Eleven Nepo Babies Sat in Congress in 2024 — America's Aristocracy Is Thriving

Eleven nepo babies held seats in the U.S. Congress as of 2024 — six Democrats, five Republicans. Seven of them occupied a seat once held by their father. That figure comes from historian Nancy Isenberg, whose new book Aristocracy, American Style (Viking, 2026) argues that America never really left the hereditary business.

The term "nepo baby" — a celebrity's child trading on the family name — usually evokes Hollywood. Isenberg's genealogy runs from the Barrymores and the Hustons to Henry Fonda's offspring, Kirk and Michael Douglas, Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson, Blythe Danner and Gwyneth Paltrow, and Jerry and Ben Stiller. Talent is beside the point, she writes: they weren't sifted from the wannabe masses. Even the New York Times, itself owned by the multigenerational Ochs-Sulzberger family, had to concede that powerful families' children "have had a leg up in life, inheriting monarchies, business empires, wealth and star power."

How far does the practice reach?

Far past Hollywood. Isenberg lists the network news legacies: Chris Wallace (son of 60 Minutes anchor Mike Wallace), CNN's Andrea Koppel (daughter of Ted), legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, and Chris Cuomo — son and brother of New York governors. Fox has Douglas Harriman Kennedy and Peter Doocy. NBC earned the nickname "Nepotism Broadcasting Company" with hires like Mika Brzezinski, Ronan Farrow, Willie Geist and, briefly, Chelsea Clinton.

The strangest case may be Luke Russert. NBC hired him in 2008 at twenty-two, fresh out of college, as an election correspondent — two months after his father, Meet the Press host Tim Russert, died. The heir took the throne with no television experience.

Who defends nepotism?

Adam Bellow, son of Nobel laureate Saul Bellow, did — in his 2003 book In Praise of Nepotism. He admitted the family cachet helped him get hired at Doubleday, which published the book, yet argued the "new nepotism" was meritocratic: privileged children must sink or swim. Nepotism, he insisted, is "hardwired" into human nature. Isenberg's retort is withering: as one critic noted, greed is "natural," too, but that doesn't mean we ought to tolerate it.

What does politics add?

The family tree runs deep. George Washington's nephew Bushrod reached the Supreme Court via John Adams. The presidencies pair off: the Adamses, the Harrisons, the Roosevelts, and the Bushes, separated by a single president. In 2002, Lisa Murkowski was appointed by her father to fill his own vacated Senate seat; at that moment, five other senators were sons of former senators. Liz Cheney got a State Department post during her father's vice presidency. West Virginia's Shelley Moore Capito is the daughter of Governor Arch Moore — whose federal corruption conviction, Isenberg notes, did nothing to dent the dynastic advantage.

The Kennedy chapter is the sharpest. JFK made his brother Robert attorney general and engineered youngest brother Ted's path to his old Senate seat, installing a placeholder until Ted turned thirty. A 1967 law banned such favoritism. Politicians simply hire colleagues' relatives instead.

What about Caroline Kennedy's Senate bid?

When Hillary Clinton left the Senate in 2008, Caroline Kennedy — never elected to anything — let her name float as successor. The press swooned. The Times' Maureen Dowd praised her "infusion of class" despite having skewered the Bushes and Clintons: "Without nepotism, Hillary would be running for the president of Vassar." On NPR, Adam Bellow compared her to Arthurian legend: "She has drawn her father's sword from the stone." A letter to the editor asked why not rename the chamber "the United States House of Peers." The bid failed; Kennedy later served ably as ambassador.

Where is the real engine?

Not glamour — tax law. Isenberg cites law professor Ray Madoff's 2010 Times essay "America Builds an Aristocracy": states strengthened dynasty trusts in the 1990s and scrapped the rule against perpetuities (the old ninety-year limit on a trust's life). The spendthrift clause shields heirs' trust assets from creditors and ex-spouses. England kept the perpetuities rule; America didn't, making the U.S., in one legal scholar's words, "a more feudal society than the British." Jefferson eliminated entail in the Revolutionary era. The trust lawyers brought it back, with better paperwork.