.png)
Although approaching its semiquincentennial anniversary in 2026, the United States of America has nevertheless experienced periods of crisis and fragility during its long history. Democracy, although not a novel concept even at the time of Independence, has continually evolved since the nation's founding. The first presidential election, held from December 15, 1788, to January 10, 1789, saw George Washington elected as the first President of the United States. From that time onward, the country has mostly operated within a two-party system, where Americans typically choose between two main parties. However, there has consistently been a potential for third-party influence.
The election of 1832 marked the introduction of the first “third-party candidate,” when the Anti-Masonic Party nominated William Wirt alongside Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay. Despite occasional third-party challenges, these candidates have often struggled to gain sufficient traction or financial support to emerge as frontrunners in presidential elections. Currently, there are four -- Cornell West, Jill Stein, Chase Oliver, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
At Chicago News Weekly, it’s our fervent mission to ensure that we are cultivating stories to create a more informed constituency, so it’s important to speak to as many presidential candidates as we can. We recently received the opportunity to speak with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (widely known as RFK Jr.) to learn about his platform, and more specifically why he decided to leave the Democratic Party and run for President of the United States.
With a quick Google search on Kennedy, here’s what you would find. He’s the third of Robert F. Kennedy's eleven children, is a prominent figure in environmental law and activism. Born in Washington, D.C. on January 17, 1954, he's an alumnus of Harvard and University of Virginia Law School. As president of Waterkeeper Alliance, he's a leading voice in global efforts to safeguard waterways. His legal battles against water pollution underscore his commitment to public health and environmental protection. Despite his environmental advocacy, his outspoken doubts about vaccine safety have sparked intense debate and rebuke from the scientific community.
While this information is impressive, it doesn’t mention much about the man who has lived a full 70 years, experienced setbacks, tackled sobriety, and enjoys lamb chops and a baked potato as his favorite family dinner. What is also not indicated in a quick Google search, is why he chose to run for president, when he could retire, because unlike many Americans, as a member of the Kennedy family he has the means.
This was his answer: “I chose to run for President because I saw my country going off the rails. And from both parties. The Democratic Party, which I was raised in, lost a lot of its backbone. It grew up as the Party of Peace, civil rights, constitutional rights, bodily autonomy, free speech, and anti-war.
Today, it's become a party opposing corporate power and has turned towards Wall Street. It's shifted against the middle class and working poor and has embraced censorship. Recently, I filed a major federal action against the Biden administration. The judge called it the most catastrophic censorship in our nation's history due to pressure on social media to censor speech challenging policies on COVID lockdowns, Ukraine, and other issues.
The party has also become a major promoter of the war in Ukraine, bringing us closer to nuclear conflict than since 1962. It mandated medical treatments with experimental technologies and threatened job loss for non-compliance.
Both parties today are influenced by Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, and the pharmaceutical industry. I believe I can uniquely challenge this corrupt merger of state and corporate power, having spent 40 years suing federal agencies and corporations now in control.”
As this was a heady indictment on the Democrats, we wanted to probe why most of his statement was geared towards them, and not the Republicans, to which he stated that he had more things to note related to the Democrats because it is the party he left.
On Future Pandemics
What has also been widely speculated in other news outlets is that Kennedy is anti-vaccine, so we inquired if another pandemic were to arise, and he was the elected president, what he would do.
“You quarantine the sick, protect the healthy, and look for effective, repurposed therapeutic drugs. Countries that did this had death rates 1/200th of ours.
We were told Haiti would be wiped out by COVID-19, yet its death rate was 1/200th of the U.S.'s. Similarly, Nigeria, with a 1.4% vaccination rate, had a significantly lower death rate.
Black Americans had the second highest death rate in the U.S., more than 3,000 per million, while Haiti, the poorest country in the hemisphere, saw much lower rates. Why wasn't anyone asking why Haiti didn't experience a pandemic while Black Americans were devastated?
According to the CDC, the average American who died from COVID-19 had 3.8 chronic diseases. These chronic conditions were the main factors leading to death, while healthy people rarely died from COVID-19, and healthy children were virtually unaffected. So, why were we shutting down schools? For many children, school was the only place they received a nutritious meal each day. Instead, we locked them at home where COVID spread more easily indoors, and we even padlocked the basketball courts.”
