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.
“I found HOPE in the POSSIBILITIES of our POLITICS.”
As a young person, I worried whether the heart of this country was big enough to love someone like me. I went searching for examples of our world becoming kinder and more just and more inclusive. I found a glimmer of hope as I stumbled across history books about the Capitol and the White House. As I read them, I marveled at not just the beauty of the buildings but also the history that occurred within their walls. I saw that the throughline of every chapter was the story of everyday people and courageous and effective elected officials bringing about change that deepened our meaning of freedom. I found hope in the possibilities of our politics.
McBride with her niece, Juliette, arriving to her Wilmington, Delaware, polling place on Election Day, 2024
So, I got involved in Delaware as a high school student, working for former governor Jack Markell and for our former attorney general, the late Beau Biden. But my crisis of hope continued into college. I went to American University and in 2011, as a sophomore, was elected student-body president. I wasn’t yet out, and in many ways the peak of my crisis was the process of coming out, which was a process of grief. I went through the different stages of grief, around my hope to be able to do work that I love, find a community that I love, or even find love myself. And it was only in that final stage of grief, in accepting the loss of any future that I had dreamed of, that I was able to finally accept myself.
“Changing HEARTS and MINDS isn’t always just about the INTELLECTUAL ARGUMENT. It’s also about allowing all of us to be SEEN in our full HUMANITY.”
In 2013, while still in college, I advocated for Delaware’s Senate Bill 97, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived gender identity, in front of the Delaware State Senate. By that point, I had been involved in politics and advocacy for years, but this was the first time I was explicitly advocating for policies that directly impacted me. I remember going into a legislator’s office and stating all the intellectual arguments for why this was right. I was scared to be vulnerable. But then I watched my mom speak to this legislator and talk about her hopes and her dreams and her fears, and I watched her be vulnerable. I realized in that moment that changing hearts and minds isn’t always just about the intellectual argument. It’s also about allowing all of us to be seen in our full humanity, in our hopes and our dreams and our fears, in our grace and our goodness as people. And it’s through that grace that we give people the space to grow. Once that happens, once someone connects policy with a person’s humanity, it fundamentally changes the way they think. It was then, in June 2013 in Delaware when the bill passed, that I saw that a politics of grace could allow for real and tangible progress.
McBride speaking at a press conference for the Equality Act in 2019
In 2020, I was elected to the Delaware State Senate after running a campaign on expanding access to quality, affordable health care and passing paid family and medical leave here in Delaware. That work was rooted in my belief in equality and justice for all, but also in my experience as a caregiver to my husband, Andy, during his battle with cancer. I saw through that experience—of loving him, serving as his caregiver, marrying him, and walking him to his passing—how lucky we were to have health insurance and flexible jobs that allowed us to focus on getting and providing care. But I do not believe that in Delaware and in the wealthiest, most developed nation on earth that the ability to get care should be a matter of luck.
One of the things I thought I was giving up when I came out was the possibility of finding love. I was incredibly lucky that I found that possibility very quickly after coming out. I met Andy, who was an attorney and LGBTQ advocate, at a White House Pride reception in June of 2012, during the fourth year of the Obama administration. A couple of weeks later, he messaged me on Facebook and said that he thought we’d get along swimmingly. I thought, “Who the hell says the word swimmingly in their 20s? That’s someone I want to spend time with.” I responded to his Facebook message, and we started talking. We went on what was my first first date after coming out, and we fell in love.
McBride with her late husband, Andy.
My relationship with Andy was so much shorter than I hoped and dreamed it would be. In September 2013, Andy was diagnosed with oral cancer, and after going into remission the following April, his cancer returned in July of 2014. He was given around a year to live. In the 24 hours after this news hit, Andy asked me, “If it turns out that this is incurable, would you marry me?” Of course I said yes. We had planned an October wedding, but after further complications and health deterioration, we decided to move it up. On August 24, 2014, we married on the rooftop of our apartment. We exchanged rings and committed ourselves to each other. He had forgotten his cheat sheet for his vows downstairs, so he improvised his lines, shortening them so he wouldn’t lose breath.
Wednesday the 27th was the last day Andy was awake. Just before he went back to sleep for the final time, I told him, “I love you.” He raised his eyebrows and mustered the energy to say four words. These words would be his last: “I love you too.” At 3:30 p.m. on Thursday the 28th, with the gifts from our wedding five days earlier still unwrapped back in our apartment, Andy passed away.
