Congress
Trans rights to be marquee fight for House Republicans
Republicans’ first response to Sarah McBride’s election to Congress was to ban her from using women’s restrooms throughout the Capitol. But their early treatment of the first openly transgender House member is likely just a preview of how they’ll navigate transgender politics and policies for the next two years.
Believing voters in the 2024 elections rejected Democrats’ more inclusive positions on transgender rights, Republicans appear ready in 2025 to double down in support of executive orders and provisions in spending bills that would make it harder for transgender individuals to get health care, serve in the military or participate in school activities. President-elect Donald Trump signaled on the campaign trail that he would pursue new restrictions in the military and in schools, and pledged in December to make U.S. policy reflect that there are only “two genders.”
Rep. Nancy Mace, the South Carolina Republican who led the push to bar McBride from using women’s restrooms in the Capitol, is showing no sign of letting up. Asked how she would press transgender issues legislatively in the next Congress, she said: “You should look at the bills that I have been filing. That’ll be educational for you.” Mace has offered bills that would restrict bathroom usage for transgender people in places receiving federal funds and impose penalties on doctors performing gender-affirming care.
“There’s always things you can do through the appropriations process,” said House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.), adding that there’s public support for “common sense” guardrails related to policy areas like transgender participation in competitive sports. Polling from Gallup in 2023 found 69 percent of people believe athletes should only play on sports teams that conform with their birth gender.
The push on transgender rights is poised to be one of the marquee health policy and culture war battles that the House GOP takes on next year, with Republican lawmakers showing no sign of softening. Though some Democrats are questioning the party’s stance when it comes to transgender women participating in competitive sports, many are gearing up to fight back.
Democratic lawmakers generally support the rights of transgender people to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity, though they’ve largely been responding to GOP-led attacks on that community rather than working to broadly expand protections. President Joe Biden’s administration has taken steps to safeguard protections for the community, such as strengthening protections for youth transgender people health care in June.
“I know that I’m willing to take my gloves off and go after anyone who tries to attack her [and other transgender peoples’] dignity, because it’s so enraging, just on a basic level of human dignity,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said of McBride.
The GOP-led House voted earlier this term to prevent members of the military from receiving gender affirming medical care and to ban transgender women from playing in women’s sports. Last month, Republicans insisted on a provision in the annual defense policy bill aimed at restricting medical treatments for transgender children.
Looking ahead, many health experts — particularly those who are concerned about the mental health implications of withholding gender-affirming care — are fearful of Republican-led efforts to deny funding to hospitals that receive Medicaid and Medicare if physicians assist trans youth with transitions. A case is now pending before the right-leaning Supreme Court that could allow states to criminalize gender-affirming care for minors.
In Congress, the issue is also getting personal as Republicans look toward McBride joining the legislative body. In November, Speaker Mike Johnson announced plans to ban transgender women from using women’s bathrooms in the House: “A man cannot become a woman,” he said.
Interviews with more than a dozen House Republicans as the bathroom debate played out revealed that many GOP members are either uncomfortable talking about transgender issues or are openly hostile to them. Most Republicans interviewed also misgendered McBride.
“You’re a dude. You want to wear a dress, it’s a free country, but at the end of the day you’re still a dude in a dress,” said Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), who added that he’d welcome grabbing a drink or coffee with her.
The new rules, which will restrict transgender people from using multi-stall restrooms for their preferred gender throughout the entire House side of the Capitol and in all House office buildings, showed how committed Republicans are to pursuing a rigid definition of gender in their own place of work.
In response, the Congressional Equality Caucus shared with congressional chiefs of staff a list of every single-stall restroom around the Capitol complex, showing there are no such restrooms in the Capitol building itself. And the GOP ban has implications beyond just lawmakers themselves.
“We’ve already heard from some members of the press who are trans, who are struggling with this [and I] have also heard people reaching out to me about their discomfort now visiting the Capitol because they identify as trans,” said House Equity Caucus Co-Chair Becca Balint (D-Vt.).
The move also hints at the possibility of similar restrictions in other federal office buildings and federally funded facilities. Mace has legislation that would expand the policy, along with a proposal to impose strict penalties for doctors who perform gender-affirming care for minors.
McBride herself has said she isn’t going to contest, or try to test, the new policy that Mace and others acknowledge was specifically crafted with her in mind, saying in a statement, “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms.”
Some Republicans may agree with her.
“To some people, this is the most important issue, I guess,” Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), chair of the Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, said of the bathroom debate when the ban was announced. “I kind of look at getting our budget heading in the right direction.”
He added of McBride specifically: “I’ll treat her like a colleague. She was elected by her constituents, so it’s the way it is.”
Daniella Diaz, Katherine Tully-McManus and Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.
Adam Hamilton raised $10.6 million in the third quarter of 2026 across his Senate campaign and his joint fundraising committees, his campaign tells Blue Light News, a significant haul for the Kansas Democrat.
The fundraising total illustrates Democrats’ newfound bullishness about flipping a Senate seat in the deep-red state for the first time since 1932.
