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Representative Sarah McBride, Democrat of Delaware and the first openly transgender member of Congress, realized shortly after she won her race that going to the bathroom on Capitol Hill was going to pose a problem in her new job.
The more I thought about it, I realized that it would not be safe for me to use the restrooms.
That morning, she sat on her hands in the Capitol Rotunda as Mr. Trump received a standing ovation for stating that “there are only two genders: male and female.” On her way out, Ms. McBride ended up walking next to Pete Hegseth, the embattled defense secretary nominee who has railed against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the military.
Surreal, was all she had to say about that.
But such awkward interactions are a reminder of the complicated position Ms. McBride occupies in Washington. She has entered Congress as a barrier-breaking representative of a small and vulnerable population at a time when L.G.B.T.Q. rights are under assault and Republicans, who now hold a governing trifecta, see political gains to be made in rolling back the rights of transgender people in particular.
It has already given Ms. McBride more of a spotlight than the average freshman lawmaker in the minority — and prompted her to be very careful about when and how she uses her singular position.
Two months ago, when Ms. McBride came to Washington to attend congressional orientation and had yet to be sworn in, Representative Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican, saw an opening and marked her arrival by introducing a measure to bar transgender individuals from using women’s restrooms and changing rooms in the Capitol complex.
Ms. McBride said she was never going to use the public restrooms in the Capitol, because she realized long ago that “there would be a bounty on my head.”
The move against her may have come faster than she anticipated, “but it was hardly a surprise,” she said. “This was an attempt to gain attention at the expense of a brand-new member of Congress.”
On Monday, Mr. Trump signed an executive order making good on his promise that the federal government would only recognize two sexes and that they were not changeable. One of the first bills that House Republicans brought to the floor in the opening days of the new Congress was to bar transgender women from participating in school athletic programs designated for female students.
Those issues hit close to home but had little to do with why Ms. McBride ran for Congress. During her campaign, she focused on paid family and medical leave, reduced child care costs, and a higher minimum wage. She barely spoke about her identity and would like to continue the same approach in Congress, if possible.
Ms. McBride chose not to speak on the floor about the bill targeting transgender individuals in sports.
I want my first speech to be about the issues I campaigned on: the economic issues this country is facing.
Over coffee, Ms. McBride said that “there are absolutely legitimate questions that need to be answered around what are the rules of the road for participation in different athletic programs.”
It’s just not an issue for Congress, she argued. The groups that should be making those decisions, she said, are athletic associations, not federal lawmakers lumping together every sport and every athlete, from kindergarten through college.
Ms. McBride came out in 2012, after her junior year at American University, when she wrote an opinion piece in the student newspaper divulging what she called “my deepest secret: I’m transgender.”
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