Congress
Meet the new members: The first transgender member of Congress
The new member: Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.)
How they got here: McBride claimed Delaware’s sole House seat, defeating former state trooper and retired businessman John Whalen, 58 percent to 42 percent.
Inside the campaign: The historic nature of her candidacy has not gone unnoticed, but issues like expanding access to health care, reducing costs and ensuring access to abortion were key topics for McBride on the campaign trail.
Her website proudly declares she’ll back “any positive policy that advances our country toward the ultimate goal of universal coverage” for health care and fight for “the full range of reproductive health care patients need.”
Her opponent, Whalen, focused his campaign on the southern border and controlling the national debt, telling CBS News “there’s more important things than that” when asked about her identity as a transgender woman.
Key issues: Health care’s been a core focus for McBride since she joined the Delaware state Senate in 2020. There’s also a personal connection: She lost her husband, Andrew Cray, to terminal cancer days after marrying him in 2014.
She has also vowed to continue fighting for affordable child care, housing access, union rights, and paid family and medical leave.
Background: There are familiar Washington stops in McBride’s career: stints in the Obama White House, the Center for American Progress and campaign work. But that doesn’t overshadow the historic nature of her rise to Blue Light News.
She was the first openly transgender person to speak at a national political conference when she addressed the DNC in 2016. She became the first transgender state senator upon her election in Delaware in 2020. And she’ll become the first openly transgender member of Congress.
Campaign ads that caught our eye: In some very relatable content, McBride said in her opening campaign video that it takes “my morning coffee” among many other things to get the government working better. Another catchy ad featured various unions around the state touting their enthusiastic support for her.
Fun facts: President Joe Biden wrote the foreword to McBride’s 2018 memoir by McBride entitled: “Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality.” She was also student body president at American University.
We’re spotlighting new members during the transition. Want more? Meet Sen.-elect John Curtis.
Trump-endorsed Marty O’Donnell won the GOP primary Tuesday to take on Democratic Rep. Susie Lee in Nevada’s battleground 3rd District.
The seat, which touches parts of Las Vegas, is one of Republicans’ targeted pickups this November since President Donald Trump carried it by less than 1 percentage point in 2024 after losing it by nearly seven points in 2020.
But O’Donnell — who also has the backing of the National Republican Congressional Committee — will face an uphill battle. He recently came under fire for hosting a neo-Nazi influencer on his podcast. Trump’s tariffs have hit the district hard, with Canadian tourism to Sin City down by 17 percent, leaving Democrats confident they can hold the seat.
O’Donnell is best known for his role as the audio composer for the “Halo” video game series. It’s his second run in the district after placing fourth in the 2024 Republican primary.
O’Donnell bested several candidates Tuesday, with businessperson Tera Anderson and former Ambassador to Iceland Jeff Gunter — who ran for Senate in 2024 — putting up the most significant challenges.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham is on his way to clinching his fifth term in the Senate.
Graham won the Republican primary for Senate on Tuesday, vanquishing five opponents that included businessperson Mark Lynch — who challenged the senator over his staunch support for the war in Iran and long history in Washington. Lynch also drew support from some of the president’s most prominent MAGA Republican critics.
But Graham won more than half the primary vote, allowing him to avoid an embarrassing two-week runoff sprint. He is expected to cruise to victory in November; a Democrat has not represented the state in the Senate since 2005, when longtime Sen. Fritz Hollings chose not to seek reelection.
The four-term senator spent big in the final weeks of the campaign to make sure he won, combining with his allies to spend over $18 million in television and digital ads touting his record and endorsement from President Donald Trump. That spending proved to be decisive in staving off Lynch’s challenge from the right.
He even called in the big guns for a last minute bump, bringing in Trump, who reaffirmed his support for his occasional frenemy in a telerally on the eve of the primary election.
Graham’s success is a loss for the strict “America First” wing of the GOP that has criticized the president’s new interventionist foreign policy streak, including former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and former counterterrorism official Joe Kent. They came out in support of Lynch during the final stretch of the campaign, though that was not enough to upset Graham, a fixture of Columbia and Washington politics.
Twenty House Republicans broke with Speaker Mike Johnson to help pass a Democratic-led bill Tuesday aimed at making it easier for workers to form unions, widening the divide between a bloc of pro-labor Republicans and GOP leaders.
Democrats successfully used a discharge petition to sidestep Johnson and force the vote with the help of a handful of House Republicans, including Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Nick LaLota of New York.
“It’s passing,” Fitzpatrick said before the vote when asked about Johnson’s efforts to whip Republicans against the bill.
The Faster Labor Contracts Act aims to reduce the amount of time between workers voting to form a union and negotiating their first collectively bargained contract, in part by requiring the parties to more quickly enter federal mediation. It’s the latest in a series of employment bills that pro-union House Republicans have bucked their party on in recent months.
House Education and Workforce Chair Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) spoke out sharply against the bill on the floor Tuesday, saying it would “threaten jobs, kill growth and in some cases, shut business down entirely.” But a hefty subset of Republicans backed the bill nonetheless, joining all voting Democrats.
- Trump-backed Marty O’Donnell wins primary for battleground Nevada House seat
- Sen. Lindsey Graham wins primary over ‘America First’ challenger
- US to reach $41T debt ceiling as soon as late winter, forecasters predict
- The Democratic establishment begrudgingly moves to embrace Graham Platner
- Teresa Benitez-Thompson wins crowded Dem primary for Nevada House seat
- IRAN FIRES MISSILES AT ISRAEL
- Trump-backed Marty O’Donnell wins primary for battleground Nevada House seat
- US to reach $41T debt ceiling as soon as late winter, forecasters predict
- US to reach $41T debt ceiling as soon as late winter, forecasters predict
- US to reach $41T debt ceiling as soon as late winter, forecasters predict
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