Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent presidential candidate, prides himself on changing his mind.
If “I’m wrong about something, tell me the facts and I’m going to change my position,” he said in a radio appearance on “Good Morning New Hampshire” in June.
On many occasions, these shifts have made it difficult to pin down the specifics of his views on many of the major policy matters and issues animating American public life, and how he would seek to reshape the country if elected.
But while Mr. Kennedy, the anti-vaccine activist who often promotes conspiracy theories, is a long shot to win the White House, his blend of populist economic rhetoric, isolationist foreign policy leanings and government skepticism has seemed to find a real base of support. He also appears to be benefiting from Americans’ discontent with the choice between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump.
He initially ran against Mr. Biden as a Democrat, but broke with the party last year. Recent polls suggest he would pull votes from both candidates in a general election.
Here’s what we know about where Mr. Kennedy, 70, stands on key issues.
Abortion
Mr. Kennedy has changed his position on abortion, one of the driving issues of 2024, over the last year. He endorsed federal restrictions on abortion after the first trimester of pregnancy, then backtracked. On a podcast released in early May, he said that women should be able to make such decisions without any government-imposed limits, “even if it’s full-term.”
That pronouncement brought internal tensions and disagreements over the campaign’s abortion platform out into the open. (His running mate, Nicole Shanahan, a former Silicon Valley lawyer and ex-wife of the Google co-founder Sergey Brin, has called for federal limits on abortion after the first trimester.)
Mr. Kennedy then issued a statement saying abortion should be unrestricted until “the baby is viable outside the womb. Therefore I would allow appropriate restrictions on abortion in the final months of pregnancy.” His campaign spokeswoman, Stefanie Spear, said Mr. Kennedy believed states should be able to enact limits after the point of viability.
The Kennedy campaign website outlines a policy called “More Choices, More Life,” which it says will “dramatically reduce abortion in this country” by expanding the social safety net for mothers and pregnant women. The centerpiece of the plan is a subsidized day care initiative paid for by “redirecting the funds being spent on the war in Ukraine.” The campaign also says it will strengthen adoption infrastructure.
Immigration and the border
Mr. Kennedy has said he would “seal” the southern border, as well as expand opportunities for legal immigration — what his campaign calls “high walls, wide gates.”
Ms. Spear said Mr. Kennedy’s plan was to finish the wall construction, relying on technology in places where a physical wall is not necessary. The campaign has also backed a policy for increased funding for asylum courts to quickly review cases.
He has endorsed Mr. Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, that the Biden administration had tried to end.
Mr. Kennedy has wavered, however, in his public remarks about whether border security is a vital issue or a partisan sideshow, suggesting that Americans are concerned with more “existential” issues like inflation and homeownership.
Climate change and the environment
Mr. Kennedy, a longtime environmental lawyer who helped found a global clean water organization, has pledged to be “the greatest environmental president in American history.”
He calls for the elimination of subsidies for fossil fuels, tougher enforcement of laws including the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act and an array of regulations on plastics and chemicals. He also urges more protection of wildlife, lands and waters.
He argues that major U.S. environmental regulatory agencies have been “captured” by corporate interests, often by the very industries they are meant to regulate. He has said he will replace “corrupt” agency leaders and impose a five-year ban on former officials lobbying the government agencies where they had worked.
When it comes to climate change, Mr. Kennedy has said that the broader environmental movement made a “huge tactical error” in its focus on combating global warming. (Former allies in the environmental and conservation worlds have sharply rebuked him for his climate change views and other stances they called “anti-science,” including his anti-vaccine activism.)
Still, Mr. Kennedy has said he accepts that greenhouse gases are the cause — while espousing conspiracy theories about organized efforts to curb emissions.
“This crisis is being used as a pretext for clamping down totalitarian controls the same way that the Covid crisis was,” he said in one 2023 video, claiming that “it’s intelligence agencies, it’s the World Economic Forum, it’s the billionaires’ boys’ club at Davos and it’s the same kind of cabal of people who are — who will use every crisis to stratify society” to benefit the wealthy, the military and the intelligence community.
He has endorsed what he calls a “free market” solution that would involve eliminating subsidies for polluters, but also tighten government regulations.
Democracy and the rule of law
Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly criticized the Justice Department as politicized and argued that it has unlawfully silenced free speech. He points to cases like that of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was indicted during the Trump administration on expanded charges of violating the Espionage Act over his role in publishing secret documents. Mr. Kennedy has pledged to pardon Mr. Assange on his first day in office.
