How this Democrat fights Marjorie Taylor Greene's transphobia in Congress with smart preparation

Yahoo

a day ago

New Mexico Democratic U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury wasn't planning to go viral. But when she spoke up during a congressional hearing last month and calmly held aloft an uncropped photo that debunked a Republican smear — while Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican and subcommittee chairwoman, slammed her gavel in exasperation — the moment captured something larger than one procedural dispute.
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In a single act of preparation and truth-telling, Stansbury had exposed the hearing as political theater. The doctored image, which Greene's team presented in an effort to humiliate USA Fencing Chair Damien Lehfeldt, appeared to show him flipping off the committee. But as Stansbury revealed, he was actually flashing a peace sign.
'The document you have up behind you is a misrepresentation of the actual post,' she said as Greene tried to continue speaking.
Greene responded with a furious, uncontrolled banging of the gavel — a scene that quickly became the viral centerpiece of the May 8 Department of Government Efficiency Subcommittee hearing and a late-night comedy segment on Jimmy Kimmel Live!
But Stansbury wasn't trying to be funny. She was trying to expose a lie.
In a Tuesday interview with The Advocate, Stansbury explained that the viral moment was the result of weeks of planning — and a decision to reject silence.
'When we saw that the chairwoman was going to call a hearing on transgender athletes, actually my initial response was, we're not participating in that at all,' she said. 'Because clearly, it really is wholly outside of the scope of anything that the Oversight Committee has anything to do with. And it's just a blatant political attack on the trans community.'
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Ultimately, she and her fellow Democrats chose to engage strategically. 'We were prepared to shut them down,' she said. 'We were ready to use every procedural motion we could. We were ready for any shenanigans they would pull.'
The plan worked. Early in the hearing, Stansbury called a motion to adjourn, and when Republicans didn't have enough members in the room to stop her, the delay bought critical time.
'They had to sit there for about 10 or 15 minutes,' she recalled. 'And so during that time, some of our staff saw the poster they were planning on presenting.'
That gave Stansbury the upper hand. When Greene unveiled the image, Stansbury called it out immediately. The gavel slammed. Greene shouted. The internet noticed.
For Stansbury, who has been representing New Mexico's First District since 2021, the hearing was just the latest installment in what she calls a disturbing trend.
'In my personal opinion, I think that the Republican fixation on trans lives is weird,' she said. 'It's just weird. I almost cannot explain it.'
Related: Nancy Mace sits silently as Robert Garcia roasts her anti-trans record in House Oversight hearing
She singled out GOP members like South Carolina U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, saying, 'Who once purported to stand with [the] LGBTQ+ community and now are just so obsessed in a way that is unhealthy — even personally.'
Stansbury made the same point even more bluntly during the hearing itself: 'It's just weird. Your obsession with this is weird.' Greene's retort — 'We'll let the American people decide who the weirdos are' — backfired spectacularly, becoming meme fodder within hours.
'I could tell that it got under the skin of the chairwoman when I said that,' Stansbury told The Advocate.
Stansbury made clear that the GOP's culture war is not organic. 'This was a completely manufactured issue,' she said. 'You know, the Republicans are obsessed with less than 1 percent of the population.'
And she knows exactly where it's coming from.
'If you rewind the tape and look at where it originated from, the same groups that have Heritage Foundation affiliation are the same as those who brought before the Supreme Court for the Dobbs case," she said, referring to the case that led the court to strike down Roe v. Wade, which protected abortion rights nationally. "They are all being funded by dark money behind the scenes. And it is a Christian nationalist agenda that is very explicitly going after the trans community.'
That targeting, she warned, has real consequences. 'I have trans kids in my life, and people are scared. People are afraid just to be themselves. I have a veteran in my district who has shared her story, and she's afraid to leave her house.'
Despite Republicans' fixation, Stansbury said the issue around taking away trans rights is nowhere near the top of mind for her constituents.
'It doesn't come up. It has never once come up. Ever. Once. Never,' she said. 'I don't get asked about it in town halls. I don't get asked about it when I'm on the campaign trail. I don't get asked about it at the doors.'
Instead, she said, New Mexicans take pride in their state's record, which includes gender-affirming care protections, legal safeguards for providers, and some of the most progressive LGBTQ+ rights laws in the country.
As the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico outlines, those seeking gender-affirming care in the state are protected by confidentiality laws and can assert their rights through legal channels if they face discrimination. The law explicitly shields the privacy of patients from out of state, and conversion therapy remains banned.
'One of the biggest applause lines that I get when I do town halls is when I list all of the things that New Mexico did under progressive leadership, including protecting LGBTQ civil rights and transgender care,' she said.
But on taking rights away from trans people in the state? 'It is not a motivating issue for any constituent that I have ever talked to,' Stansbury said.
Amid whispers from some Democrats that the party should tone down its public support for transgender rights to avoid alienating moderate voters, Stansbury offered a sharp rebuttal.
'What I make of the kind of political retreat that I see some people making around this issue is, like, the American people right now — no matter what their ideological affiliation is — they want to see strong leadership,' she said.
'Trump is trying to take us back a half-century, whether that's civil rights, LGBTQ rights, women's rights, whatever it is,' she continued. 'And so we have to be as bold and as fierce in our fight as Democrats in standing up and saying no — and punching back — as they are in attacking people.'
Asked how Democrats should respond to the tidal wave of false narratives, Stansbury was unequivocal: 'Allyship doesn't mean anything if it doesn't come with action.'
'To me, that means saying something when you see something, fighting back in a full-throttled way, speaking up, speaking out, reaching out to the communities that we work with and partnering with them.'
And when it comes to Trump's broader agenda?
'They're trying to rewrite the Civil Rights Act. They're trying to undo all of these things that are not the result of policy and politics — they're the result of culture changing, of people's movements for generations,' she said. 'They think they can just go and write a few executive orders and undo generations of social struggles. They're crazy. That's not going to happen.'
Stansbury finds hope in younger generations. 'I look at people in my life who are Gen Z and Alpha ... this younger generation doesn't even think about these issues the same way the older generation does,' she said. 'There's not only going not to be a demand for this, there's not going to be any tolerance for this.'
But until that future arrives, Stansbury isn't waiting for permission to lead.
'We see you. We're fighting for you,' she said of her message to transgender Americans. 'You're loved, you're cared for, and we see what's happening — and we're going to continue to fight back.'