Robert F. Kennedy Jr. facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
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Official portrait, 2025
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| 26th United States Secretary of Health and Human Services | |
| Assumed office February 13, 2025 |
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| President | Donald Trump |
| Deputy | Jim O'Neill (nominee) |
| Preceded by | Xavier Becerra |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Robert Francis Kennedy Jr.
January 17, 1954 Washington, D.C., U.S. |
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| Spouses |
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| Children | 6 |
| Parents | |
| Relatives | Kennedy family |
| Education |
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Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. (born January 17, 1954), also known by his initials RFK Jr., is an American politician and environmental lawyer who has served as the 26th United States secretary of health and human services since February 13, 2025. He was an independent candidate in the 2024 United States presidential election. A member of the Kennedy family, he is a son of the U.S. attorney general and senator Robert F. Kennedy, and a nephew of the U.S. president John F. Kennedy and the senator Ted Kennedy.
He is the founder and chairman of Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine advocacy group.
Contents
Early life and education
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Kennedy was born in Washington, D.C., on January 17, 1954. He is the third of eleven children of senator and attorney general Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy, née Skakel. He is a nephew of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Ted Kennedy.
Kennedy grew up at his family's homes in McLean, Virginia, and Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He was nine years old when his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963, and 14 years old when his father was assassinated while running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968.
After his father's death, Kennedy lived with a surrogate family in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and graduated from the Palfrey Street School, a day school in Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1972. Kennedy continued his education at Harvard University, graduating in 1976 with a Bachelor of Arts in American history and literature. He later studied at the London School of Economics before earning a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Virginia School of Law, and a Master of Laws from Pace University.
Career
Kennedy began his career as an assistant district attorney in New York City.
In 1984, he joined Riverkeeper and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in 1986, two non-profits focused on environmental protection. Kennedy is an environmental law specialist and of counsel in the law firm of Morgan & Morgan and partner of Kennedy & Madonna, LLP.
Through litigation, lobbying, teaching, and public campaigns and activism, Kennedy has advocated for the protection of waterways, indigenous rights, and renewable energy.
He became an adjunct professor of environmental law at Pace University School of Law in 1986. In 1987, he founded the Pace Law School's Environmental Litigation Clinic, where he held the post of supervising attorney and co-director until 2017. He founded the non-profit environmental group Waterkeeper Alliance in 1999, serving as the president of its board.
Kennedy was a venture partner and senior advisor at VantagePoint Capital Partners, one of the world's largest cleantech venture capital firms. Among other activities, VantagePoint was the original and largest pre-IPO institutional investor in Tesla. VantagePoint also backed BrightSource Energy and Solazyme, amongst others. Kennedy is a board member and counselor to several of Vantage Point's portfolio companies in the water and energy space, including Ostara, a Vancouver-based company that markets the technology to remove phosphorus and other excessive nutrients from wastewater, transforming otherwise pollution directly into high-grade fertilizer. He is also a senior advisor to Starwood Energy Group and has played a key role in a number of the firm's investments.
He is on the board of Vionx, a Massachusetts-based utility scale vanadium flow battery systems manufacturer. On October 5, 2017, Vionx, National Grid and the U.S. Department of Energy completed the installation of advanced flow batteries at Holy Name High School in the city of Worcester, Massachusetts. The collaboration also includes Siemens and the United Technologies Research Center and constitutes one of the largest energy storage facilities in Massachusetts.
Kennedy is a Partner in ColorZen, which offers a turnkey cotton fiber pre-treatment solution that reduces water usage and toxic discharges in the cotton dyeing process.
2024 presidential campaign
In a speech in New Hampshire on March 3, 2023, Kennedy said he was considering a run for president in 2024: "I am thinking about it. I've passed the biggest hurdle, which is that my wife has greenlighted it."
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Kennedy filed his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination on April 5, 2023. On October 9, 2023, he became an independent candidate in the election. He is the fifth member of his family to seek the presidency of the United States.
Kennedy was considered for nomination for the Libertarian Party's candidate for president in May 2024, but lost to Chase Oliver.
Kennedy's campaign has been noted for receiving significant support from Republican donors and Trump allies who believe he will serve as a 'spoiler', taking votes of those who would have otherwise voted for Joe Biden.
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On August 23, Kennedy held a press conference in Phoenix, Arizona where he formally dropped out and endorsed Trump, while also indicating that he intended to maintain ballot placement in certain non-swing states.
