Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. A (born January 17, 1954), also known by his initials RFK Jr., is an American environmental lawyer, politician, and writer. He is known for advocating anti-vaccine misinformation and public health-related conspiracy theories. He is a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination in the 2024 presidential election.
A democratic government is supposed to be of, by, and for the people. But government institutions have betrayed our trust. The intelligence agencies spy on our own people. Government and tech platforms conspire to surveil and censor the public. Regulatory agencies have been captured by those they are supposed to regulate: Wall Street controls the SEC. Polluters and extractive industries dominate the EPA and BLM. Pharma controls the CDC, NIH, and FDA. Big Ag controls the USDA. Big Tech has captured the FTC. No wonder trust in government is at all-time lows. It’s time to earn it back.
From his long experience and familiarity with systems of power, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. understands that most people in corporations and government are perfectly decent human beings. They play the game, but a lot of them are fed up with its phoniness, and cynical about the paralysis of the system. They feel trapped in it. Clean government isn’t just about removing corrupt individuals. It is about changing a system in which perfectly decent people become agents of corruption without even knowing it.
We are going to remake public institutions to serve the public. We will roll back the secrecy and make government transparent. We will protect whistleblowers and prosecute officials who abuse the public trust. We will rein in the lobbyists and slam shut the revolving door that shunts people from government agencies to lucrative positions in the companies they were supposed to regulate, and back again. We will get money out of politics. We will open our institutions to real citizen involvement. We will restore integrity to government.
America is more polarized and divided now than at any time in living memory. Both sides seem to agree that the basic problem is the horrible people on the other side. Both sides are wrong. The basic problem is the division itself. A divided public lacks the strength to resist exploitation or to overcome the inertia of the status quo. The classic American can-do spirit exhausts itself in endless battles. So let’s heal the divide.
Today, powerful undemocratic forces have a death-grip on our nation. There is only one way to break that grip and restore power to the people. That is a broad popular movement that unites left and right, Black and White, urban and rural, young and old, and working people of all ethnicities. This populist uprising is not defined by its enemies. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recognizes that even the elites have become prisoners of the system they have created. Many of them no longer believe in it, despite the wealth and power it gives them. They too are welcome to defect to the movement of people power.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has clear positions on most of today’s divisive trigger issues like abortion, guns, and immigration, but he knows that both sides have legitimate concerns and legitimate moral positions. No one is deplorable. Furthermore, most of the disagreements obscure deeper shared values. Everyone wants their children to be safe. No one wants more abortions, nor do they want to force women to undergo unwanted pregnancies. Everyone wants safe streets, yet few wish for millions of people to languish in prison. Robert F. Kennedy will draw on the broad moral agreements beneath our divisions. He will model careful listening, and create conditions where each group can hear the stories of the other. He will lead the way toward national reconciliation, respectful dialog, and willingness to change, to grow, and to forgive.
These commitments to respect and unity start right now, in the campaign. In Kennedy's own words, “Every nation, like every individual, has a darker side and a lighter side. The easiest thing for a politician to do is to appeal to our greed, to our anger, to our fear, to our xenophobia, our bigotry, all of the alchemies of tribalism. I will appeal instead to our generosity as a people, our goodness, our kindness, and our courage.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent most of his career as an environmental lawyer, suing big polluters and the government agencies that failed to enforce the law. By the early 2000s, he had become one of the most influential environmentalists in the United States, designated by TIME magazine as a “Hero of the Planet.”
RFK Jr.’s success came from uniting liberal environmentalists with conservative rod-and-gun folks who shared a desire for a clean, healthy environment. As President, he will bring the same commitment and coalition-building to address the most pressing environmental problems in America and beyond.
Recent years have seen one environmental disaster after another: floods and droughts, fires, and toxic spills. Our soils are depleted, the weather is wacky, trees are dying, and the water in many places is toxic. Chronic disease is at an all-time high. We’re going to address these problems at their root causes.
In all of his policies, RFK Jr. will put people and places first. In recent years, climate change has made the environment a divisive issue, but there are many policies that make sense to skeptics and activists alike. We will emphasize those, and rebuild a broad environmental coalition to clean up this country.
