THE PEOPLE and IDEAS SHAPING the CULTURE POLITICS of GRACE

Representative SARAH MCBRIDE, the first openly TRANS MEMBER of CONGRESS, reflects on how her experience with LOVE and LOSS taught her to pursue CHANGE from a PLACE of COMPASSION

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Clockwise from top left: McBride speaking at a press conference for the Equality Act, 2019; holding her 2018 memoir, Tomorrow Will Be Different; with her niece, Juliette, arriving to her Wilmington, Delaware, polling place on Election Day, 2024; with her late husband, Andy; at the Capitol during orientation; chatting with Delaware state senator Dave Sokola (left) following a press conference in March 2024

In November, on the Sunday after the election, I drove down to Washington, D.C., for orientation. I was still sleep-deprived and riding a high from Election Day. As a member-elect, you travel to a hotel not too far from the Capitol where Democratic and Republican freshmen come together for two weeks of what is essentially a crash course in Congress. You go to sessions to learn the legislative process in a bit more detail than Schoolhouse Rock! You go through ethics training and the biannual rite of passage of the office lottery to secure a freshman office space. You also get to spend time learning your way around the Capitol; I still, after two weeks, was getting lost in its tunnels.

But being in the Capitol, you realize you're in a legislative body that Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy served in. And in the House Chamber, you're in the space that the 13th and 14th Amendments passed in, where women got the right to vote. You're in the chairs that people sat in as they voted for the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and created Medicare and Medicaid. It's awe-inspiring.