Robert F.
Kennedy Jr.

Public servant. Environmental lawyer. Acting Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Four decades spent taking polluters to court, founding the world’s largest clean-water movement, and writing fourteen books — and now, in his own words, setting out to correct the wrongs of decades of fraud in America. Welcome — this is an archive of the whole record.

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  • 3
    Movements founded
  • 14
    Books written
  • 40+
    Years in court
Official portrait of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services
Official portrait, 26th Secretary of Health and Human Services

The story

He could have done anything.
He chose to take on the powerful.

Born into the most consequential political family in modern American life, Bobby Kennedy Jr. chose the harder road: a law degree and a career spent standing between ordinary families and the institutions that had stopped answering to them.

He learned the method early, working alongside commercial fishermen who had lost their livelihoods to industrial polluters — read the documents, follow the money, put the powerful under oath. It made him one of the most persistent litigators in the country, and it made him enemies in every industry he touched.

He has spent the four decades since saying out loud what agencies and industries would rather not hear: about captured regulators, about what is in the food and the water, about the chronic disease carried by American children. That work now runs from inside the federal government as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaking at an event
40+
Years taking on powerful institutions
3
National movements founded
14
Books written for the public
1999
TIME Hero for the Planet

Start here

Who Is Bobby Kennedy?

Approx. 35 minutesNarrated by Woody Harrelson

The film that put the whole life in one place — Hyannis Port and Hickory Hill, the loss of a father at fourteen, the years on the Hudson, the Waterkeeper movement, and the road to 2024. It is the piece supporters send to people who only know the headlines.

Watch at the source

Produced and paid for by the American Values 2024 political action committee. Independent fact-checkers, including FactCheck.org, have disputed the film's claims about vaccines.

The three organizations

He didn’t join movements.
He started them.

Three organizations, founded across three decades, all built the same way: find the people being harmed, read every document, and make the case in public until something moves.

01

Children's Health Defense

Founded 2016

Founder · Chairman 2015–2023

“Fighting for children, parents, and the right to know.”

Kennedy founded Children's Health Defense and chaired it until 2023, when he stepped down to run for president. The group frames the rise in childhood chronic conditions as an environmental-exposure problem and applies the tools he used against polluters — public-records requests, litigation, and sustained pressure on regulators — to food, chemical, and pharmaceutical policy.

  • Forced transparency out of federal and state health agencies through public-records litigation and suits over rulemaking and informed consent.
  • Put childhood chronic disease — allergies, asthma, autoimmunity, obesity, neurodevelopmental conditions — at the center of the national health conversation.
  • Campaigned against toxic exposures: industrial and pharmaceutical mercury, pesticides, PFAS and other “forever chemicals”, and additives in the American food supply.
  • Championed parental rights, informed consent, and a family's right to see the underlying data.
  • Challenged regulatory capture and conflicts of interest between agencies and the industries they oversee.
  • Built a large independent newsroom and publishing arm so families could read the research themselves.
  • Organized parents in all 50 states and gave harmed families a lawyer, a platform, and a hearing.
Founded
2016
Founded
Years as chairman
7
Years as chairman
States organized
50
States organized

Children's Health Defense is an anti-vaccine advocacy organization, and its central claims about vaccine safety — including a link between vaccines and autism — are rejected by the CDC, the WHO, and the mainstream medical research consensus. Members of the Kennedy family have publicly criticized the group's work.

childrenshealthdefense.org
02

Make America Healthy Again

Launched 2025

Chair, Presidential MAHA Commission

“Chronic disease, food policy, and what's on the American plate.”

Minutes after Kennedy was sworn in as Secretary of Health and Human Services on February 13, 2025, Executive Order 14211 created the Make America Healthy Again Commission with Kennedy as its chair. MAHA is the movement's name for its central argument: that America's chronic-disease burden — especially in children — is driven by what the country eats, drinks, breathes, and is prescribed. A separate 501(c)(4), MAHA Action, carries the same agenda into electoral advocacy.

