Robert Kennedy Jr. files to run for president

Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine advocate, filed a statement of candidacy to run for president in 2024 with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday.

His campaign will challenge incumbent President Joe Biden, who is expected to run for reelection but has not yet announced, for the Democratic nomination. So far, the only other Democratic candidate who has launched her campaign is activist and author Marianne Williamson.

According to CNN, Kennedy’s campaign treasurer, John E. Sullivan, confirmed the announcement and stated that a formal announcement will come on April 19.

Kennedy brings to the table his affiliation with one of America’s most famous political families — he is the son of late U.S. attorney general and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of late former President John F. Kennedy, both of whom were assassinated.

Apart from his lineage, he is most known for his skepticism against vaccines. Kennedy has, for at least a decade and a half, claimed that vaccines are unsafe and can cause autism. But amid the pandemic, he boosted his advocacy efforts and launched Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine nonprofit. Per The Associated Press, the charity fund doubled revenue in 2020 to $6.8 million.

Kennedy has written multiple books, like “Cause Unknown,” which examines suspected vaccine-related deaths during the pandemic, and “The Real Anthony Fauci,” where he targets the former chief medical adviser as well as billionaire Bill Gates and the big pharma industry.

“I realized the huge delta between the official narratives promoted by Pharma and public health regulators on one side and the published science I was then reading,” Kennedy told The New York Times about the latter book.

Kennedy faced controversy in January 2022 when he compared the circumstances of Anne Frank, a young diarist who was forced into hiding under Nazi rule and died in a concentration camp, to the restrictions that were imposed under the pandemic.

Although he apologized for his statements, his sister, Kerry Kennedy, a lawyer and activist, labeled his narrative “both sickening and destructive,” adding that he did not represent the views of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, a nonprofit, and the Kennedy family. His wife, actress Cheryl Hines, also decried his statements as “reprehensible” in tweets that have since been deleted, per CNN.

Meanwhile, his other siblings, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and former Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II, D-Mass., and his niece, Maeve Kennedy McKean, co-wrote an op-ed for Politico Magazine, denouncing Kennedy’s anti-vaccine stance.

“We love Bobby,” they said. “We stand behind him in his ongoing fight to protect our environment. However, on vaccines he is wrong.”

The editorial cited former President Kennedy’s Vaccination Assistance Act of 1962, which encouraged immunization against polio, diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus for children, in addition to his attorney general father’s push to improve health care, and his uncle, late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s numerous campaigns for vaccines.

In March, Kennedy told a crowd in New Hampshire that he was thinking about running for president, according to Fox News. “I have passed the biggest hurdle, that my wife has greenlighted it,” he said.