On the surface Caroline Cruz is like any other teenage girl. The 17-year-old loves spending time with her friends and dreams of becoming a Hollywood actor—except her upbringing has been anything but average because she is the eldest child of Senator Ted Cruz. “Growing up as the daughter of a famous politician has always been a struggle for me,” she tells Vanity Fair, speaking from a conference room at her high school in Houston, where she is studying for exams. “I feel like I have to go the extra mile to prove that I am my own person and that I can succeed.”
Caroline isn’t the only child of a member of Trumpworld who is eager to make a name for herself away from the legacy, success, or controversies of her political parent. Some work in law in the Midwest, others are reported to have been DJs, and one even shared Thanksgiving dinner with the Secret Service. None of them know one another and each has adapted in their own way to life in the spotlight, but they seem to have one thing in common: They’ve been labeled with the term “nepo baby.”
For the Texan teenager, growing up in the shadow of her father’s political career has never been easy. “People just disregard my accomplishments and my 4.5 GPA and my 35 internships,” Caroline says. “I’ve realized that no matter what I do, my entire life people are automatically going to call me a nepo baby, so I kind of just have to ignore it.”
At 16 she was flung into internet stardom when a video went viral of her displeased side-eye and quiet warning to her mother of “don’t clap for that” when Ted mentioned Donald Trump during his election night victory speech. One version of the moment has since amassed 15 million views on TikTok.
Rather than shy away, Caroline leaned into the moment, displaying the early signs of what has now become a teenage insouciance and deadpan wit. “I really did have fun with that,” she recounts. “It kind of was the first time that I felt recognized by the general public as my own person.” Her boisterous charm, though, surfaced well before TikTok discovered her.
During Ted’s 2016 presidential campaign, Caroline repeatedly made headlines at just seven years old, flashing bunny ears behind him, looking bored on the trail, flicking his face when he tried to engage with her, and basically eschewing the formal etiquette expected of a politician’s family while adding her own hilariously chaotic flair.
But there have been darker consequences to being the child of a politician too: changing schools, needing security just to go on a walk, and having private information about her health leaked to the press.
“In 2022 I slit my wrist and I ended up in an ambulance going to the hospital, and our neighbor filmed it,” Caroline says. “The nurses at the hospital violated HIPAA and told the press that I was in there for self-laceration. I just remember I went back to school, all of my friends knew, and everyone started treating me like an outcast.”
She looks back on that period and shrugs it off, saying it “worked out.” For now, she’s focused on the magical monotony of teenage routines: stopping by the same coffee shop every morning with her best friend, trying new Houston restaurants, and perfecting her application to her dream school, USC. As for her relationship with her father, who Axios recently reported may be eyeing a 2028 presidential bid by leaning into his feud with Tucker Carlson, at the moment it’s “pretty good.” They have meals together when he’s back from Washington on the weekends.
“The media has decided that just because I disagree with my dad that means I don’t love him, which just isn’t the case. My dad and I have not always had the best relationship, but recently I feel like we’ve really gotten to a place where our family just has happy, fun dinners, and when we do bring up things we disagree on, we do it formally and with evidence and not emotion.”
Although she is applying to college, her long-term sights are set on acting. “I think if I could be in any movie, I’d be in Heathers,” she says, taking a few seconds to land on the 1988 cult classic and adding that when she auditions for roles she often uses her mother’s maiden name, Nelson. Her favorite actors are Robert Downey Jr., Winona Ryder, Hugh Laurie, and Angelina Jolie. She is “totally obsessed” with Saturday Night Live.
“I wish people knew that I’ve spent the past three years doing auditions and I finally got a manager and an agent,” Caroline explains. Last week she acted in a small student-written play at high school, though, because she wants to “be part of the community.”
Other daughters of Republicans have chosen to perfect the art of staying on script, delivering anodyne responses to difficult questions and lending a fierce, unwavering allegiance to their parents’ political ventures. Arianna Zeldin, daughter of Lee Zeldin, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, spent this summer in the White House internship program and cohosts a conservative podcast called Beyond the Ballot, offering, “unfiltered takes on today’s political climate,” according to its YouTube page. Evita Duffy-Alfonso, daughter of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, is a “journalist, commentator, and rising voice of Gen Z,” according to her bio for the Unleashed podcast, presented by Moms for Liberty, where she appeared as a guest, and she contributes to The Federalist.
Elsewhere among the offspring of America’s current administration, the paths skew more eclectic. Kyle Lutnick, son of Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, has reportedly performed as a DJ and rapper and is executive vice chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial services company his father led as chairman and CEO before joining the Cabinet. His brother Brandon is the chairman. One of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s daughters, Kyra, is modeling in Milan, and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum’s daughter, Jessamine, is one of the producers behind Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, Eleanor the Great.
For Kristi Noem’s daughter Kassidy Noem Peters, though, the truest form of enjoyment is found at home in South Dakota, where she and her husband are raising their three children. Now 31, Kassidy is accustomed to her mother being away; she was eight when Kristi was first elected to the state legislature and 12 when she started to work in Congress.
“We went out to DC with her a lot—four or five times a year,” she told me over the phone. “I don’t know that many kids [who] got that kind of experience, kids of congressional members at the time.”
The three Noem siblings—Kassidy, Kennedy, and Booker—grew up on a ranch in a small town in South Dakota. Kassidy now lives on the northeastern side of the state. She speaks with her mother regularly—calls, texts, visits when they can—and their family group chat, which has gone through many rebrands over the years, is simply titled “Noem Fam.”
“On Thanksgiving, me and my sister and my mom spent most of the day cooking,” Kassidy tells me. “What was really cool about this year is she had all of her Secret Service [with her] and so we cooked a meal to get enough food for them to have Thanksgiving with us. I don’t think that many politicians would have done that. She wanted to make it special for them.”
The family crammed everyone in and sat down to a true traditional spread: turkey, roast beef, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn casserole, bread, cranberry dip, and carrot cake. “We had literally everything,” Kassidy says. “She likes to try to keep life as normal as possible.”
For Kassidy, like others, being in the spotlight comes with highs and lows. While her mother came under fire for things like her handling of COVID-19, her tensions with Indigenous communities, and “a lot of controversial things” while she was governor of South Dakota, Kassidy says this scrutiny has been elevated now in her administration position. She adds that it can be challenging to see news alerts about her mother’s work on her phone, but she and her family “believe in what she’s doing.”
The same can be said for Kassidy’s childhood. “I guess I felt like everywhere I went, people just knew me as Kristi’s daughter, which I didn’t think was a bad thing, but it definitely put a pressure on me,” she recollects. “That’s normal, I think, to have those days where you wish that life could be completely quiet and normal.”
In 2021 Kassidy found herself at the center of a controversy over accusations that her mother had intervened to help her reapply for a real estate appraiser license after her application was denied. South Dakota lawmakers later unanimously approved a report concluding Kassidy had gotten preferential treatment while applying, something that Kassidy and Kristi deny. “It’s not the truth,” she says. “If my last name wasn’t Noem, things wouldn’t have been as difficult as they were.”
As for the broader “nepo baby” discourse, she says it doesn’t rattle her. “I want to be known as someone who works hard and can make a name for myself. Even though I’m really proud of her and what she’s doing, I never want to be known as someone who has ridden her coattails or tries to use her to advance. Hopefully that’s just evident in my actions.”
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