On Chronic Disease
Chronic diseases have become a silent epidemic in America, with rates skyrocketing over the past few decades. This alarming trend disproportionately affects marginalized communities, exacerbating health disparities. Addressing the root causes and implementing effective solutions is paramount to improving the nation's overall health and well-being. In this section, we delved into the critical issue of chronic disease with Kennedy, exploring its devastating impact on American society and outlining potential strategies for a healthier future.
“We need to eliminate chronic disease, which is killing people. When I was a kid, chronic disease affected 6% of Americans; now it's 60%. Black Americans, like American Indians, are disproportionately affected. Diabetes and asthma rates among Black Americans are devastating. Today, one in three children in a pediatrician's office has diabetes. When I was young, asthma was so rare that doctors said it wouldn't be studied; now, one in eight Black children in urban areas has asthma. Autism rates have risen from 1 in 10,000 in my generation to 1 in 34 in my children's generation.
We are mass poisoning a generation with processed foods, especially in Black communities, which are often food deserts. These processed foods contain thousands of ingredients banned in other countries. This is a form of genocide. As president, I will address the chronic disease epidemic and identify the causes of obesity, such as high fructose corn syrup.”
K-12 Education and Affordable Post-Secondary Education
While many issues are important to an American voter, education is one of those tenements we asked the former Harvard grad, his educational platform. More specifically, we inquired about his plan for students grades K-12, and how he planned on making post-secondary school more affordable. For this section, we want to note that Mr. Kennedy specifically mentioned HBCUs while not being specifically asked about them.
“I am very committed to HBCUs. We have two high-level staff members who are HBCU graduates, and I have been speaking at these institutions, most recently at Clark University in Atlanta. I am dedicated to making these schools a major resource commitment.
As for K-12 education, we need to provide minority Americans with school choice. When I was a kid, America had the best school system in the world, ranking number one until about 1979.
Today, we're 22nd, and inner-city schools are in terrible condition. It's criminal what we're doing to our kids. I've been part of the liberal establishment advocating for more funding for public schools, but it hasn't worked.
We need to give parents the option to choose, including allowing charter schools, which are public schools. If a school isn't working for a child, parents should be able to move that child to a better school. We need to provide this choice to Black mothers and fathers stuck in broken schools and allow them to take tuition elsewhere to find better educational opportunities for their children.”
The Youth Vote
According to a study done by Harvard’s Institute of Politics, fewer young Americans plan on voting in the 2024 presidential election, with the decline mainly among young Republicans and independents. The number of young Americans (18-29) who "definitely" plan to vote has dropped from 57% in 2020 to 49% in 2023.
In the 2020 election, turnout for Americans under 30 was 54.1% according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Currently, 35% of young Americans affiliate with the Democratic Party, 26% with the Republican Party, and 38% are independent or unaffiliated.
The decline in voting intention is seen across demographics, notably among younger Black (50% to 38%) and Hispanic Americans (56% to 40%), as well as among women (56% to 47%) and the younger cohort (18-24) compared to older youth (25-29). College graduates still plan to vote robustly, but college students and young people without degrees show significant drops in voting commitment. This data highlights a critical shift in youth voter engagement leading up to the 2024 election.
While the numbers of young voters are dropping, that is still a considerably large population to connect with. We asked Kennedy about his plan to galvanize the youth vote.
“I win overwhelmingly among Americans under 35 years old. In the recent Quinnipiac poll, I'm winning in all the battleground states and among Americans under 45. I beat President Trump and President Biden. I'm at 38% among young people, and my rallies are filled with them. The most important issue for this generation is getting them into homes. This is the first generation in history that will have diminished lives and economic well-being compared to their parents. We have let them down, leaving them with a $34 trillion debt, now insurmountable, with interest greater than our military budget. In five years, it will consume 50 cents of every tax dollar, causing unsupportable inflation.
The biggest obstacle now is home ownership. If you own a home, you care about your community and have equity to borrow against for entrepreneurial endeavors. Without equity, you are excluded from the capitalist system. Housing prices have doubled in two years, and interest rates have soared from 3% to almost 8%, making home ownership unattainable for many, including my children, despite their good education and jobs.
Investment firms like BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, and Fidelity are buying up single-family homes, driving prices up and converting us from an ownership society to a rental one. This shift makes us subjects rather than citizens. After World War II, federal programs like the G.I. Bill and the highway system enabled widespread home ownership, creating an entrepreneurial middle class, the greatest economic engine in history. Now, this middle class is under attack, with 1% of the population controlling more wealth than the 60% that represents the middle class.
