Vermont Rep. Becca Balint recently made headlines for taking a conservative activist to task during a June congressional hearing. After the source submitted testimony somehow connecting a corporate governance strategy to “efforts to promote ‘gender transitions’ for children,” Balint responded, “I want to know, do you really believe that garbage?... or do you just use it as another opportunity to beat up on children?”
“It feels like every single hearing that I am in, whether it is in Oversight or whether it is in Budget or whether it is in a subcommittee, the witnesses find a way to bring in trans children into whatever conversation we’re trying to have here,” Balint continued, mentioning having just met with parents of trans children thirty minutes beforehand.
In November 2022, Balint became the state’s first LBGTQ+ and first woman elected to federal office when she won her race to the House of Representatives. With her election, Vermont became the last state to send a woman to federal representation.
When serving as state senate president pro tempore in Vermont, Rep. Balint was known for slow and steady “peacemaking” efforts — language that wouldn’t generally be used to describe the U.S. Congress. “People would say, Yeah, well, that stuff all works in Vermont, but you'll never be able to be yourself in DC, it's going to change you, it's going to make you bitter,” Balint tells Teen Vogue. She wasn’t interested in being changed. “I know myself, I'm very clear on who I am, in my community and in the world, and how I want to do politics.”
Balint recently spoke to Teen Vogue about showing up as her “genuine self” in a hostile Congress, sticking up for LBGTQ+ kids, her time as an educator, and more.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Teen Vogue: Following your race, a lot of the headlines focused on the barrier-breaking nature of your win. Since taking office, you’ve had to join a Congress influenced by the national concentrated effort to target LGBTQ+ folks through rhetoric and policy. What has that been like for you?
Becca Balint: It’s disgusting. I was talking about this with folks last night at another congresswoman's house and I said, Look, this is the same playbook they've been using decade after decade. When they are losing — when they know they don't have a resonant message — they pick on queer and trans people. That's what they do. They've done it my whole life. They are on the losing side of history. We know that Gen Z, Gen Alpha — and I have a 12 year old and a 15 year old kid — they think about the world in really different ways. I know this wave of progressive voters, and voters who think more broadly about what it means to be human, is coming, so it feels very tired and, of course, very fear-based. It's about dehumanizing people, and I just don't feel that's going to win out over the long term.
In the short term, we have to fight for every single right, and we can't give an inch. That is definitely something that Jamie Raskin has said for us on [the House] Oversight [Committee], we have to stand up for the facts and for the truth every single time and we can't give an inch, because even when we're talking about issues completely unrelated to LGBTQ rights, they will find a way to drag it into our hearings, to pick on queer and trans kids and their parents. [Ed. note: Since this interview, Balint was appointed to the House Judiciary committee; she will likely step down from one of her other two committee positions.]
That's why I keep doing this job, why I keep finding the light, is because there's only a handful of us in Congress who are in those rooms who feel it on a personal level. Often I'm the only queer woman in the room. There are two other queer [woman] representatives and their districts are really different — they represent purple districts, so I know that they have to walk a different line than I have to walk as someone from a more solidly blue state. I have a responsibility to show up in those spaces. Even with my colleagues, when they have a particular frame on something, and I will say, yeah, I get that, but let me tell you what it looks like from my perspective as a queer woman, and I think that that has to be part of my work every single day.
TV: That’s a little concerning; I feel like I know more people than not who’ve been impacted by anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment.
BB: Many do. I am so excited that this leadership team is very strong on these issues, both publicly and privately. I just want to be clear, there's definitely a group of people within the caucus who continue to struggle with these issues, and we just gotta keep showing up, and we have to bring the experiences of queer and trans people into those conversations every time.
TV: You’re a former longtime educator, and many of the attacks on LGBTQ+ youth have focused on schools. What’s your take on the targeting of education?
BB: I have had so many thoughts about this. I taught primarily middle school for many years, I also taught community college. I am horrified by the distrust that the GOP seems to have when it comes to schools, when it comes to school boards, and also when it comes to parents. Honestly, I don't need them telling me that I should be worried about what's in my school library or spreading misinformation.
This ridiculous “parents’ bill of rights” — they tried to argue that now, for the first time, parents will know what's in the school budget. Parents always [could learn] what's in the school budget, but they’ve got to actually show up at a school board meeting and look over the budget. We already have that right. There is no conspiracy within schools to brainwash kids. This is about supporting all kids, making a safe place for all kids, and that is not a radical idea.
And it is so disheartening to see them bring up bill after bill after bill onto the floor, that actually will have no positive impact on kids when we have a terrible mental health crisis going on right now among teens and twenty somethings, it's an epidemic. I mean, I travel around Vermont a lot when I'm home and visit schools and talk to parents and they all say, why aren't we talking about not having enough providers at all levels? Why aren't we dedicating more money in Congress for mental health supports for youth and teens and young people on college campuses? That is where we should be putting our focus.
Why are we continuing to demonize young people? That's what's going on here, this whole argument about whether we can let your 13 year old trans girl play on a hockey team — this is not what families are worried about right now. Their kids need help navigating this pandemic world, and we're not doing them any favors by focusing on the wrong issues. I feel so strongly about that.
TV: Right, there’s a well-documented mental health crisis among… well, everyone, right now, but particularly youth.
BB: I hear from parents all the time: my kids are suffering, our kids are suffering. When are we collectively, as a nation, going to accept that we've been through this horrible, traumatic experience, which was the global pandemic? Millions of people died globally, and we were expecting kids to just shrug it off and go on — that the entire world was upended. Our relationship to work has changed, our relationship to school has changed, and we are not giving any time to that incredible crisis right now.
TV: Or how it’s impacting teachers, who are leaving the workforce en masse.
BB: There is a fundamental misunderstanding right now of what it is to teach today. The job is not the same that it was 20, 30 years ago. I mean, in the last few years of teaching, I watched all the bushes cut down in front of my school, because they didn't want shooters. That's what we're talking about. We're not just talking about the trauma of doing these shooter drills, our adults in the room have this incredible responsibility to keep kids safe. They take it really seriously, and that wears on you.
TV: What other issues would you say you’re prioritizing back in Vermont in this current role? You’ve previously worked on issues of affordable housing in your home state, for example, a crisis impacting people all over the country.
BB: We're in a surprising situation. I think a lot of people don't believe the statistics. California has the worst homelessness crisis per capita; Vermont's number two. So housing, yes, and mental health, but also gun violence prevention.
There was an interesting conversation the other day about if the Republicans continue to refuse to bring an assault weapons ban or universal background checks to the floor, what are the other things that we can do to prevent these mass shootings?... There are other ways to get at this, but we need willing partners. I was thinking about this interview, what is my message to people outside of my world? It's that it has to be kids and families putting pressure on Republican House members. They have to hear from them, because they don't seem to have the courage to jump together. We always say there are some more moderate Republicans, but if they're there, we're not seeing them on these votes. They're all falling in line. They make noises about being able to work across the aisle or being, quote unquote, more reasonable, [but] when it comes to the vote — they fall in line.
So when are those parents and those districts going to be activated to say, are you going to stand up to the gun lobby? What are you going to do? How many kids are going to be slaughtered before you do that? And I think young people have a part to play in this in those districts too, to show up at the town hall meetings for these Republican House members, to show up with their parents and say, No, we are in your district, and we want change on this. This is not the price we have to pay for freedom, that our children get slaughtered in schools. It's not. It is such a horrible feeling to feel hopeless about this, and I refuse to feel hopeless. I refuse.
Stay up-to-date with the politics team. Sign up for the Teen Vogue Take.
