AP PHOTOS: A lifelong Republican transitions to a new party, years after gender reassignment surgery

A decade ago, Jessie McGrath began a physical transition to make her body match her gender identity

A decade ago, Jessie McGrath began a physical transition to make her body match her gender identity. More recently, she underwent a political transformation.

A veteran, NRA member and lifelong Republican, McGrath stuck with her political leanings even after starting gender reassignment surgeries in 2014 at the age of 53. Then Donald Trump and his opposition to gender reassignment surgery changed her mind.

“The Trump campaign and his history show he is no friend of trans people," she told The Associated Press.

McGrath grew up on a family farm in Max, Nebraska, a rural town in the state’s southwestern corner that was home to just 149 people in 2022, according to Census data.

She struggled with her gender identity as a child. Growing up in a conservative, religious household, she turned to prayer to calm her inner turmoil. But it only served as a temporary fix.

Her mother died in 2011, and when her step-father died three years later, she returned to Nebraska to clean out their home. She was 53 and experienced an intense bout of gender dysphoria as she sorted through her mother's makeup and clothes, remembering how she used to dress up in them as a child.

That inspired her to go online to find information about people who had gone through with gender reassignment surgery at her age. She joined an online forum that helped her work through her thoughts and feelings. By the end of the year, she knew that she was transgender and wanted to transition physically.

Several months later, in April 2015, while at her parents' farmhouse in Max for an estate sale, she sat with family members to watch the interview in which former Olympian Caitlyn Jenner told journalist Diane Sawyer, “I'm a woman.” McGrath believes that helped her family get a better understanding of what she had been through and where she was going.

Over the last 10 years, she's had countless therapy sessions, doctor's appointments, two major surgeries and hours of electrolysis to get rid of facial hair.

“One thing that hasn’t happened is any form of regret over my decision to transition,” she said. “I have never looked back and asked, was this the right thing to do?”

Even as she transitioned, she still identified strongly with Republican policies.

“My youngest son asked if I was going to become a Democrat," she said. “My kids all got a big laugh when I told him that while I was willing to make some changes in my life, I wasn’t going to do anything as dramatic as that.”

But when she moved back to her native Nebraska from California last year, she registered to vote as a Democrat. This year, she was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention.

She plans to vote for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

“I hope that if Harris wins we can start to get back to working in the middle and solving many of the problems that we have been ignoring because we haven’t been able to build consensus,” she said. “I also hope that her victory will kill off the ugliness of the MAGA movement and the vitriolic rhetoric that it brings.”