“What fundamentally CHANGED for me was the UNDERSTANDING that HOPE as an EMOTION, hope as a PHENOMENON, only MAKES SENSE in the face of HARDSHIP.”
In the final weeks of Andy’s life, my oldest brother, a radiation oncologist who had seen a lot of people pass away from cancer, said that it was going to be incredibly difficult walking Andy to his passing but that I should take stock of the acts of amazing grace that would fill my life. Grace and those miracles were everywhere in those final few weeks. Both before and after Andy passed, I continued to bear witness to awe-inspiring love and kindness and, yes, change. What fundamentally changed for me was the understanding that hope as an emotion, hope as a phenomenon, only makes sense in the face of hardship.
McBride chatting with Delaware State Senator Dave Sokola (left) following a press conference in March 2024
This country is facing a crisis of hope right now. It’s a crisis of hope across the political divide, fueled by people losing trust and faith that the government sees them, respects them, and can deliver for them. It has always felt through our lifetime that if we simply worked for it and fought for it and voted and volunteered and shared our story, change was inevitable. And it doesn’t feel like that anymore. But I think back to the seemingly impossible odds that previous generations have faced. Enslaved people in the 1850s had no reason to believe that the Emancipation Proclamation was on the horizon. Unemployed workers during the early days of the Great Depression had never heard of a New Deal. Patrons at the Stonewall Inn never knew of an America where they could live openly and authentically as themselves without violating the law. You cannot tell me that the reasons for hopelessness now are greater than those in so many previous points in our country’s history or previous points in the history of humanity.
In the final couple of weeks of Andy’s life, we had a conversation on the couch in our living room. Andy was leaning against its back, and the tears in his eyes were amplifying their blueness. He was crying about his fear of death but also about the fact that the world would go on without him and that he wouldn’t be there to watch his niece and nephew grow up, that he wouldn’t be there to watch all that his friends and family did, that he wouldn’t be there to tell me that he was proud of me. That moment is seared into my memory because of its tragic beauty: because of how blue his eyes looked, because of how devastating that conversation was. But it means that I can hear him say, like it was yesterday, “I’m proud of you.”
As I got sworn in, I looked up from the floor of the United States House of Representatives. I saw my parents and envisioned Andy there. And I hoped that Andy was proud of me in that moment and that my parents knew, as scared as they were when I came out to them on Christmas Day in 2011, that I’m okay.
McBride getting sworn-in to the U.S. House of Representatives on January 3, 2025.
During the second week of orientation, another member of Congress decided that I should not be able to use the restrooms I’ve used my entire adult life when at my workplace. I always knew that there would be individuals in the Republican Conference who would seek to utilize my service as an opportunity to grab headlines and who would seek to politicize not only my service but my very presence in Congress. So I wasn’t surprised when news came of the resolution that my future colleague introduced or when news came that the Speaker of the House had decided to adopt the resolution into a future rules-package vote. But it did happen a little bit earlier than I anticipated; I thought maybe they would wait until January.
What was clear from the start was that the ultimate goal of that effort was not really to ban me from restrooms but to bait me into a fight. It was an effort to characterize me, and I simply refuse to give any member of Congress the power of determining what my focus is and what my priorities are. I simply refuse to give them my anger and provide them the response that they are seeking.
“I simply REFUSE to give any MEMBER of CONGRESS the POWER of determining what my FOCUS is and what my PRIORITIES are.”
The attacks we are seeing right now on the rights and dignity of so many people in this country, including LGBTQ people, are dangerous; there is no question. But we also have to be clear that they are part of an ongoing strategy to distract from the fact that not only do far-right-wing politicians have absolutely no solutions to address the issues that are keeping our constituents up at night, they actually want to distract from the very real, tangible harm that they’re doing to working people across this country. Every bit of time and energy spent attacking a vulnerable and small group of people is time and energy not being spent addressing the cost of living or lowering the cost of health care, housing, and childcare.
I have always said that any responsibilities that come with being a first are only met if I am fulfilling the fundamental responsibility that I have to work on all of the issues that my constituents care about effectively. I am there to defend my constituents, not just myself, and I am best able to do that work when I am seen as a member of Congress who’s there to work on all of the issues, not just a member known for one aspect of who I am. I hope to make Andy and my constituents proud. And I hope to turn the possibilities before us into progress.
