Congress

Trans rights to be marquee fight for House Republicans

Published

2 years ago

January 2, 2025

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.

“I’m not here to fight about bathrooms,” Rep. Sarah McBride said.

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.

Congress

Former MLB star Mark Teixeira to hit campaign trail with GOP leaders

Published

1 hour ago

July 31, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House GOP leaders are planning to bring former MLB star Mark Teixeira, one of their top candidate recruits this cycle, out on the trail in battleground districts over the summer recess sprint.

Majority Leader Steve Scalise will host a fundraiser with Teixeira in New York City on Aug. 20 with Speaker Mike Johnson as a special guest, according to three people with direct knowledge of the event, granted anonymity to discuss plans that have not yet been made public.

It’s part of a New York swing where Teixeira and Johnson will also hit nearby stops in GOP Rep. Mike Lawler’s 17th Congressional District and for Mike LiPetri, who is trying to unseat Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi in New York’s 3rd Congressional District.

Teixeira is running to replace GOP Rep. Chip Roy in Texas’ 21st Congressional District. He won a World Series title with the Yankees in 2009 and also played for the Texas Rangers, Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles Angels before retiring from professional baseball in 2016 after 14 seasons.

Because Teixeira has little chance of losing in the deep-red seat, Republican leaders are hoping to harness his star power to boost their candidates in the most competitive races. They’re planning for Teixeira to help campaign in a wider swath of battleground districts in August and through November, including likely stops in Pennsylvania and Georgia.

Congress

Faced with Blanche dilemma, Trump chooses revenge

Published

1 hour ago

July 31, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump has a choice: allow changes to a controversial court settlement and secure the confirmation of his former personal lawyer as attorney general, or thumb his nose at a pair of his few remaining Republican critics in Congress.

True to form, he is giving no ground — so far.

Trump’s decision Thursday to signal he would rather pull the nomination of Todd Blanche, his pick to lead the Justice Department, rather than give in to the demands of Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis demonstrated that the president’s desire to thwart his enemies does not end with the demise of their political careers.

Both Republican senators will leave Congress at the end of the year after running afoul of Trump, and both have found a degree of independence since becoming untethered from needing to keep in his good graces.

But their efforts to exert leverage and seek to curtail a controversial settlement agreement reached in May between Trump and the IRS only prompted the president to double down. He announced in a Truth Social post that Blanche would remain as acting attorney general “in any event” and that he would potentially withdraw and resubmit the nomination “after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office” in January.

Tillis, who announced he would not seek reelection last year after clashing with Trump over Medicaid cuts in his home state of North Carolina, betrayed little surprise when asked about Trump’s reticence to bargain over the IRS settlement.

“Look up the definition of recalcitrant,” he said.

Cornyn, who lost his bid for renomination to a fifth term representing Texas in May after Trump endorsed a scandal-prone opponent, brushed off the accusation that he was simply seeking revenge by blocking Blanche.

He called Trump’s claim “a convenient excuse, but it’s certainly not true.” And he warned the president that trying to wait him out would be a “gamble.”

“After the midterms, who knows who’s going to be the next United States senator from North Carolina or Texas?” he said.

The subtext of Cornyn’s remark was that Republicans might have a smaller majority if they have one at all — raising the question that if Trump can’t strike a deal with members of his own party to advance his prized nominee, what will governing with Democrats possibly look like?

One of Trump’s frequent Democratic sparring partners from his first term in office — Sen. Adam Schiff of California — said the pressure from Cornyn and Tillis is only a hint of what is to come and that the president should get used to “a restoration of checks and balances.”

“I would hope what it will mean both for the remainder of this Congress and the next is that Congress will once again assume the role of being a counterbalance to the power of the executive,” said Schiff, who led Democrats’ first Trump impeachment attempt. “We largely reneged on that.”

The battle of Blanche has been especially pitched given Trump’s personal interests. Not only did Blanche represent Trump in multiple cases brought in the years before the president’s reelection, Cornyn and Tillis were seeking to curtail a deal that personally benefited him.

Both men sought to ensure a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” set out in the agreement text could not be revived and to restrict the terms of an audit immunity agreement applying to Trump, his family and business.

It’s possible a deal could still be reached. Cornyn and Tillis met with Blanche Thursday afternoon after Trump issued his ultimatum. One person granted anonymity to describe the private meeting said the two sides were “working collaboratively now” and that it was good “they were finally all face to face.”

Ahead of the meeting, both senators insinuated that the White House — not Blanche — was the obstacle to revising the settlement and moving forward with the confirmation. Cornyn explicitly blamed Trump, while Tillis said the presidents’ advisers could be to blame.

“They’re making this a lot harder than it needs to be,” Cornyn said Wednesday. “We’ve tried to make it easy for them, and they simply refuse to take our help.”

Both said they believed there was a desire in Trump’s orbit to resurrect the payout fund at some point to direct federal settlements to the president’s political allies.

GOP colleagues also chalked up Thursday’s drama to the White House not wanting to give in — whether to protect the original settlement agreement or to deny Trump’s critics a victory.“Clearly, the White House does not want to do what Senator Cornyn and Senator Tillis were asking,” said Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said she shared Cornyn and Tillis’ qualms about the settlement and asked Blanche in her own private meeting to put his oral commitments in writing.

“I have expressed the same concerns, and I am waiting for the same answers,” said Murkowski, an occasional Trump critic who is up for reelection in 2028.

Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

Congress

Trump-aligned parents rally behind kids’ online safety rules

Published

12 hours ago

July 30, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Parents’ rights groups aligned with the MAGA movement and other socially conservative groups are imploring congressional leaders to enact strict rules that aim to prevent online dangers for kids.

They join a chorus of more progressive parent and survivor groups urging lawmakers ahead of an upcoming Senate Commerce online kids’ safety markup to enact robust and clear “duty of care” requirements that would legally compel technology companies to prevent harm to children.

In a July 30 letter to Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), shared first with Blue Light News, the groups demanded specific standards that would require technology companies to “truly stand with, not against parents.”

So-called duty of care requirements have emerged as a central battleground in negotiations over kids’ online safety legislation. The provision would mandate tech companies to take reasonable steps to prevent and mitigate specific harms to minors on their platforms and would give regulators a legal basis to hold companies accountable if they fail to do so.

“[W]e write as parents, pro-family leaders, survivors, and child advocates to implore you to act in a way that truly empowers parents to protect our children, and to resist the rather loud voices who say that immunity for Big Tech and evisceration of state efforts in this space is somehow pro-parent,” the groups wrote. “It is not.”

They also urged lawmakers to expand on state laws rather than override them. Preemption provisions have become much more broadly unpopular in the year since Cruz tried — and failed — to attach a 10-year moratorium on the ability of states to set their own artificial intelligence laws in the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“States are standing with parents and children,” the letter reads. “Your committee must build on that work, not tear it down.”

The groups signing the letter, led by Institute for Families and Technology, include MAGA-aligned Moms for Liberty, Louisiana Family Forum, South Dakota Family Voice and the Family Policy Alliance, a conservative Christian group influencing state policies.

Cruz this week postponed a broader artificial intelligence markup tentatively planned for next week until September. Instead, next week, he’s going to take up several measures on kids’ safety and chatbots.

Cruz, in an interview Wednesday, did not rule out preemption provisions in next week’s markup, telling Blue Light News, “Those are all active topics under negotiation.”

Spokespeople for Cruz and Cantwell did not return requests for comment.

The letter comes as right-leaning and family organizations have a heightened awareness of kids’ safety around technology. In fact, the issue was a big topic at last week’s SoCon Con, where there were multiple panels and speakers on kids and tech, including one on keeping kids safe and how to “beat Big Tech.”

“This is new substantive engagement that didn’t really exist before,” said a social conservative advocate granted anonymity to discuss private coalition discussions. “There’s this tipping point that is happening where these groups represent large populations at the state level and saying this is an issue that’s important to us and we’re going to engage as family groups.”