal lawmakers lumping together every sport and every athlete, from kindergarten through college.

Ms. McBride came out in 2012, after her junior year at American University, when she wrote an opinion piece in the student newspaper divulging what she called “my deepest secret: I’m transgender.”

Back then, Ms. McBride was a political wonk, the president of the student body and — much in the mold of Pete Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary and onetime presidential candidate — someone who had been watching “Meet The Press” since she could talk and forever planning a career in government and politics. Before she came out, Ms. McBride thought she would have to sacrifice that; it didn’t seem possible to her that someone like her could have a future in public life.

“I thought, ‘If I can do as much good as I can in my life, it will make it OK for me to not come out,’” she said of her thinking at the time. “I had told myself for a while that a professionally and civically fulfilling life would compensate for a life in the closet.”

But it didn’t work that way. When she declared that she was transgender, she said: “I mourned the loss of any kind of future political career. But the pain was too much to not.”

Today, she considers herself lucky to have what she describes as an “authentic” and a “fulfilling” life as an openly transgender lawmaker.

“The only references I had as a young person were dead bodies in a drama or punchlines in a comedy,” she said. “I know how much it would have meant to me as a young person.”

Then she corrected herself: “Honestly, I don’t know how much it would have meant to me. It was incomprehensible to me.”

Behind the scenes, Republicans have not exactly apologized for the antics of Ms. Mace and other hard-right lawmakers who have made her a target. But, she said, “there has been clear intentionality about when they say ‘Welcome to Congress, looking forward to serving with you.’”

“Honestly, every Republican I’ve interacted with has been warm and welcoming, save for a couple,” she added.

In the elevators, Ms. McBride regularly introduces herself to interns as “Sarah” and asks them where they are from. Many of them seem to have no idea who this overly enthusiastic stranger is, and she’s fine with that.

“There’s a weird line between members and staff that feels overly distant,” she said as she made her way to the Dunkin’ Donuts in the basement of the Longworth House Office Building for coffee on Tuesday. “We’re all colleagues — let’s get to know each other!”

Ms. McBride is bubbly and in her element, eager to talk shop or discuss her current favorite television show, the reality game show “Traitors,” with anyone she can convince to watch it. (So far, that’s none of her staff.) Mostly, she’s eager to win back the majority in two years and thinks Democrats’ must grapple with how to appeal to voters amid a broader shift to the right that is happening around the world.

“No one runs for Congress to be in the minority,” she said. “In retrospect, you look at the global political dynamics, and it was naïve to think that the United States would be different. We have to see people’s pain.”

Ms. McBride loves Delaware almost as much as former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. does. She is close with Mr. Biden because of her onetime bond with his son Beau Biden, the former state attorney general who died of brain cancer in 2015 and whose campaigns she worked for.

“One of the last conversations Beau and I had, he was trying to decide whether to run for governor,” she said.

Unsurprisingly, given her connection to the Bidens, Ms. McBride defended Mr. Biden’s decision to pardon his family members in his final hours in office.

“It’s incredibly sad that we have a politics where elected officials seem more focused on punishing the family members of their political foes,” she said. “It’s a sad indictment of our politics that it is an understandable fear.”

As for Ms. Mace, the two have not yet interacted with each other in person, but Ms. McBride is willing to extend her colleague some grace.

“No one is their worst action — everyone is trying to figure things out,” she said. “That doesn’t excuse what they are doing. But everyone has a story, and experiences that impact their decision-making.”