California Democrat asks Twitter, Facebook to ban Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine posts

California state Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, is calling on Twitter and Facebook to ban high-profile anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from their platforms as part of a national campaign to encourage vaccination against COVID-19.

Pan told supporters of his Ready to Vaccinate campaign in a Wednesday email that Kennedy should be stripped of his accounts for using them to “spread lies about COVID-19 vaccines and trying to drive fear in communities of color.”

“Sadly, COVID-19 isn’t the only disease we’re fighting,” Pan wrote in the email inviting subscribers to sign a petition for Kennedy’s social media removal. “We’re also up against the disease of misinformation, perpetuated by high-profile anti-vaxxers like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”

Ready to Vaccinate is a project under the umbrella of ProtectUs Now, a nonprofit launched in January that Pan works with to combat misinformation around health policy.

The organizations were set up to “provide spaces for people to speak up” and have deep discussions on public health issues like COVID-19 and vaccines, said Crystal Strait, founder and board member. The group has not started taking donations yet, Strait said.

Kennedy is an environmental attorney and the son of former U.S. Attorney General and New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. He’s also known for his advocacy as the founder of Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group that has promoted false information on immunizations, including the COVID-19 vaccines.

Because of his online rhetoric, Instagram removed Kennedy Jr.’s account in February as part of a multi-month sweep by social media companies to eradicate COVID-19 and vaccine falsehoods on their platforms.

“We removed this account for repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines,” a spokesperson for Facebook, which owns Instagram, said at the time.

But Kennedy’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, with 309,000 and 227,000 followers, respectively, remained active.

In an interview, Kennedy said Pan’s campaign was an attempt to quell debate.

“The idea of a government official advocating for censorship of Americans for criticizing a pharmaceutical product is anti-American,” he said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration determined authorized COVID-19 vaccines to be safe and effective after enduring rigorous scientific reviews. The vaccines will also continued to be monitored for any safety concerns, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes.

This is not the first time Pan and Kennedy have publicly clashed over vaccines.

The legislator is the author of California’s two strict vaccine laws, which Kennedy lobbied against when they were written in 2015 and 2019. The rules limit when kids can skip their shots in order to enroll in school as a way to maintain high vaccination rates against deadly diseases in California’s classrooms.

Pan said the platforms need to ban accounts like Kennedy’s in order to “curtail the influence of anti-vaxxer information online.”

“They’ve been undermining science for years,” Pan wrote, “and today, we say: No more.”