Robert "Bobby" F. Kennedy Jr.

Criminal Justice / Public Safety

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 de-escalation 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. Learn more

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. Learn more

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. Learn more

Defense / Veterans

Mr. Kennedy understands that veterans are not victims. Instead, your steadfast dedication to values such as accountability, duty, honor, and candor has been misused by politicians and the military-industrial complex, who have deliberately kept the true opinions of those who have served in these wars out of the conversation. For example, veterans have first hand knowledge of the waste and fraud endemic to the government contracting system, and ideas of how to fix it. Learn more

In scaling back military spending, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Will devote a portion of the savings to strengthening veteran benefits. He will also establish a Veterans Council within the President’s Executive Office. The purpose of this council will be (1) To respond quickly to veteran’s issues while bypassing the bureaucracy of the VA; (2) To draw on veterans’ knowledge to root out corruption in the defense industry, and (3) To give veterans a say in matters of war and peace by placing the head of the Veterans Council on the National Security Council. Learn more

Education

People should not be on the hook for a lifetime for a choice they made when they were 18 or 20 years old, a choice that was forced upon them by exorbitant higher education costs. As President, RFK Jr. Will propose legislation to Congress to repeal the unfair provisions of the Act and replace it with genuine protection for indebted consumers. Learn more

We need to expand the concept of higher education to include the trades. Electricians, plumbers, mechanics, builders, paralegals, and technicians of all kinds are just as important to America’s prosperity as the laptop class. Maybe more important. They are what keep America working. Learn more

In the 2021-2022 Congress, Rep. Eric Swalwell introduced the No Student Loan Interest Act, which would abolish interest on new and existing student loans. Unfortunately, the bill went nowhere. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Will lobby Congress to pass legislation along the lines of Salwell’s bill. He will also explore other ways to achieve the same result. Currently, lenders are anticipating a massive wave of student loan defaults. Undoubtedly, lenders will clamor for bailouts. If these happen, let’s have a debtors’ bailout rather than a creditors’ bailout. That means that if the Treasury or Federal Reserve purchases distressed student loan assets, they will cut the interest rate to zero. Learn more

Environment / Energy

Climate change has become an unnecessarily divisive issue, because many of the things that can address climate change have other benefits. Mr. Kennedy will focus on those things in his environmental policy. For example, he will shift American agriculture toward regenerative practices that restore carbon to the soil, improve fertility, and replenish the water table. He will protect forests and wetlands that help moderate the climate. He will promote conservation and non-polluting forms of energy. These are policies that climate activists and skeptics alike can support, each for different reasons. Learn more

Foreign Policy

Mr. Kennedy will stop using Ukraine as a geopolitical pawn in a game of world domination, which has cost Ukraine hundreds of thousands of casualties and the US hundreds of billions of dollars, all to no avail. Kennedy will negotiate the best possible diplomatic settlement, which will likely include withdrawing US missile batteries from Russia’s borders, no more NATO expansion, Russian withdrawal from occupied territory, UN peacekeepers in Eastern Ukraine, and an end of sanctions in order to improve the global economy. Learn more

Guns

I respect the Second Amendment, and I won't take away people's guns. This divisive issue obscures an underlying moral unity. Learn more

Mr. Kennedy will protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, including the Second Amendment. As an environmentalist and outdoorsman, he recognizes the importance of guns to rural culture in America. He also understands why people want to own guns at a time of rising crime and low trust in government. However, as someone whose own life was shattered by gun violence at a young age, he will make it a priority to reduce gun violence in America, which starts by looking at its causes: despair, mental illness, alienation, desperation, cycles of trauma, and lack of opportunity for young men. Learn more

Healthcare

Mr. Kennedy is in favor of safe and voluntary vaccines. Whether in the case of vaccines or any other drug, he will ensure public safety by freeing the FDA, NIH, and CDC from corporate capture, so that proper science can be done free from conflicts of interest. Doctors and members of the public can then make their own health choices based on unbiased information. Learn more

A Kennedy administration will go beyond making existing modalities available to all, to include low-cost alternative and holistic therapies that have been marginalized in a pharma-dominated system. We will move from a sick care system to a wellness society. Learn more

Immigration

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. Learn more

As President, Kennedy 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. Learn more

Mr. Kennedy will make the border impervious to illegal immigration, while expanding the means for lawful, orderly immigration. Learn more

Infrastructure / Transportation

Government assistance to the nation’s most vulnerable is a high priority, but even more important is to reverse the policies that have led to such poverty in the first place. We will rebuild the industrial infrastructure, ruined by forty years of off-shoring and misguided ''free trade'' schemes. We will enact policies that favor small and medium businesses, which are the nation’s real job creators and the dynamos of American enterprise. We will support labor in reclaiming its fair share of American prosperity. We will break up ''too-big-to-fail'' banks and monopolies, and when crisis strikes, bail out the homeowners, debtors, and small business owners instead. Learn more

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. Learn more

Social Services

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 American citizens Learn more

Wages / Job Benefits

The Administration of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Will make defense of the rights of workers a cardinal principle of governance. Learn more