Republican Rep. Keith Self abruptly adjourned a House committee hearing after a Democratic congressman called him out for deliberately misgendering Rep. Sarah McBride, the first transgender member of Congress.
Tuesday's House Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing is the latest anti-trans attack from Republican lawmakers in the wake of Donald Trump’s inauguration and his streak of actions targeting transgender Americans, including an order that flatly denies the existence of trans, nonbinary and intersex people.
After Self addressed McBride as the “Gentleman from Delaware,” she replied: “Thank you, Madame Chair.”
A furious Democratic Rep. Bill Keating then turned to Self in apparent disbelief and asked him to repeat how he addressed a “duly elected representative from the United States of America.”
Texas Republican Keithself storms out of the meeting he's supposed to be running because a Democrat asked him to treat his colleague Sarah McBride with respect. These people would not last one day as a trans person. pic.twitter.com/qtgg879u2A
— Ari Drennen (@AriDrennen) March 11, 2025
“I will,” Self said. “The representative from Delaware, Mr. McBride.”
Keating fired back.
“Mr. Chairman, you are out of order,” he said. “Mr. Chairman, have you no decency? I mean, I’ve come to know you a little bit, but this is not decent.”
“We will continue this hearing,” Self replied.
Keating once again cut him off.
“You will not continue it with me unless you introduce a duly elected representative the right way,” he said.
Self then adjourned the hearing.
He defended his actions on X, writing that “it is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” echoing Trump’s executive order eliminating federal recognition of trans people and inaccurately stating there are only two sexes, without accounting for intersex people.
McBride has routinely been the target of anti-trans attacks and discriminatory rhetoric from her colleagues.
Last month, Republican Rep. Mary Miller referred to McBride as the “Gentleman from Delaware” during remarks on the House floor.
“I refused to deny biological reality,” she wrote on X. “President Trump restored biological truth in the Federal Government, and I refuse to perpetuate the lie that gender is open to our interpretation. It is not.”
Republican Rep. Nancy Mace frequently misgenders and spreads false claims about trans people and has repeatedly used a transphobic slur on social media and in congressional hearings.
She introduced a resolution to ban trans women from using women’s restrooms in response to McBride’s election. House Speaker Mike Johnson then adopted the ban for the rules of the 119th Congress.
Mace has incorrectly said affirming care “sterilize our children” and that children experience temporary gender dysphoria due to being on the autism spectrum.
The attacks have, until now, faced little protest from Democratic members of Congress.
Trump’s administration, meanwhile, is facing an onslaught of lawsuits for a series of actions targeting trans people in an effort to bar them from public life.
The president has pressured schools and athletic organizations to ban trans women and girls from competing in women’s sports, threatened funding for hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to people under 19 years old, and banned trans people from serving in all branches of the U.S. military.
Trans service members — including roughly two dozen people who are suing the administration to reverse the ban — are beginning to receive notices from Defense Department officials that they will be removed from their posts.
Incarcerated trans women are also suing the administration after Trump’s gender order directed the Bureau of Prisons to move trans women into men’s prisons and cut off their access to gender-affirming care.
Last month, during a confrontation at the White House, the president threatened the Democratic governor of Maine to comply with his executive order banning trans women and girls from women’s sports or risk losing federal funding. “We’ll see you in court,” Governor Janet Mills replied.
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