A democratic government is supposed to be of, by, and for the people. But government institutions have betrayed our trust. The intelligence agencies spy on our own people. Government and tech platforms conspire to surveil and censor the public. Regulatory agencies have been captured by those they are supposed to regulate: Wall Street controls the SEC. Polluters and extractive industries dominate the EPA and BLM. Pharma controls the CDC, NIH, and FDA. Big Ag controls the USDA. Big Tech has captured the FTC. No wonder trust in government is at all-time lows. It’s time to earn it back.
From his long experience and familiarity with systems of power, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. understands that most people in corporations and government are perfectly decent human beings. They play the game, but a lot of them are fed up with its phoniness, and cynical about the paralysis of the system. They feel trapped in it. Clean government isn’t just about removing corrupt individuals. It is about changing a system in which perfectly decent people become agents of corruption without even knowing it.
We are going to remake public institutions to serve the public. We will roll back the secrecy and make government transparent. We will protect whistleblowers and prosecute officials who abuse the public trust. We will rein in the lobbyists and slam shut the revolving door that shunts people from government agencies to lucrative positions in the companies they were supposed to regulate, and back again. We will get money out of politics. We will open our institutions to real citizen involvement. We will restore integrity to government.
In the long term, a nation’s strength does not come from its armies. America spends as much on weaponry as the next nine nations combined, yet the country has grown weaker, not stronger, over the last 30 years. Even as its military technology has reigned supreme, America has been hollowing out from the inside. We cannot be a strong or secure nation when our infrastructure, industry, society, and economy are infirm.
A high priority of a Kennedy administration will be to make America strong again. When a body is sick, it withdraws its energy from the extremities in order to nourish the vital organs. It is time to end the imperial project and attend to all that has been neglected: the crumbling cities, the antiquated railways, the failing water systems, the decaying infrastructure, the ailing economy. Annual defense-related spending is close to one trillion dollars. We maintain 800 military bases around the world. The peace dividend that was supposed to come after the Berlin Wall fell was never redeemed. Now we have another chance.
As President, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will start the process of unwinding empire. We will bring the troops home. We will stop racking up unpayable debt to fight one war after another. The military will return to its proper role of defending our country. We will end the proxy wars, bombing campaigns, covert operations, coups, paramilitaries, and everything else that has become so normal most people don’t know it’s happening. But it is happening, a constant drain on our strength. It’s time to come home and restore this country.
In Ukraine, the most important priority is to end the suffering of the Ukrainian people, victims of a brutal Russian invasion, and also victims of American geopolitical machinations going back at least to 2014. We must first get clear: Is our mission to help the brave Ukrainians defend their sovereignty? Or is it to use Ukraine as a pawn to weaken Russia? Robert F. Kennedy will choose the first. He will find a diplomatic solution that brings peace to Ukraine and brings our resources back where they belong. We will offer to withdraw our troops and nuclear-capable missiles from Russia's borders. Russia will withdraw its troops from Ukraine and guarantee its freedom and independence. UN peacekeepers will guarantee peace to the Russian-speaking eastern regions. We will put an end to this war. We will put an end to the suffering of the Ukranian people. That will be the start of a broader program of demilitarization of all countries.
We have to stop seeing the world in terms of enemies and adversaries. As John Quincy Adams wrote, “Americans go not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” Robert F. Kennedy will revive a lost thread of American foreign policy thinking, the one championed by his uncle, John F. Kennedy who, over his 1000 days in office, had become a firm anti-imperialist. He wanted to exit Vietnam. He defied the Joint Chiefs of Staff and refused to bomb Cuba, thus saving us from nuclear Armageddon. He wanted to reverse the imperialistic policies of Truman and Eisenhower, rein in the CIA, and support freedom movements around the world. He wanted to revive Roosevelt’s impulse to dissolve the British empire rather than take it over.
John F. Kennedy’s vision was tragically cut short by an assassin’s bullet. But now we have another chance. The country is ailing, yes, but underneath there is vitality still. America is a land rich in resources, creativity, and intelligence. We just need to get serious about healing our society, to become strong again from the inside.
America was once an inspiration to the world, a beacon of freedom and democracy. Our priority will be nothing less than to restore our moral leadership. We will lead by example. When a warlike imperial nation disarms of its own accord, it sets a template for peace everywhere. It is not too late for us to voluntarily let go of empire and serve peace instead, as a strong and healthy nation.
