Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. (born January 17, 1954), also known by his initials RFK Jr., is an American politician, environmental lawyer, author, anti-vaccine activist, and conspiracy theorist[discuss] who has served since February 13, 2025, as the 26th United States secretary of health and human services.

[14][15] After his father's death, Kennedy struggled with drug abuse, which led to his arrest in Barnstable, Massachusetts, for cannabis possession at age 16,[16][17] and his expulsion from two boarding schools: Millbrook and Pomfret.

[65] In a 2003 article, he argued factory farms produce lower-quality, less healthy food, and harm independent family farmers by poisoning their air and water, reducing their property values, and using extensive state and federal subsidies to impose unfair competition against them.

[76] The firm litigates environmental contamination cases on behalf of individuals, non-profit organizations, school districts, public water suppliers, Indian tribes, municipalities and states.

[81] In 2007, Kennedy was one of three finalists nominated by Public Justice as "Trial Lawyer of the Year" for his role in the $396 million jury verdict against DuPont for contamination from its Spelter, West Virginia, zinc plant.

[88][better source needed] In The Wall Street Journal, Kennedy wrote, "Vermont wants to take its nuclear plant off line and replace it with clean, green power from Hydro-Québec—power available to Massachusetts utilities—at a cost of six cents per kilowatt hour (kwh).

[112] Between 1996 and 2000, Kennedy and the NRDC helped Mexican commercial fishermen halt Mitsubishi's proposal to build a salt facility in the Laguna San Ignacio, an area in Baja where gray whales breed and nurse their calves.

Kennedy argued that the activities were unnecessary, and that the Navy had illegally destroyed several endangered species, polluted the island's waters, harmed the residents' health, and damaged its economy.

[173] The deciding vote was from Bill Cassidy, who was originally hesitant, but said he had received "serious commitments" from the Trump administration and "honest counsel" from Vice President JD Vance in exchange for his support of Kennedy's nomination.

[190][191] The group alleges that exposure to certain chemicals and radiation has caused a wide range of conditions in many American children, including autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), food allergies, cancer, and autoimmune diseases.

[208][209][210] In June 2005, Kennedy wrote an article, "Deadly Immunity", that appeared in both Rolling Stone and Salon.com and alleged a government conspiracy to conceal a connection between thimerosal and childhood neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism.

[224] In an August 2017 interview with STAT News reporter Helen Branswell, Kennedy said that he had been meeting with federal public health regulators at the White House's request to discuss defects in vaccine safety science.

They offered a $100,000 reward to any journalist or citizen who could point to a study showing that it is safe to inject mercury into babies and pregnant women at levels currently contained in flu vaccines.

Craig Foster, a psychology professor who studies pseudoscience, deemed the challenge "not science", calling it a "carefully constructed 'contest' that allows its creators to generate the misleading outcome they presumably want to see".

[233] In August 2020, Kennedy appeared in an hour-long interview with Alec Baldwin on Instagram and touted a number of incorrect and misleading claims about vaccines and public health measures related to the pandemic.

In it, Kennedy alleges that Fauci sabotaged treatments for AIDS, violated federal laws, and conspired with Bill Gates and social media companies such as Facebook to suppress information about COVID-19 cures, to leave vaccines as the only option to fight the pandemic.

[248] During a speech on January 23, 2022, at an anti-vaccination rally on the National Mall in Washington D.C., Kennedy said: "Even in Hitler's Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in the attic like Anne Frank did.

"[249] The Auschwitz Memorial responded on Twitter: "Exploiting of the tragedy of people who suffered, were humiliated, tortured & murdered by the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany—including children like Anne Frank—in a debate about vaccines & limitations during global pandemic is a sad symptom of moral & intellectual decay."

He explained his remarks by citing a 2021 study that he said showed that "COVID-19 appears to disproportionately affect certain races" due to racial differences in the effectiveness of COVID-19's furin cleave docking site, thus serving "as a kind of proof of concept for ethnically targeted bioweapons".

In December 2023, he had a heated exchange with Breaking Points host Krystal Ball, in what Rabbi Shmuley Boteach called "the single greatest defense of Israel on videos since the start of the" 2023 Israel–Hamas war.

[239] Kennedy's disapproval of U.S. intervention in foreign governments was expressed in a 1974 Atlantic Monthly article titled "Poor Chile", discussing the overthrow of Chilean president Salvador Allende.

[285] In an article titled "Why the Arabs Don't Want Us in Syria" published in Politico in February 2016, Kennedy referred to the "bloody history that modern interventionists like George W. Bush, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio miss when they recite their narcissistic trope that Mideast nationalists 'hate us for our freedoms.'

[288] Kennedy believes that the administration of President Joe Biden, in large part, caused the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia due to reckless and militant action; he has specifically cited the issue of NATO expansion into Eastern Europe.

[32] He had been an early supporter of natural gas as a viable bridge fuel to renewables and a cleaner alternative to coal,[306] but said he turned against this controversial extraction method after investigating its cost to public health, climate, and road infrastructure.

[347][25] In 2003, Kennedy published an article in The Atlantic Monthly about the 1975 murder of Martha Moxley in Greenwich, Connecticut, in which he insists that his cousin Michael Skakel's indictment "was triggered by an inflamed media, and that an innocent man is now in prison".

[359] In a June 2023 podcast interview with Jordan Peterson, Kennedy posited that several issues in children, including gender dysphoria, might be linked to atrazine contamination in the water supply.

[365] After media criticism, a spokesperson for Kennedy's 2024 presidential campaign told CNN that he was being mischaracterized and that he was not claiming that endocrine disruptors were the sole cause of gender dysphoria, but rather proposing further research.

He organized and led several "first-descent" whitewater expeditions to Latin America, including three hitherto unexplored rivers: the Apurimac, Peru, in 1975; the Atrato, Colombia, in 1979; and the Caroni, Venezuela, in 1982.

In a 2012 divorce court deposition, he attributed neurological issues to "a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died", in addition to mercury poisoning from eating large quantities of tuna.

[415] Kennedy claimed that the bear had been hit by a car in front of him and that he ultimately abandoned the carcass for fear that it would spoil before he could preserve it, deliberately positioning the body to give the impression that it had been struck by a cyclist in Central Park.