  • Executive Order 14211 directed the Commission to investigate the incidence and causes of chronic childhood disease.
  • Produced the MAHA report on childhood chronic illness, ultra-processed food, and environmental exposures.
  • Pushed food-system changes at HHS, from synthetic dyes and additives to federal nutrition guidance.
  • MAHA Action organizes around real food, agency accountability, and a medical system designed to heal.
Est. by executive order
2025
Est. by executive order
Founding document
EO 14211
Founding document
Core issue areas
5
Core issue areas

The Commission's work and its recommendations on vaccines and pharmaceuticals are contested by major medical and public-health organizations.

mahaaction.org
03

Waterkeeper Alliance

Founded 1999

Co-founder · President until 2020

“Swimmable, fishable, drinkable waterways, worldwide.”

In June 1999 a few dozen Riverkeepers gathered in Southampton, Long Island, and turned a scattering of local patrols into a single global movement. Kennedy served as president for two decades, overseeing its legal, membership, policy, and fundraising programs, and the model he built on the Hudson — a paid, full-time advocate for one body of water, backed by lawyers — is now the standard for waterway defense on six continents.

  • Grew into the umbrella group for 344 licensed Waterkeeper programs across 44 countries.
  • Launched the 2001 “Clean Coal is a Deadly Lie” campaign, bringing dozens of suits over mountaintop removal, slurry ponds, mercury emissions, and coal ash.
  • Waged a decade-long legal and public campaign against factory-farm pollution in North Carolina, Oklahoma, Maryland, and Iowa.
  • Organized national summits with independent family farmers harmed by industrial meat operations.
Licensed programs
344
Licensed programs
Countries
44
Countries
Years as president
21
Years as president
waterkeeper.org

Achievements

A record built case by case

01Truth to power

Four decades of taking on the powerful

From industrial polluters to federal agencies, his career has been built on the same act: putting institutions under oath, forcing their own documents into the public record, and saying plainly what those documents show.

02Children's Health Defense

A movement for American children

He founded and chaired Children's Health Defense, turning a citizen-litigation playbook on the questions parents were told not to ask: what children are exposed to, what regulators know, and who pays when a family is harmed.

03For the people

Cases brought for communities, not clients

Senior attorney work with the Natural Resources Defense Council, landmark suits over water and air, and thousands of pro bono hours for working families, fishermen, and farmers living downstream of industry.

04Clean water

Riverkeeper and Waterkeeper Alliance

He helped bring the Hudson back from an industrial sewer, then built the local patrol model into a worldwide alliance of hundreds of Waterkeeper groups.

05The written word

Bestselling author and public advocate

Fourteen books and countless essays and speeches arguing that a captured government cannot protect the people it governs — several of them national bestsellers written against enormous institutional pushback.

06Public service

Secretary of Health and Human Services

In 2025 he took office as the 26th U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, carrying the fight over chronic disease, food policy, and agency accountability inside the federal government.

Timeline

Seventy years, in order

  1. 1954

    Born in Washington, D.C.

    Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. is born on January 17 at Georgetown University Hospital, the third of eleven children of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy, and a nephew of President John F. Kennedy.

  2. 1968

    A family, and a country, in mourning

    His father is assassinated in Los Angeles during the presidential primary campaign. Bobby is fourteen. He is a pallbearer at the funeral and reads from his father's speeches at Arlington.

  3. 1976

    Harvard

    He graduates with a degree in American history and literature, having done his thesis research in Alabama on the federal judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. — the subject of his first book, published two years later.

  4. 1982

    Law school, and a false start

    He earns a Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law and is sworn in as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan.

  5. 1984

    The bottom, and the turn

    After a heroin arrest the previous autumn he pleads guilty, enters treatment, and ends fourteen years of addiction. Probation sends him to volunteer at the Natural Resources Defense Council — the accident that becomes a vocation. He has spoken about it openly ever since.