Secretary of Health and Human Services (2025–present)
Days before the 2024 United States presidential election, Donald Trump said that Kennedy would have "a big role in health care".
In January 2025, the Senate Committee on Finance and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee (HELP) held hearings on Kennedy's nomination.
On February 13, 2025, the Senate confirmed Kennedy as Secretary of Health and Human Services by a vote of 52 to 48.
Tenure
On February 13, 2025, Kennedy was sworn in as the 26th secretary of health and human services in the Oval Office by Justice Neil Gorsuch. He is the first independent or third-party presidential candidate to become a cabinet member after running for president.
The next morning, agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) were informed that approximately 5,200 newly hired federal health workers were to be fired that day.
Political views
Kennedy's rhetoric often utilizes conspiracy theories.
He expressed skepticism about the COVID-19 pandemic, contending that it served to benefit billionaires.
He also stated that the financial industry and the military–industrial complex are funded at the expense of the American middle class. Kennedy sees a "vibrant middle class" as the backbone of the economy and stated that the economy has deteriorated because the middle class has become poorer.
An outspoken opponent of the military industry and foreign intervention, Kennedy was highly critical of the Iraq War.
Kennedy expresses his support for regenerative farming and states that the priority of environmentalists should be to tackle the "carbon industry". Kennedy has been an advocate for a global transition away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy. He has been particularly critical of the oil industry. He described the current society and economy as unsustainable and based on a "longtime deadly addiction to coal and oil" and contended that the current economic system rewards pollution. He also stated his support for the Green New Deal resolution of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and announced his plans to implement it.
Kennedy spoke out against geoengineering, claiming that geoengineering solutions are an attempt by big business to profit from climate change.
He is also against nuclear energy, considering it too expensive and too unsafe.
Gun control
Kennedy has stated that he supports "common sense" gun control, but has also said that he would not "take away anybody’s guns." He has explained his position saying "I’m a constitutional absolutist. We can argue about whether the Second Amendment was intended to protect guns. That argument has now been settled by the Supreme Court." Kennedy also expressed support for a bipartisan assault weapons ban.
International and indigenous rights
Starting in 1985, Kennedy helped develop the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)'s international program for environmental, energy, and human rights, traveling to Canada and Latin America to assist indigenous tribes in protecting their homelands and opposing large-scale energy and extractive projects in remote wilderness areas.
In 1990, Kennedy assisted indigenous Pehuenches in Chile in a partially successful campaign to stop the construction of a series of dams on Chile's iconic Biobío River. That campaign derailed all but one of the proposed dams. Beginning in 1992, he assisted the Cree Indians of northern Quebec in their campaign against Hydro-Québec to halt construction of some 600 proposed dams on eleven rivers in James Bay.
In 1993, Kennedy and NRDC, working with the indigenous rights organization Cultural Survival, clashed with other American environmental groups in a dispute about the rights of Indians to govern their own lands in the Oriente region of Ecuador. Kennedy represented the CONFENIAE, a confederation of Indian peoples, in negotiation with the American oil company Conoco to limit oil development in Ecuadorian Amazon and, at the same time, obtain benefits from resource extraction for Amazonian tribes. Kennedy was a vocal critic of Texaco for its previous record for polluting the Ecuadoran Amazon.
From 1993 to 1999, Kennedy worked with five Vancouver Island Indian tribes in their campaign to end industrial logging by MacMillan Bloedel in Clayoquot Sound, British Columbia.
In 1996, Kennedy met with Cuban President Fidel Castro to persuade the leader to halt his plans to construct a nuclear power plant at Juraguá. During a lengthy latenight encounter, Castro reminisced about Kennedy's father and uncle, speculating that U.S. relations with Cuba would have been far better had President Kennedy not been assassinated.
Between 1996 and 2000, Kennedy and NRDC helped Mexican commercial fishermen to halt Mitsubishi's proposal to build a salt facility in the Laguna San Ignacio, a known area in Baja where gray whales bred, and nursed their calves. Kennedy wrote against the project, and took the campaign to Japan, meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi.
In 2000, he assisted local environmental activists to stop proposals by Chaffin Light, a real estate developer, and U.S. engineering giant Bechtel from building a large hotel and resort development that, Kennedy argued, threatened coral reefs and public beaches used by local Bahamians, at Clifton Bay, New Providence Island.