“This grassroots support sends a clear message: with three weeks until Election Day, Adam Hamilton is building the momentum to win,” said Hamilton campaign spokesperson Tyson Brody.
Hamilton’s third-quarter figure is nearly triple his $3.66 million second-quarter total. His campaign did not provide a current cash-on-hand total.
National Democrats began pumping money into Kansas in recent days, a sign of their growing hopes that Hamilton could win. Last week, Senate Majority PAC — Senate Democrats’ top super PAC — reserved $5 million in television ads backing Hamilton. American Bridge PAC and Lower Costs Now, a new group affiliated with former Vice President Kamala Harris’ super PAC, have spent in Kansas in recent weeks.
Republicans have also flocked to Kansas to prop up Marshall: Senate Leadership Fund, the Senate GOP’s top PAC, has spent or reserved nearly $11 million backing Marshall in the past week, according to tracking firm AdImpact.
“It took us five months to raise $15 million. [Marshall] got it in a day,” Hamilton said at a campaign event in Lawrence, Kansas on Monday. “So please help us.”
Marshall’s campaign has yet to release his third-quarter fundraising totals. As of mid-July, Marshall had over $5 million in the bank to $1.73 million for Hamilton.
A bipartisan Senate duo is urging Trump national security officials to “bring its full capacities to bear” to stave off threats posed by artificial intelligence — sooner rather than later.
Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, and Republican South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, who serves on the Senate Armed Services cybersecurity subcommittee, are calling for a full government response to a growing number of cybersecurity breaches.
“Recent AI security incidents should serve as a warning,” the senators wrote in a Tuesday letter to Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton and White House Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios. “Advanced AI agents have escaped testing environments, bypassed safeguards, and gained unauthorized access to real-world systems owned by government agencies and private organizations.”
Spokespeople for Clayton and Kratsios did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Their letter comes as lawmakers struggle to hash out what legislation on AI safety, if any, might look like. Members are currently in recess ahead of the November elections and there’s little hope progress can be made by the year’s end.
But those lawmakers who have been engaged on the topic for years now have mapped out administrative actions the Trump administration could move on now, without waiting on Congress.
The Cantwell and Rounds priorities include: strengthening federal AI safety and security standards at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST; expanding independent testing capabilities at the Center for Advancing Innovation and Standards for Super Intelligence, Department of Energy and the national labs; and working with the tech industry to develop and deploy defensive AI tools.
Specifically, the senators wrote, new NIST standards should address the risks posed by advanced AI capabilities, including the “potential misuse by malicious actors” to conduct sophisticated cyberattacks, automate attacks at scale and agents that threaten external systems and critical infrastructure.
They also said the federal government capacity should be complemented by universities and other research organizations, as well as by private sector, third-party evaluators.
Finally, they point to ways the government could use existing programs at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to work with AI labs to help detect threats and reinforce vulnerable systems.
A bipartisan group of senators urged President Donald Trump to rescind his recent diesel deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, amid bubbling anger on Capitol Hill about Trump’s announcement.
In a letter sent to the White House, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the senators warned that the president’s deal with Russia will not “achieve just ends” or benefit Americans.
“Granting Moscow the ability to sell Russian diesel freely in global markets damages American security interests and is a betrayal of the people of Ukraine, who continue to defend themselves from Putin’s murderous, illegal war,” wrote the lawmakers, led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). “This deal is a gift to our adversary and a betrayal of our Allies; it should be rescinded.”
On Sunday, a smaller group of senators called on the president to “immediately reverse course” on the plan in a statement. Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) — who signed on to both — said Sunday there may be “a legitimate case for saying the president’s not following the law.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump announced in a social media post on Friday that Russia would “immediately supply” diesel fuel to global markets — including potentially the U.S. — to help relieve high prices driven, in part, by the ongoing war with Iran. Though Trump has repeatedly defended the U.S.’s actions against Iran, on Saturday he demanded an end to Ukrainian drone strikes that have crippled Russian oil refineries that he argues have caused the record-high oil prices.
The senators on Tuesday argued that the deal with Russia will have a “negligible impact” on fuel prices while providing Putin with “more fuel to finance his war machine” as Russia continues its “brutal attacks on Ukrainian civilians.”
The deal with Russia is a sharp pivot from a sweeping sanctions package signed into law last month. That legislation — championed by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) — was meant to deplete Moscow’s resources by targeting Russian officials, banks and a shadow fleet of oil tankers. It drew widespread bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress.
Senators on Tuesday referenced the package as they condemned Putin as a “tyrant.”
“For decades, America has stood as the bastion of freedom against tyranny, and American presidents have embodied our nation’s resistance to tyrants. Putin is a tyrant,” the letter reads. “Withdraw from this agreement, rescind General License No. 135, and execute the authorities provided under the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026. Maintain our legacy – and the duty America holds – as leader of the free world.”
In addition to Blumenthal and Tillis, Tuesday’s letter was signed by Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Dick Durbin (Ill.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Jack Reed (R.I.), and Chris Coons (Del.) and Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Susan Collins (Maine), Alan Armstrong (Okla.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and John Cornyn (Texas).
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