  6. 1985

    Riverkeeper takes on the Hudson

    Admitted to the New York bar, he is hired as Riverkeeper's senior attorney and begins suing municipalities and industries — General Electric among them — to stop discharges and clean up legacy contamination on the Hudson.

  7. 1987

    Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic

    He founds the clinic at Pace University School of Law and wins a special order from the New York Court of Appeals letting his students try real cases against Hudson polluters. He supervises it for three decades and earns his LL.M. in environmental law the same year.

  8. 1996

    The New York City Watershed Agreement

    After five years of litigation and reports, he helps broker the landmark agreement protecting the Catskill watershed — the reason millions of New Yorkers still drink unfiltered surface water.

  9. 1997

    The Riverkeepers

    With John Cronin he writes the history of the early Riverkeepers and a field manual for anyone who wants to defend their own river.

  10. 1999

    Waterkeeper Alliance is founded

    Local Riverkeeper and Baykeeper programs unite into a single global movement at a gathering in Southampton, Long Island. He serves as president for the next two decades. The same year, TIME names him a Hero for the Planet.

  11. 2001

    “Clean Coal is a Deadly Lie”

    Waterkeeper opens a campaign against mountaintop removal, coal slurry ponds, mercury emissions, and coal ash. Men's Journal gives him its Heroes Award for creating the Pace clinic.

  12. 2005

    Crimes Against Nature

    The bestseller arguing that corporate capture of the regulatory agencies is an environmental crisis and a democratic one at once. Waterkeeper meanwhile grows into hundreds of programs on six continents.

  13. 2010

    Newtown Creek

    A Pace clinic lawsuit forces ExxonMobil to clean up tens of millions of gallons of oil from legacy refinery spills under Brooklyn.

  14. 2016

    Children's Health Defense

    He founds and chairs the advocacy organization, turning his public work toward children's chronic illness, environmental exposures, and government transparency. He chairs it until 2023.

  15. 2018

    American Values

    The memoir: Hyannis Port, Hickory Hill, two assassinations, and what it does to a boy to inherit that name at fourteen.

  16. 2020

    Stepping back from the water

    He resigns the Waterkeeper Alliance presidency in November, leaving behind 344 licensed programs in 44 countries. He had already left Riverkeeper in 2017 after 33 years.

  17. 2023

    A candidate for President

    He launches a campaign for the presidency in Boston, later continuing as an independent, and draws crowds to hours-long, unscripted town halls across the country.

  18. 2024

    Suspends the campaign

    He ends his independent bid in August and endorses Donald Trump. In November, Trump announces he will nominate him to lead Health and Human Services.

  19. 2025

    U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services

    Confirmed by the Senate 52–48 on February 13, he is sworn in as the 26th Secretary — the first third-party presidential candidate ever to join a cabinet. Minutes later, Executive Order 14211 creates the Make America Healthy Again Commission with Kennedy as chair.

Featured films

Three ways to see the whole story

Full-length films rather than clips. Watch them here, or open them at the source.

Inspirational film · Start here

A Return to Camelot

If you watch one thing on this page, watch this. A short film that sets his own words against the family story — Hyannis Port, the river, and the long road back to public life. Five minutes that explain why so many people call him their hero.

An independently produced video, not an official production.

Watch on YouTube
Documentary

Who Is Bobby Kennedy?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. · official channel · Feature length

The film supporters send to people who only know the headlines: Hyannis Port and Hickory Hill, the loss of a father at fourteen, the Hudson years, the Waterkeeper movement, and the road to 2024. Narrated by Woody Harrelson.

Produced and paid for by the American Values 2024 political action committee. Independent fact-checkers, including FactCheck.org, have disputed some of the film’s claims about vaccines.

Watch at the source
Documentary

The Rise of RFK Jr.

FRONTLINE, PBS · Full documentary

The critical outside look. PBS traces the family history, the environmental career, and the turn toward health politics. Included here because the whole record is worth seeing — including the parts told by people who disagree with him.

An independent FRONTLINE investigation, not an authorized or supportive portrait.

Watch at the source
Watch on Angel
Series

The Truth About RFK Jr.

Angel Studios · Streaming episode

A long-form look at the man, the family, and the causes — streaming on Angel. Watch the episode free at the source.

Watch at the source

Videos & content

Hear him at length, not in soundbites

Speeches, testimony, and long-form interviews. Each collection opens the full, unedited source so you can judge the words for yourself.

Speech

Announcing a run for President

The full campaign announcement speech in Boston — nearly two hours, unscripted, on democracy, corporate power, and healing the divide.

Watch
Testimony

Before the United States Senate

Confirmation hearings and congressional testimony, in full and unedited, on health policy and federal transparency.

Watch
Long form

The environmental years

Interviews and lectures on the Hudson, Waterkeeper, and four decades of taking polluters to court.

Watch
Interview

Podcasts & conversations

Hours-long conversations where he answers the hard questions at length rather than in soundbites.

Watch
Archive

The Kennedy legacy

Historical footage of the family whose public service shaped the American century.

Watch
Books

In his own words

The essays and books, from Crimes Against Nature onward, that make the written case.

Watch

The complete bibliography

Fourteen books, and counting

A judge’s biography at twenty-four, a saint’s life, two children’s books about American heroes, the founding text of the Waterkeeper movement, and the bestsellers that made him one of the most argued-about authors in the country. Every title he has written or edited is listed here.

  1. 1978

    Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr.

    A Biography

    Putnam

    His first book, written in his twenties: a portrait of the federal judge who drove racial desegregation in Alabama. The research began as a Harvard thesis project.

  2. 1997

    The Riverkeepers

    Two Activists Fight to Reclaim Our Environment as a Basic Human Right

    Scribner · with John Cronin

    The founding text of the Waterkeeper movement — part history of the Hudson fight, part field manual for anyone who wants to defend their own river.

  3. 2004

    Saint Francis of Assisi

    A Life of Joy

    Hyperion

    A life of the patron saint of ecology, and of Kennedy's own patron saint — the clearest statement of why he calls environmental work spiritual work.

  4. 2005

    Crimes Against Nature

    How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Highjacking Our Democracy

    HarperCollins

    The book that made him a national political voice: an argument that corporate capture of the regulatory agencies is an environmental problem and a democratic one at the same time.

  5. 2007

    American Heroes: Joshua Chamberlain and the American Civil War

    Hyperion

    For young readers. The Maine college professor who held Little Round Top, told as a story about ordinary people doing the hard thing.

  6. 2008

    Robert Smalls: The Boat Thief

    Hyperion

    For young readers. The enslaved pilot who commandeered a Confederate steamer, sailed his family to freedom, and later served in Congress.

  7. 2014

    Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak

    The Evidence Supporting the Immediate Removal of Mercury from Vaccines

    Skyhorse

    Edited by Kennedy. An argument for removing the mercury-based preservative thimerosal from all vaccines — a position rejected by the CDC, the WHO, and the weight of published research.

  8. 2016

    Framed

    Why Michael Skakel Spent Over a Decade in Prison For a Murder He Didn't Commit

    Skyhorse

    A defense of his cousin in the Martha Moxley case, and Kennedy at his most characteristic: read every document in the file, then argue the record.

  9. 2018

    American Values

    Lessons I Learned from My Family

    Harper

    The memoir. Hyannis Port, Hickory Hill, two assassinations, and what it does to a boy to inherit that name at fourteen.

  10. 2020

    Climate in Crisis

    Who's Causing It, Who's Fighting It, and How We Can Reverse It Before It's Too Late

    Hot Books · with Dick Russell

    Four decades of environmental litigation distilled into a climate argument aimed at a general reader.