Kennedy was one of the early editors of Indian Country Today, North America's largest Native American newspaper. He helped lead the opposition to the damming of the Futaleufú River in the Patagonia region of Chile. In 2016, citing the pressure precipitated by the Futaleufú Riverkeeper's campaign against the dams, the Spanish power company, Endesa, which owned the right to dam the river, reversed its decision and relinquished all claims to the Futaleufú.
Personal life
General interests
Kennedy is a licensed master falconer and has trained hawks since he was 11. He breeds hawks and falcons and is also licensed as a raptor propagator and a wildlife rehabilitator. He holds permits for Federal Game Keeper, Bird Bander, and Scientific Collector. He was President of the New York State Falconry Association from 1988 to 1991. In 1987, while on Governor Mario Cuomo's New York State Falconry Advising Committee, Kennedy authored the examination to qualify apprentice falconers given by New York State. Later that year, he wrote the New York State Apprentice Falconer's Manual, which was published by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and continues in use today.
Kennedy is also a whitewater kayaker. His father introduced him and his siblings to whitewater kayaking during early trips down the Green and Yampa Rivers in Utah and Colorado, the Columbia River, the Middle Fork Salmon in Idaho, and the Upper Hudson Gorge. Between 1976-81, Kennedy was a partner and guide at a whitewater company, "Utopian", based in West Forks, Maine. 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. He made an early descent of Great Whale River in northern Quebec, in 1993.
In 2015, he took two of his sons to the Yukon to visit Mount Kennedy and run the Alsek River, a whitewater river fed by the Alsek Glacier. Mount Kennedy had been Canada's highest unclimbed peak, when the Canadian Government named it for the assassinated American president, in 1964. In 1965, his father was the first person to climb Mount Kennedy.
Marriages and children
On April 3, 1982, Kennedy married Emily Ruth Black (born 1957), whom he had met at the University of Virginia School of Law. They had two children: Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy III (born 1984; married to writer, peace activist, and former CIA officer Amaryllis Fox) and Kathleen Alexandra ('Kick') Kennedy (born 1988). The latter shares the nickname of her great-aunt, the late Kathleen Cavendish, Marchioness of Hartington. Kennedy and Black separated in 1992 and divorced in 1994.
On April 15, 1994, Kennedy married Mary Kathleen Richardson (1959–2012) aboard a research vessel on the Hudson River. They had four children: Conor Richardson Kennedy (born 1994), Kyra LeMoyne Kennedy (born 1995), William Finbar "Finn" Kennedy (born 1997), and Aidan Caohman Vieques Kennedy (born 2001). Mary died on May 16, 2012.
Kennedy married his third wife, actress-director Cheryl Hines, on August 2, 2014, at the Kennedy compound on Cape Cod. They were introduced by Hines' co-star Larry David, from the HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm, and began dating in 2012. Kennedy and Hines currently reside in Los Angeles, California and Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Select awards and recognition
Kennedy has received awards in his name or groups he has been part of have received awards.
- 2018, The National Trial Lawyers, Mass Tort Trial Team of the Year – for "groundbreaking case of Dewayne "Lee" Johnson v. Monsanto Company" Kennedy was co-counsel at one of the two law firms involved in the case.
- 2017, Earth Justice Mountain Heroes
- 2017, Foro La Region Award for "La Proteccion de los Recursos Naturales"
- 2014, Stroud Award of Freshwater Excellence
- 2009, Rolling Stone "100 Agents of Change"
- 2008, USC Dornsife Sustainability Champion Award
- 2008, Theodre Gordon Flyfishers Conservation Award
- 2007, Vanity Fair "The Green Team"
- 2005, William O. Douglas Award, on behalf of the Waterkeeper Alliance
- 2003, Professional Resource Award, NY State Council of Trout Unlimited
- 2001, Distinguished Service Award presented at Pace Law School's 25th Anniversary
- 2001, Men's Journal "Heroes" Award
- 2000, 12th Annual Manhattan Award
- 2000, Jacques Sartisky Peace Award
- 2000, New York State Champion of the Environment
- 1999, Time's "Heroes of the Planet"
- 1998, William E. Ricker Resource Conservation Award
- 1997, EPA Environmental Quality Award
- 1997, The Brave 40 Award from NYC Department of Environmental Conservation
- 1997, Thomas Berry Environmental Award, presented to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic
- 1995, Green Star Award presented by the Environmental Action Coalition
- 1991, Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Award
Images for kids
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Kennedy in 2000
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Kennedy at a taping of ETown during the 2008 Democratic National Convention
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See also
In Spanish: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. para niños
- Bobby Kennedy – Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s father
- Kennedy family
