Robert F. Kennedy Jr

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has married three times and had six children with his first two wives. He married Emily Ruth Black in 1982, and they had two children, Robert and Kathleen, before divorcing in 1994. He married Mary Kathleen Richardson later that year, and they had four children: Conor, William, Aidan, and Kyra. Richardson died by suicide in 2012 before their divorce was finalized.

Kennedy married actor Cheryl Hines in 2014. Hines has distanced herself from some of Kennedy's controversial views.

Kennedy began volunteering with environmental nonprofit organizations after an arrest for heroin possession in 1983. He worked with Riverkeeper, formerly the Hudson River Fishermen's Association, and became its chief prosecuting attorney and later a senior attorney. His work focused on enforcing environmental regulations and addressing pollution in New York waterways.

In 1987, Kennedy cofounded an environmental litigation clinic at Pace University. He played a leading role in negotiating the 1997 New York City Watershed Memorandum of Agreement, which protected the upstate reservoir system that supplies New York City with drinking water.

Kennedy published The Riverkeepers with environmental activist John Cronin in 1997. In 1999, he launched the Waterkeeper Alliance, a clean-water advocacy group, and served as its president for 21 years. Time magazine profiled Kennedy and Cronin in 1999 and named them “heroes for the planet.”

His environmental legal work also included representing Indigenous groups in treaty and conservation cases. He protested the Keystone XL pipeline in 2013 and participated in demonstrations against the Dakota Access Pipeline at the Standing Rock Reservation in 2016. He was part of legal teams that won major settlements involving toxic dumping and contamination by DuPont, as well as a 2018 class-action victory against Monsanto concerning glyphosate in Roundup.

Kennedy's public profile increasingly centered on his views about vaccines and public health. In a 2005 article for Rolling Stone and Salon, he promoted a purported connection between autism and thimerosal, a mercury-containing antiseptic used in some vaccines. Salon later retracted the article, stating that the theory had been debunked.

In 2016, Kennedy became chief legal counsel and board chair of the World Mercury Project, an organization that promoted the theory. The organization was renamed Children's Health Defense in 2018. Kennedy continued to write and speak about vaccine skepticism, including in Thimerosal: Let The Science Speak and A Letter to Liberals: Censorship and COVID: An Attack on Science and American Ideals.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kennedy promoted claims that COVID-19 vaccines caused injuries and deaths and advanced theories involving Anthony Fauci and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. His Instagram account was suspended in 2021 after repeated posts concerning vaccines and COVID-19, and it was reinstated in 2023. His vaccine views also produced a public rift with members of the Kennedy family.

Kennedy announced his campaign for the Democratic Party's nomination for president in April 2023. He switched to an independent campaign in October of that year, presenting himself as a candidate outside the traditional party structure. In March 2024, he announced Nicole Shanahan as his running mate.

His independent campaign faced the challenge of securing ballot access across the states, while his polling numbers declined amid criticism of his policy positions and public statements. In August 2024, Kennedy suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump.

After Donald Trump won the 2024 election, he nominated Kennedy to serve as secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy's nomination drew opposition from critics who objected to his vaccine skepticism and his views on public health. His cousin Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg urged senators not to confirm him.

During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy continued to express skepticism about vaccines while saying he would not discourage or prevent people from receiving them. He also supported implementing Trump's anti-abortion agenda. The Senate confirmed him by a vote of 52-48 on February 13, 2025, and he was sworn in later that day.