Our administration will make it a top priority to protect and restore the fundamental civil liberties, enshrined in the Bill of Rights, that hold the essence of what America can be. These liberties have endured constant assault for over twenty years, starting with the Bush/Cheney War on Terror, and accelerating in the era of Covid lockdowns.
Freedom of speech is the capstone of all other rights and freedoms. Once a government has the power to silence its opponents, no other right is safe. We will therefore dismantle the censorship-industrial complex, in which Big Tech censors, deplatforms, shadowbans, and algorithmically suppresses any person or opinion the government asks them to. We will respect the right to privacy and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, by ending mass surveillance of American citizens and the abuse of civil asset forfeiture. We will make sure that the Covid-era suspension of the right to assembly, trial by jury, and freedom of worship will never happen again. The same for the right to property. During Covid, 3.4 million business were forced to close. Many of them, including 60% of Black-owned businesses, will never reopen.
A Kennedy administration will respect American citizens and stop treating them like suspects and schoolchildren. We will stop manipulating the public with propaganda and targeted leaks. We will never weaponize the law against political opponents, nor hold our own officials above the law. We will return the intelligence agencies to their proper role as protectors not violators of liberty.
We will also take special care to ensure the civil liberties of minorities and the poor. We will end the failed War on Drugs and grant amnesty to nonviolent drug offenders. We will shut the school-to-prison pipeline, and transition prisons away from a punishment paradigm to a rehabilitation paradigm. Prisons will be an intervention in a life gone wrong, and a way to prevent offenders from harming others again.
Instead of defunding the police, we will transform the police. We will incentivize them to prevent violence, not make unnecessary arrests. We will train them in deescalation and mediation skills and partner them with neighborhood organizations. No longer will their relationship to the public be adversarial. They will focus their attention on serious crimes, not harassing ordinary people.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. sees the situation at the border primarily as a humanitarian crisis. It is a crisis that has spread far beyond the border, as a flood of migrants has overwhelmed the resources of cities as far away as New York. The suffering of the migrants at the hands of drug cartels, human traffickers, and exploitative employers is heartbreaking.
As President, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is going to end the humanitarian crisis, starting with its most immediate cause – an uncontrolled border. As he seals the border to illegal immigration, his administration will enact deeper reforms to stem illegal migration in the long term, while expanding lawful, orderly immigration according to principles of justice and fairness.
We must recognize that the foremost victims of a porous, chaotic border are the immigrants themselves. Compassion and decency demand that we do not allow the current situation to continue.
The criminal cartels that now control immigration across the Mexican border exact a high price. MIgrants are routinely robbed, raped, kidnapped, and sex trafficked. These horrors are happening systemically and at scale. The whereabouts of some 85,000 children who have been separated from their parents are unknown. In May, a “stash house” with 135 kidnapped migrants was liberated just across the border in San Luis. For every one that is discovered, many more operate undetected. Our unregulated border is not compassionate. It is an open opportunity for the worst kinds of organized crime.
The Mexican cartels controlling immigration are as ruthless in this business as they are in the drug business. Gang violence all along the border has spiked as the cartels vie for turf through assassination and torture. The Mexican state of Sonora recorded 1765 murders in 2022, and many unsolved disappearances. The Mexican government’s official tally of disappearances now approaches 100,000.
This civil disorder is encroaching into the US, as destitute migrants flood American cities, sleeping on sidewalks and overwhelming humanitarian resources. Here too they are easy prey for criminals.
Fentanyl and methamphetamine are flooding into the country across the border along with the migrants. That is part of the cartels' integrated business model.
Because migrants have no documentation, they have no bargaining power or recourse when employers take advantage of them. They work for $5 or $6 an hour. They exist as the permanent bottom layer of a shadow economy from which it is almost impossible to escape. A pool of cheap, exploitable labor lowers the floor for all labor, putting downward pressure on wages and harming the American working class.
As a young man, RFK Jr. had the honor to work with Cesar Chavez. He understood that farm laborers’ condition would never improve when endless new busloads of undocumented immigrants were available to replace any workers who tried to bargain for better working conditions. He was no xenophobe. Immigration is good for this country. It is unlawful, disorderly illegal immigration that harms migrants and undercuts American workers.
In the long term, perhaps the most pernicious effect of the current border chaos is that a criminal infrastructure of well-financed, institutionalized cartels is taking hold, corrupting government officials and insinuating itself into society. Just as Prohibition was a tremendous boon to organized crime, birthing the American mafia of legend, so also does the border situation provide a financial foundation for criminal organizations that could persist of decades.
The first step toward fixing this situation is to reassert control over our border. Today there is no control, no effective policy and, as a result, there is a humanitarian, security and economic disaster.
There are two ways people enter this country illegally. One way is by sneaking in. The other is by simply walking across at an entry point, claiming asylum, and disappearing. We have to address both. If we only shut down the asylum route, they will sneak across instead. If we only seal the border, they will overwhelm asylum processing resources. We must end both simultaneously. To accomplish this, the Kennedy administration will pursue the following policies.
There are 1.6 million immigrants living in the US while they await their asylum hearing. Fewer than 15% will be approved. We need to appoint hundreds more judges to deal with this backlog, and to ensure that newly arriving immigrants get a hearing before being admitted to the US.
This is a common sense solution that can transcend partisan rancor. Democrats will support swift attention to asylum claims so that we meet our humanitarian obligations. Republicans will support an end to the flow of millions of unheard asylum claimants into the US on their own recognizance.
Migrants will know that their case will be heard at the border and they will not be let through unless it is approved. Deciding to spend a lifetime of savings and risk injury, rape, and death to make this journey is the biggest decisions of most migrants' lives. They do not make that kind of a decision in a vacuum. We must give them forewarning that we are hiring hundreds more judges and they can no longer expect to be let into the country due to judicial delays.
Together, these three policies will end the business model of the cartels. When we also expand legal immigration, migrants will rationally choose the legal path instead of putting their families’ lives at the mercy of criminals.
Beyond the immediate border crisis is a long-term immigration crisis, the result of lack of leadership, poor planning, little to no diplomacy, economic exploitation, and an inability to reimagine a regionally cooperative approach. We can control the border, but immigration pressure will not abate until we change the conditions that make so many people desperate to flee their homelands. Sadly, the United States has contributed to those conditions. As President, RFK Jr. will change that by implementing a new kind of Good Neighbor policy, starting in this hemisphere.
Politicians in the past have appealed to xenophobia and bigotry in calling for a tough border policy. RFK Jr.’s call for a tough border comes from a different place. It comes from compassion and humanitarian conscience. He calls upon all Americans, of every part and political persuasion to face facts. President Biden’s loose border policy has been a disaster. It serves no one: not the migrants, not the nations south of the border, and not our own country. We are in the midst of a humanitarian nightmare, an entirely unnecessary one of our own making. Conscience demands that we stem the tide of illegal immigration so that we can return to the orderly, lawful immigration that has brought so much dynamism to our country.
That is the guiding principle of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s economic policies.
It’s hard to believe that once upon a time, a blue-collar worker with a high school education could support a family, take vacations, and even save for retirement. Technology has made our productivity many times higher – so why is life poorer, not richer, than in the 1960s? Why do people just accept that life will get slowly worse?
Bobby Kennedy does not accept it. We can restore the American middle class by reversing the missteps of the last fifty years. A massive military machine has nearly bankrupted this country. Rampant corruption in Washington has put corporations in charge, enriching the wealthiest as working people have dropped out of the middle class. Official unemployment is low – but most of the new jobs are in the low-pay service sector. Wealth inequality in the country is at 100-year highs. More than 60% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, with no savings for an emergency. Take-home pay after inflation and taxes has fallen 9% since Biden took office.
Under the Biden administration, the price of an average home has risen from $250,000 to around $400,000, and mortgage rates have more than doubled. Rents have followed the trend, putting more and more people on the edge of catastrophe.
But we can turn it around. Being able to afford a decent life doesn’t mean working more hours. It means higher pay and lower bills. Here is what Bobby Kennedy will do to make that a reality.
People always ask, “How are we going to pay for all this?” The answer is simple. First is to end the military adventures and regime-change wars, like the one in Ukraine. The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya already cost us over $8 trillion. That’s $90,000 per family of four. That’s enough to pay off all medical debt, all credit card debt, provide free childcare, feed every hungry child, repair our infrastructure, and make college tuition free – with money left over. That’s enough to make social security solvent for another 30 years.
