Rafael Edward Cruz is an American politician and attorney serving as the junior United States senator from Texas since 2013. A member of the Republican Party, Cruz was the solicitor general of Texas from 2003 to 2008. Since 2025, Cruz has chaired the Senate Commerce Committee.
After graduating from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Arts and earning a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School, Cruz pursued a career in politics, eventually serving as a policy advisor in the George W. Bush administration. In 2003, Texas attorney general Greg Abbott appointed Cruz to serve as Solicitor General, a position he held until 2008. Cruz was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012, becoming the first Hispanic American to serve as a U.S. senator from Texas. In the Senate, he has taken consistently conservative positions on economic and social policy. He played a leading role in the 2013 federal government shutdown, unsuccessfully seeking to force Congress and President Barack Obama to defund the Affordable Care Act. Cruz was reelected in a close race in 2018 and again in 2024. In 2025, he drafted and led the effort to pass the TAKE IT DOWN Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump.