Gen Z in the House

A week with Maxwell Frost, the youngest new member of Congress

- By Abigail Tracy

SHORTLY AFTER 7 P.M. on January 3, down a cobblestone alley in the splashy Washington, DC, waterfront known as The Wharf, a steady pulse emanated from Union Stage. Inside was a raucous scene: strobing lights, high-top tables covered with empties, the stagnant smell of beer-soaked floors. A backlit white sign near the entrance read “Tonight: Swearing In Concert of Maxwell Alejandro Frost.” Inside, an eclectic crowd—half dressed like they’d just left meetings on Capitol Hill, the other half like ’90s teens—filled the dance floor. “I am too old for this shit,” one attendee near the bar quipped with a laugh as music thumped in the background.

Most people there were too old for this shit—and that is, in a sense, what the party was about. Elected when he was 25 years old, Frost is the first Gen Z member to win a seat in Congress. His arrival on Capitol Hill comes at a critical inflection point for House Democrats. For the first time in two decades, Nancy Pelosi, who is in her 80s, is no longer the Democratic leader—New York representative Hakeem Jeffries, a 52-year-old Gen X’er, is. And despite his complicated record on progressive issues, Jeffries is ushering in a new generation of Democratic lawmakers, Frost among them. “It’s not like Gen Z has been waiting to get into Congress. We just got old enough,” Frost told Vanity Fair. “But the thing is that we just got old enough and we are already here. And I think that’s really the story: Gen Z isn’t waiting.”