Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Congresswoman Sara Jacobs: Thanks for having me.
Jacobs: Yeah, so she offered a number of amendments that would have prohibited gender-affirming care for service members and their dependents, which would have included mental health care that would have stopped trans people from being able to use the restroom that they need. There was a number of other things she was trying to do. This particular one we were debating was preventing trans service members from using the bathroom that they need to use. And she has, over the course of the last few years, said some pretty terrible things about trans people, constantly using the T-slur, using words like deranged and all these other really emotion-evoking terminology. She went after Sarah McBride when she first got here, and I think just generally has tried to get attention by targeting trans people and in particular trans kids.
Nancy Mace (audio voiceover): No one wants biological men in women’s spaces. And because of this wacko ideology, not based in science, is now pervasive. We’re teaching it in schools. We’re forcing kids to use pronouns. And we want to protect women because the left has gone so far. Not just the left. This is mainstream Democrat policy going after our girls. The average American—we see it every day now. It’s everywhere, and people are sick and tired of it. And if they want this harassment to stop, then the trannies need to stop harassing the rest of America. This is not what the American people want. It’s not what they voted for.
Sara Jacobs (audio voiceover): I would just like to point out that I think it’s very interesting that my colleague from South Carolina is so obsessed with the issue of trans people, using horrible slurs to talk about them when many people in this body have received gender-affirming care. Filler is gender-affirming care. Boob jobs is gender-affirming care. Botox is gender-affirming care. Lots of my colleagues have received gender-affirming care. And let me be clear. I think everyone should have access to the gender-affirming care that they need. And I think we should respect everybody in this country. With that, I yield back.
Mike Johnson (audio voiceover): This is not recognized. Order. The House will be in order. The gentlelady and the gentleman will suspend. The house will be in order.
Jacobs: Look, I didn’t actually say anything about Nancy Mace. I said many of my colleagues have had this kind of care. So I think it’s very telling that she thought that I was picking on her. It sounded like she told herself. And to be honest, I think everyone should get whatever gender-affirming care they want. Like you do you, girl. But the idea that she would use that to target this already vulnerable population is horrible. She knows it gets her headlines and clicks. She thinks it’s going to help her in her campaign for governor of South Carolina. And she’s targeting vulnerable young people to do that.
Jacobs: Yeah, absolutely. So my youngest sibling is trans, and my middle sibling is gender-nonconforming. And I’ve seen firsthand how much happier and healthier my siblings are when they’ve been able to get the gender-affirming care that they need. And let’s be clear, gender-affirming care is not only surgery, right? It’s someone using the correct pronouns. It’s mental health care. Sometimes it’s hormone therapy. Sometimes it is surgery. But there’s a full range of things. And I also know personally how impactful rhetoric coming from Washington, D.C., can be for trans people. My youngest sibling—in the first Trump administration, one of the things that actually got me thinking about running for office was how impacted his mental health was by what he was hearing coming out of the White House. And I don’t want any kid to have to feel like there’s something wrong with them or they don’t belong just because Nancy Mace wants to get some clicks and more media attention.
Sargent: I want to home in on what you said before about this not being theoretical. Can you paint a broad picture for us about what’s going on nationally? One of the things that I found offensive about Mace’s performance was she tried to assume the victim mantle, but we’re in the middle of a really vicious national anti-trans moment right now that is working its way through many, many state legislatures—reactionary state legislatures—and it’s having an impact on millions of people. Can you talk about that dimension of it?
Trans youth are more likely to be homeless. They’re more likely to have mental health issues. And let’s be clear, it’s not because they’re trans. It’s because of all of these societal things that are put on them, like the things they have to hear from my colleagues here in Congress. I know everyone’s not familiar with this topic or as familiar as I am. That’s OK. You don’t need to understand everything. Imagine if your kid came to you and said, I don’t feel right in my body, and this is the only way that I’m going to feel right. And you as a parent want the ability to talk to their doctor and figure out what makes the most sense—not have the government tell you what you can or cannot do or have the government come and say you’re a bad parent because you’re supporting your child.
Jacobs: Yeah. Look, we can’t let it go unchecked and we can’t normalize hatred. Now, we also know some of what she wants is the attention. And so sometimes it is strategic to just not give her that attention because that’s what she’s seeking. But I also think it’s important that we don’t let their narrative be the only narrative that’s out there because in many cases, it’s that people don’t really understand trans issues. They’ve never met an openly trans person, right? I totally understand why people have concerns and fears around this. That’s totally normal. The answer is not what Nancy Mace is doing. And if that’s the only argument they’re ever hearing, then it’s really dangerous for all of us.
Jacobs: Absolutely. I’m not going to lie to you, I think many of my colleagues took the wrong lesson from the last election. I think they took the lesson that the American people hate trans people, the American people don’t want us talking about it. And I just don’t think that’s true. When I talk to people—I traveled all across the country—it’s not that they hate trans people; it’s that they hate that someone is getting health care while they can’t afford it. They don’t hate asylum seekers; they hate that someone is getting government paid housing when they can barely afford rent. What we need to do is actually build a society where everyone gets what they need and not say that you aren’t getting it because this other population is. There’s no actual scarcity here. It’s false. We need to get away from that scarcity mindset and actually build the economy and social structures that everyone needs so that everyone can afford health care and rent and all of the other things that they need.
Sargent: Right. Just to clarify for listeners, the they/them ad that you’re talking about is an ad that the Trumpworld ran against Kamala Harris, spent enormous, enormous sums on it. And it basically said Kamala Harris is for they/them, Trump is for you. And look, I think Democrats really took the wrong lesson from the widespread use of that ad. It strikes me as highly implausible that that ad really was all that decisive in an election that was so heavily focused on the cost of living and maybe on immigration to some degree. But for some reason, a certain segment of the Democratic Party decided to pretend that that ad was the decisive factor or something close to it in order to advance an agenda inside the Democratic Party to the effect of, Maybe let’s stop talking about these issues. Let’s moderate in a major way on them.
Sargent: Well, you’ve got some Democrats who are trying to carve out a place in the party where they’re essentially mostly for protecting the civil, political, and human rights of trans people. But at the same time, they want to say, OK, let’s move away from trans people and sports, that kind of thing. What do you think is the sweet spot for a mainstream Democrat here who wants to get right in that pocket? Is there a message that you think respects the rights of trans people but also somehow doesn’t look too “extreme” or whatever? What’s the sweet spot?
Sargent: Absolutely.
Sargent: Right. And that provides a frame for Democrats who maybe want to look a little more moderate or whatever to find their way on this issue, right? They can essentially say, Look, I’m leaving it to local institutions to make these decisions.
Sargent: So let’s go back to Mace. When you when you live in a world where right-wing vitriol and hate is just basically the oxygen you breathe—can you talk about that sense of what it’s like to be trying to make progress on this issue when an entire political party has just essentially declared it normal to talk that way about a large group of Americans? It seems like we have a major problem on our hands now that that’s gotten normalized.
Sargent: Congresswoman Sara Jacobs, thank you so much for talking to us. It was super enlightening.
Jacobs: Thanks for having me.
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