Lawmaker rips ex-Trump official for linking trans issues to sustainable investing

Becca Balint to Mandy Gunasekara: ‘Do you really believe this garbage?’

Rep Becca Balint of Vermont strongly criticised former Trump administration official Mandy Gunasekara in a congressional hearing on Tuesday for asserting that sustainable investment strategies by companies promote gender transitions for children.

Ms Gunaskara, who worked at the Environmental Protection Agency when Donald Trump was president, was testifying at a House Oversight Committee meeting on the topic of ESG — a corporate governance framework called environmental, social, governance that considers social and environmental factors that has rankled conservatives.

Partway through her testimony, she made the claim that ESG structures promote the notion that children should change their gender identities. Ms Balint was unimpressed.

“I want to know: do you really believe this garbage?” Ms Balint asked.

“It’s not about believing, it’s a matter of fact,” Ms Gunasekara replied.

Ms Balint was not having it.

“Oh – so you believe that investing strategies are actually weaponised to support and promote gender transition for children,” Ms Balint said. “Is essentially that what you’re saying? Or do you just use it as another opportunity to beat up on children? Do you believe this?”

Ms Balint, who is LGBT+ and the first woman ever elected to Congress from Vermont, later relayed to Ms Gunasekara that she had just come from a meeting with parents of trans children from states attempting to outlaw gender-affirming care for kids.

“They literally said, when you leave this room, could you please, the next time you’re in a room with someone bringing up, yet again, our children and our families as some kind of boogyman, that you will actually stand up for us,” Ms Balint said. “I didn’t think it would take less than a half hour.”

Conservatives and the Republican Party have made transgender rights a central political issue this year. As of April, state legislatures around the country had already set a record by introducing more than 400 bills targeting the LGBT+ community.

A number of those bills specifically target the trans community, with numerous states banning gender-affirming care for trans youth that studies show can save lives.

Ms Balint then noted the frequency with which Republican-aligned witnesses have turned to attacking trans children in recent months in congressional hearing rooms.

“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, somehow the witnesses find a way to bring in trans children into whatever conversation we’re trying to have here,” Ms Balint said.