Second is to end the corruption in Washington, the corporate giveaways, the boondoggles, the bailouts of the too-big-to-fail that leave the little guy at the mercy of the market. Corporations right now are sitting on $8 trillion in cash. Their contribution to tax revenues was 33% in the 1950s – it is 10% today. It’s high time they paid their fair share.
Other Presidents have tinkered on the edges, but Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will make the deep changes necessary to put the economy on a sound footing. The broad prosperity of the Eisenhower and JFK era can be ours again. It is just a shift of priorities away.
The dream of home ownership is slipping away for many Americans with high mortgage rates, rising prices, and stagnant income. To make matters worse, venture capital firms and hedge funds are buying up single-family homes by the millions. As home ownership costs rise beyond reach, rents follow them into the stratosphere.
Consider these statistics:
What this means is that home ownership is now out of reach for all but the top income bracket. Younger Americans in particular barely dream of ever owning a home. They face a future at the mercy of faceless corporate landlords who will raise rent to the highest level the market will bear.
None of this is inevitable, though. As President, RFK Jr. will enact a series of policies to put home ownership back within the reach of working families. Here’s how.
Together, these changes will restore home ownership to tens of millions of Americans, and lower costs for tens of millions more. We will get large corporations out of the single family home business.
Nearly sixty years after the Civil Rights Act, the condition of Black people in America is better in many respects. However, in terms of income, wealth, education, infant mortality, home ownership, incarceration, health, and life expectancy, they still lag behind the rest of the population.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. believes that this unacceptable situation is the result of the unhealed legacy of racism in this country. We must take direct action to remedy it — not only for the sake of Black people, but for the wellbeing of the entire nation. He will appeal not to guilt and blame, but to the conscience of Americans of all races who want to repair the wounds of history. Here are some of the policies he will adopt to accomplish it.
1. Targeted Community Repair
Communities that were specifically targeted for destruction need to be specifically targeted for repair. During Jim Crow, Black banks, businesses, hospitals, schools, and farms were targeted for destruction. Racists knew that without these, the Black community had no chance of building wealth. We must set federal dollars aside to rebuild Black infrastructure.
These programs complement direct redress payments or tax credits to the descendents of the victims of Jim Crow and other victims of persecution. RFK Jr. will find ways to offer this redress that are legal, fair, and win the approval of Americans of all races.
2. Prison reform
RFK Jr. will undo the legacy of the 1994 crime bill that disfavors African-Americans. He will seek early release for nonviolent offenders. He will reorient the prison system around rehabilitation rather than punishment. His policy will be tough in the sense of keeping violent people where they can do no further harm, but generous in recognizing the fundamental desire of most human beings to live meaningful lives and contribute to society.
3. Police reform
RFK Jr. will reorient police to serve, not occupy, Black communities; to keep neighborhoods safe rather than harassing their residents. The federal government will work with localities to change police culture, with pro-community incentives, training in deescalation, and cooperation with neighborhood organizations.
4. Working class / working poor
Because Black people are disproportionately represented among the working class, RFK jr.’s policies to uplift working people will disproportionately help the Black community. These include a $15 minimum wage, tax credits, child care subsidies, and home-buying programs. Federally-backed 3% mortgages will extend home ownership to millions of Black families.
5. Schools
Black children bear the brunt of the shameful decrepitude of the schools in the cities and inner suburbs. RFK Jr.’s policy team is looking at ways to revive these schools while also supporting parents to choose other options.
6. Addiction
Addiction afflicts all ethnic groups in America, but is especially devastating in conjunction with the unique legacy of racism and trauma faced by Black people. RFK Jr. will launch a nationwide network of low-cost or free addiction healing centers on organic farms available to anyone who sincerely wants to heal.
7. Youth
In America’s most devastated communities, many of them heavily Black, young people have few pathways and little hope to escape their situation. RFK Jr. will expand youth programs to make them available to every young person who wants to learn skills while serving society, the environment, the sick, the elderly, and so on.
8. Free ID for all
Today, many marginalized people lack a government-issued ID, locking them out of the banking system, schools, and many other social institutions. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will make free passport cards available to anyone who wants one.