Climate Change

“The issue is now so toxic and so radioactive that if you even talk about it, it shuts off people’s brains,” Kennedy said about climate change.

  • Kennedy’s own colleagues are pleading for him to “honor our planet, drop out.” Nearly 50 leaders, activists, and former colleagues of Kennedy from the Natural Resources Defense Council are calling on him to withdraw from the race. A coalition of national environmental organizations issued an open letter, claiming Kennedy’s “agenda would be a disaster for our communities and the planet.”

  • Trying to appeal to “skeptics and activists alike,” Kennedy has turned his back on the environmental movement. He once fought adamantly for oil fracking bans in New York, yet he has now promised he won’t consider any national fracking bans. Americans deserve a leader that will stand up for what’s right — not someone who will only do what’s politically convenient.

  • Accepting praise from climate deniers such as Marc Morano, a prominent climate denier blogger, and even hiring a climate denier as his communications director, Kennedy could not care less about protecting our planet. Kennedy said he doesn’t care what other people’s beliefs on the subject are — taking a starkly different stance than he did in 2014 when he said that he wishes it was possible to "punish" people who are skeptical of or deny climate science.

  • In 2022, the largest investments in clean energy and climate action in history were made through the Inflation Reduction Act. Kennedy wants to get rid of it. We need more bold climate action, not candidates that seek to take us backward.

Wild Conspiracies

“After 50 years of failure, with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v. Wade. … Without me, there would be no 6 weeks, 10 weeks, 15 weeks, or whatever is finally agreed to.” (2023)

  • Kennedy has said that ‘there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective’ and he believes in the factually incorrect idea that vaccines can cause autism. He’s claimed that vaccines are linked to autoimmune diseases, developmental disorders, and allergies and believes that 5G wireless internet can cause ADHD, brain damage, impaired blood flow, and more. He even told Joe Rogan that wifi causes cancer and “leaky brain” and that “it degrades your mitochondria and it opens your blood-brain barrier.”

    None of these are true. There is no science to back this up. Kennedy’s conspiratorial ideas endanger the health and wellbeing of people across the country.

  • Kennedy’s Instagram account was deleted in 2021 for repeatedly sharing debunked claims about COVID-19 vaccines. The Center for Countering Digital Hate identified Kennedy as one of 12 people responsible for up to 65% of anti-vaccine content on Facebook and Twitter. During COVID-19 he urged people to ‘resist’ CDC guidelines on when kids should be vaccinated and promoted the debunked claim that hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin were effective treatments for the virus. At a time where the American public needed clear information and guidance the most, Kennedy failed us and delayed a return to normal life.

  • Not only did Kennedy promote dangerous misinformation to the public, he actively profited off it. As chairman for Children’s Head Defense, an anti-vaxx group, he was paid $1.9 million as a base salary between 2017 to 2021. On top of his salary, he’s positioned to personally profit from lawsuits, such as the case against the pharmaceutical giant Merck over the common Gardasil HPV vaccine for children.

  • In 2015, Kennedy likened increased cases of autism to the "holocaust.” In 2020, he compared mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic to Nazi medical experimentation on Jews in concentration camps. In 2022, he said the unvaccinated have less freedom than Anne Frank did. In 2023, he suggested that the coronavirus was designed to spare Jews and Chinese people.

  • He claimed using poppers and a “gay lifestyle” were significant factors in causing AIDs and supported research into whether the pesticide atrazine could turn children transgender. Kennedy’s conspiracist rhetoric has real harmful consequences to LGTBQ youth who are already under attack.

Democracy

"Reasonable people, including Trump opponents, tell me there is little evidence of a true insurrection. They observe that the protestors carried no weapons, had no plans or ability to seize the reins of government, and that Trump himself had urged them to protest 'peacefully,'" Kennedy said. 

  • Kennedy has repeatedly expressed sympathy for the rioters of Jan. 6, downplayed the insurrection, and suggested that the prosecutions of Jan. 6 defendants were just politically motivated. He also said that the rioters were “activists” peacefully protesting, who had been “stripped of their constitutional liberties,” although he later retracted that statement blaming a “new marketing contractor.”

  • Kennedy was encouraged to run by Trump allies such as Steve Bannon and Roger Stone, he’s received extensive friendly coverage from right-wing media outlets, and Kennedy’s top fundraising contributors are Republicans. In fact, Trump and Kennedy share the same mega donor. Timothy Mellon, a billionaire GOP donor who gave Trump 20 million dollars for his 2020 re-election campaign, has donated millions of dollars to both Trump and Kennedy’s super PACs this election cycle. A Kennedy consultant — and two-time Trump voter — was recorded giving a presentation in New York outlining a strategy to secure a Trump win. She even said, “if I wake up on Nov. 6 and Trump wins, I’m not going to be overly upset.”

    Make no mistake, a vote for Kennedy this November is a vote for Trump — they’re not even trying to hide it.

Gun Violence

“I'm not going to take people's guns away,” Kennedy said.  

  • Kennedy has suggested that mass shootings in the U.S. are linked to antidepressants and video games. There is no data to support this claim, but that didn’t stop him from saying that "prior to the introduction of Prozac, we had almost none of these events in our country." Instead of proposing any meaningful gun reform that would save American lives, Kennedy once again defaults to harmful lies.

  • Kennedy will not implement common sense gun reform. As a self-proclaimed “constitutional absolutist,” he claims there’s nothing meaningful we can do to reduce gun ownership within the Second Amendment — a poor excuse to avoid accountability and a choice to put the lives of Americans at risk.

Reproductive Rights

“Every abortion ultimately is a tragedy,” Kennedy said. 

  • Kennedy refuses to give voters a straight answer on abortion. After saying that he would sign a 15-week national abortion ban, his campaign backtracked his statement and avoided giving a clear answer on his position. In response to the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos are people, Kennedy would not say when he thinks life begins.

  • Kennedy’s running mate Nicole Shanahan has let us know exactly where she stands. She has been outspoken in her opposition to in vitro fertilization, calling it "one of the biggest lies that’s being told about women’s health today."