We Watched "Queer Eye" With Sarah McBride - Washingtonian

"On Thursday evening, an exhausted Sarah McBride sank into a pale yellow armchair in her Congressional office. It had been a long week, and she still had to drive two hours home to Delaware-but first, she'd agreed to watch the new Queer Eye, the tenth and final season of the hit Netflix makeover show, which is set in DC. On a wall-mounted TV-which typically shows a live feed of the House floor-we scrolled through the episodes and landed on one about a local tour guide."

"In early seasons, the Fab Five-the show's crew of five charismatic gay men-would trundle around red states extending extraordinary kindness to folks who'd not had a lot of experience with people like them, basically propagandizing their own humanity while gently bettering participants' lives. The show caught flack for it. Some believed it wasn't moral or strategic to engage with anyone MAGA-adjacent. McBride disagrees."

"We didn't discuss it, but that day McBride had quietly scored a victory: an enormous spending package had just passed the House stripped of dozens of anti-trans provisions, including a ban on federal funding for gender affirming care and threats to punish schools for supporting trans students. Alongside some colleagues, she'd successfully lobbied against those riders, whipping votes from various members who think quite differently than she does-including Republicans with whom she'd arduously built relationships over"

Sarah McBride watched the new Queer Eye season in her Congressional office after a long week. The show’s premise aligns with her approach of extending kindness to political opponents. Early seasons showed the Fab Five traveling to red states, humanizing themselves and improving participants' lives, which some criticized as engaging MAGA-adjacent people. McBride, a freshman Democrat and the first out-trans member of Congress, favors a "politics of grace" that meets differences with curiosity and gives people space to grow. She successfully lobbied to remove dozens of anti-trans riders from a spending package, securing votes from members across the aisle.

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