Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) slammed a former Trump administration official for bringing up transgender issues at a hearing about sustainable investing on Tuesday. (Watch the video below.)
Many Republicans have attacked ESG, the environmental, social and governance investment strategy that also accounts for a company’s approach to climate change and social issues, as “woke” and detrimental to profits.
But Balint, who is gay, reached her boiling point at claims made by GOP “climate and energy strategy strategist” Mandy Gunasekara, who worked in the Environmental Protection Agency under President Donald Trump and has been dubbed the “chief architect of the Paris Accord withdrawal.” Gunasekara asserted that ESG promoted gender transitions for children at the House Oversight Committee meeting.
“I wanna know, do you really believe that garbage?” Balint asked.
“It’s not about believing. It’s a matter of fact,” Gunasekara answered.
“So you believe investing strategies are actually ... weaponized to support and promote gender transition for children? It is that essentially what you’re saying, or do you just use it as another opportunity to beat up on children?” Balint said.
“I’m not the one beating up on children,” Gunasekara said. “It’s the people who are promoting gender transitions in children that are potentially harming them.”
Balint, the first woman and first openly gay person Vermont has elected to Congress, said she had just met with parents whose transgender children have been denied care and have been demonized by the right. The parents urged her to stand up for them when the issue came up again, Balint said.
“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,” Balint said.
Gunasekara’s Texas Public Policy Foundation bio reads: “While at EPA, she spearheaded many of the Trump Administration’s greatest energy and environmental policy achievements. Mandy was the chief architect of the Paris Accord withdrawal and the repeal of the Clean Power Plan. She also led efforts to develop its replacement — the proposed Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule.”