The rules that applied to my generation should apply now: if you work hard and play by the rules, you should be able to purchase a home. When I was a kid, the average price of a home was about $7,000, and the average income was around $5,000, so you could buy a home with just over a year's income. Today, it takes seven to ten years of income to afford a home, making it unattainable for many young people. We need to address this issue. Additionally, this generation faces alienation, a lack of community, and many are turning to drugs, alcohol, and suicide. Suicide is now the second leading cause of death among our youth, and last year we lost 107,000 to drug overdoses. These issues are at the forefront of my administration, and I have concrete solutions for them. I'm talking about these problems openly, which is why I'm getting overwhelming support from young people. We're engaging with them on TikTok, podcasts, social media, and Instagram, where we have better engagement than any other candidate.”
On the War in Ukraine and Israel
While we have had a lot of news headlines coming in about many different things, while Americans sleep, or ponder the recent assassination attempt on former President Trump, there are currently wars in multiple countries, some of which the United States is providing aid to, specifically Ukraine and Israel. For someone who is running for president, we wanted to know if Kennedy, from his point of view, wanted to provide a report card on how the Biden Administration is doing.
“I don't think the United States can afford to be the policeman of the world anymore. We've spent $8 trillion on regime change wars over the past 20 years, and all the countries we intervened in are now worse off than we found them. The wars haven't worked; they've made us enemies, ruined the dollar, and bankrupted us at home. Instead of spreading democracy, they're spreading totalitarianism.
We shouldn't be in Ukraine; we should have settled that war with Putin with a settlement agreement in April 2022. But there are forces in the United States, mainly military contractors like Northrop Grumman, Lockheed, Boeing, General Dynamics, and others, that wanted that war. BlackRock, which owns these military contractors, has the contract to destroy Ukraine and rebuild it, and it's one of the biggest owners of the Democratic Party. If you want to know why we're at war all the time, it's because it pays off for some people, but it's devastating our country.
That's why we have inflation. We need to take that money and bring it home. If we had spent that $8 trillion here, we could have paid off all student debt, provided free tuition, kept Social Security solvent, and paid for childcare, which generates 18.1 jobs for every million dollars spent, unlike military spending which generates only two jobs. It's a bad choice for our country. We need to get out of the war business, and I'm going to dismantle the military-industrial complex and the war machine and bring that money home.”
On immigration
With much debate on how America is handling immigration at the border, we asked Kennedy what he plans to do differently from the Biden Administration to solve the country's current immigration issues.
“I'm going to shut and secure the border quickly. Right now, the Sinaloa drug cartel is effectively running U.S. border policy. I witnessed 300 people come through the fence in Yuma between 2 AM and 4 AM one night. Among them, 110 were young men of military age from West Africa, and another 110 were mainly from Asia. They are brought across by the border patrol, which is supposed to stop them, and then flown to destinations across the country. They receive an asylum court date seven years down the road and can't legally work, making them prey to predatory employers who pay them $8-$12 an hour, taking jobs from Americans and not paying taxes, thus straining our social safety net. In New York City, they are camped on playing fields, preventing kids from playing sports. This situation is destructive and needs to end.
I spent the last 10 years of my life working closely with Cesar Chavez on pesticide issues, as Hispanic farm workers are disproportionately poisoned by pesticides. Chavez also fought against illegal immigration because it undermined his efforts to secure good wages and conditions for legal American workers. Many liberals think they are being humanitarian by opening the border, but that's wrong. We do need immigrants, but they must come in legally. We should have wider gates, meaning a quicker path to citizenship for those individuals.”
While we discussed many things with the president hopefully, there were some things that there wasn’t time to address. This very opinionated candidate hasn’t wavered in his statements, and his campaign says he is currently on the ballot in 22 states.
Since our interview last Wednesday, Kennedy made headlines when it was reported by Vanity Fair that Eliza Cooney, now 48, worked for Mr. Kennedy’s family as a weekend babysitter in her early 20s, the year she graduated from college, and at the same time was an intern at his environmental legal clinic at Pace Law School in White Plains, N.Y. In an article in Vanity Fair last week, she said Mr. Kennedy made unwanted sexual advances toward her while she was at his family home in the late 1990s, including by groping her in a pantry.
On July 13th, there was an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump in which a rally attendee was killed and the 20-year-old shooter was gunned down. There have been reports as of July 15th, that Kennedy met with Trump in Milwaukee but what they discussed is not clear. We have reached out to Kennedy’s campaign team to discuss these recent events and will update this article once we receive them.