  11. 2021NYT bestseller

    The Real Anthony Fauci

    Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health

    Skyhorse

    His biggest-selling book by far, and his most contested: a sweeping indictment of federal health leadership during COVID-19. Its central allegations have been disputed in detail by fact-checkers and public-health researchers.

  12. 2022

    A Letter to Liberals

    Censorship and COVID: An Attack on Science and American Ideals

    Skyhorse

    A short book addressed to his own political tradition, arguing that the pandemic response traded open debate for enforced consensus.

  13. 2023NYT bestseller

    Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak

    Skyhorse · with Brian Hooker

    A New York Times bestseller surveying studies comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. Immunologists and epidemiologists have criticized its selection and reading of that literature.

  14. 2023

    The Wuhan Cover-Up

    And the Terrifying Bioweapons Arms Race

    Skyhorse

    On gain-of-function research, biodefense funding, and the origins debate — the money-trail method applied to virology.

President John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office with his young nephew Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in 1961

Away from the podium

The man behind the record

He is a falconer, a whitewater guide, and a Catholic who takes his cues from a saint who talked to birds. The outdoor life is not a hobby alongside the environmental work — it is where the environmental work came from.

Master falconer
He has trained hawks since he was eleven, breeds hawks and falcons, and is licensed as a raptor propagator and wildlife rehabilitator. He led the New York State Falconry Association from 1988 to 1991 and wrote the state's Apprentice Falconer's Manual, still in use.
Whitewater kayaker
His father taught him on the Green, the Yampa, and the Middle Fork of the Salmon. He guided commercially in Maine and led first descents of the Apurimac in Peru, the Atrato in Colombia, and the Caroni in Venezuela.
Mount Kennedy
In 1965 his father became the first person to climb the Yukon peak named for President Kennedy. Fifty years later, Bobby took two of his sons back to run the Alsek River beneath it.
A devout Catholic
He attends Mass regularly and takes Francis of Assisi as his patron saint — the reason he says plainly that “environmental work is spiritual work.”

Honors & recognition

Awards & offices

1999
Hero for the Planet
TIME Magazine

Named for the Hudson River litigation that turned Riverkeeper into the model for waterway defense worldwide.

2000
Thomas Berry Environmental Award
Harvard Divinity School

For work joining environmental protection to a moral and spiritual tradition.

2001
Heroes Award
Men's Journal

For founding the Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic and putting law students in court against polluters.

2004
Global Green Environmental Leadership Award
Global Green USA

Recognizing two decades of clean-water enforcement.

2008
Environmental Leadership Award
Environmental Law Institute

Honoring a career of citizen-suit litigation under the Clean Water Act.

1999–2020
President, Waterkeeper Alliance
Waterkeeper Alliance

Twenty-one years leading the world's largest clean-water advocacy network: 344 licensed programs in 44 countries.

Ongoing
New York Times bestselling author
Publishing

Multiple bestsellers, including Crimes Against Nature, American Values, and The Real Anthony Fauci.

2025
26th Secretary of Health and Human Services
United States of America

Confirmed by the United States Senate 52–48 on February 13, 2025, and sworn in the same day.

Common questions

The short answers

Who is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — known as Bobby Kennedy Jr. or RFK Jr. — is an American environmental lawyer and author, born in 1954, the son of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy. He spent decades litigating clean-water cases, founded Waterkeeper Alliance, and became the 26th U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services in 2025.
What organizations did RFK Jr. found?
He helped build Riverkeeper on the Hudson, founded Waterkeeper Alliance — the world's largest clean-water advocacy network — founded Children's Health Defense, and launched the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement.
How many books has RFK Jr. written?
Fourteen, including Crimes Against Nature, American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family, and the No. 1 bestseller The Real Anthony Fauci.
What is the film Who Is Bobby Kennedy?
Who Is Bobby Kennedy? is a 2024 documentary narrated by Woody Harrelson covering his family, legal career and environmental work. It was produced by a supportive political action committee, and some of its health claims have been disputed by fact-checkers.

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