When it comes to the investigations into Mr. Trump, Mr. Kennedy has suggested without evidence that Mr. Trump’s myriad legal woes, including his conviction for falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal that threatened to derail his 2016 presidential campaign, are part of an effort by Democrats to weaponize the justice system to derail a political opponent.
He has also questioned the Justice Department’s motivation for prosecuting participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, downplayed the severity of the riot and expressed sympathy for those who were charged.
Though he later distanced himself from those statements, Mr. Kennedy maintained he would appoint a special counsel to look at the prosecution of some rioters to “assure the public that there’s a process here that the public can trust.”
More broadly, he has minimized Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
He also made headlines for saying he could argue that Mr. Biden is “the much worse threat to democracy” than Mr. Trump — who refused to accept his 2020 loss, has laid groundwork to deny the 2024 election results if he loses, and floated prosecuting his political rivals if he wins. Mr. Kennedy cited the Biden administration’s efforts to curtail misinformation online, including about vaccines, which he has called censorship.
Foreign policy: Ukraine, Israel and China
On the campaign trail and in interviews, Mr. Kennedy has largely struck an anti-interventionist tone, coming out strongly against continuing to back Ukraine in its fight against a Russian invasion and vowing to cut the military budget by half in four years.
Mr. Kennedy has denounced “military imperialists in Washington” while echoing arguments from some conservative lawmakers that the United States is spending “hundreds of billions of dollars protecting Ukraine’s borders, when we haven’t secured our own.”
If elected, he asserted, he would “immediately” end the war, without specifying how. (Cutting off aid to the Ukrainians, as he has endorsed, would significantly undermine the democratic nation’s military capabilities.) The Kennedy campaign website said he would seek a “diplomatic solution” where Russia would “withdraw its troops from Ukraine and guarantee its freedom and independence.” Russia has said it will not participate in a Ukraine peace summit scheduled to begin June 15, and both Ukraine and Russia have vowed to fight until the war is won.
When it comes to China, his campaign told Politico that he could seek to de-escalate military tensions, and did not commit to protecting Taiwan against possible China aggression.
But Mr. Kennedy has offered strong support for Israel. In a March interview with Reuters, he expressed misgivings about a White House push at the time for a temporary cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
He has strongly defended Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which followed the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and has killed more than 36,000 people in Gaza, according to health officials there, a figure that includes both combatants and civilians.
Ms. Spear said Mr. Kennedy supported Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. His campaign did not respond to a question about his stance on U.S. military assistance to Israel.
According to the campaign’s website, Mr. Kennedy proposes paying for his agenda through sharp cuts to military spending and raising taxes on corporations, as well as by ending “the corporate giveaways, the boondoggles, the bailouts of the too-big-to-fail.”
His campaign platform proposes a “revenue-neutral plan” paid for not by raising rates on individuals but by closing loopholes and eliminating deductions that benefit the wealthy. He also proposes increasing child tax credits.
Mr. Kennedy also champions cryptocurrency, appearing frequently at crypto events and sitting down for interviews with proponents of cryptocurrencies. He has called for “a regulatory infrastructure that protects against fraud, protects against predatory practices, but also makes cryptocurrencies absolutely transactional,” saying that users should not have to pay taxes on transactions that use cryptocurrencies.
Vaccines and health
Perhaps no issue is more closely associated with Mr. Kennedy than vaccines. For years, in his capacity as the chief legal officer and founder of the nonprofit group Children’s Health Defense, he has promoted widely debunked claims that childhood vaccinations lead to chronic diseases, autism and other “injuries.” (He has been on leave from the group since announcing his presidential run last year.)
He has not emphasized vaccines in his presidential campaign — he scarcely talks about the issue on the trail. Ms. Spear said that Mr. Kennedy was not “anti-vaccine,” but that he believed “pharma influence has corrupted the science.” (Ms. Shanahan has also said that she is not “anti-vax,” but has said that her experience with a child with autism has made her question vaccine safety.)
The issue is part of the ticket’s broader critique of the pharmaceutical industry, regulatory agencies and the food supply, the campaign said.
Mr. Kennedy has said that in his first week in office, he would “declare a major shift in priorities” at the National Institutes of Health, refocusing its research budget toward chronic disease prevention, including examining toxic chemicals, microplastics, “electromagnetic pollution,” processed foods and pharmaceutical products.
He says he would ban advertising by pharmaceutical companies on television and remove restrictions that protect vaccine makers from lawsuits.
