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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. comes to Boston to launch 2024 presidential bid

FILE - Attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks outside the Albany County Courthouse, Aug. 14, 2019, in Albany, N.Y. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist and scion of one of the country’s most famous political families, is running for president. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink, File)
FILE - Attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks outside the Albany County Courthouse, Aug. 14, 2019, in Albany, N.Y. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist and scion of one of the country’s most famous political families, is running for president. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink, File)

Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from WBUR's daily morning newsletter, WBUR Today. If you like what you read and want it in your inbox, sign up here


Donald Trump may be making his first post-indictment visit to New Hampshire next week, but the 2024 presidential campaign is landing even closer to home today — a stone’s throw from the Boston Common. And the event features another familiar, if controversial, name.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. formally launched his dark-horse Democratic primary challenge against President Biden, delivering an almost two-hour speech at his campaign launch at Boston Park Plaza on Wednesday.

Along with his famous name, Kennedy is best known as a leader in the anti-vaccine movement and for spreading largely discredited information about the dangers of vaccines. Today he told supporters he's running for President to end "the corrupt merger of state and corporate power."

He mentioned his family during his campaign several times from invoking his father and uncle to poking fun at disagreements with his siblings and cousins.

  • Who is he? Kennedy is one of the 11 children of his namesake: former U.S. attorney general and senator Robert F. Kennedy. The 69-year-old has made his career as a renowned environmental lawyer, taking on Monsanto and working to clean up the Hudson River. (He was even a candidate to lead the EPA in 2008.)
  • But in more recent years, he’s become one of the faces of the anti-vaccine movement. While his stance dates back well before COVID, researchers say RFK Jr. emerged as one of the most influential disseminators of vaccine misinformation during the pandemic. He wrote a book accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci of a “coup d’etat against Western democracy” and produced an anti-vax movie aimed at Black Americans. (Several of Kennedy’s siblings have publicly rebuked his anti-vax crusade as “dangerous” and “heartbreaking.”)
  • What’s he running on? To quote Kennedy’s announcement email, his “top priority is to end the corrupt merger between state and corporate power that has ruined our economy, shattered the middle class, polluted our landscapes and waters, poisoned our children, and robbed us of our values and freedom.”
  • Why here? Kennedy has called New York home for the past few decades and Boston isn’t much of a hotbed for anti-vax sentiment, but Kennedy’s campaign is hoping to invoke the city’s history as the birthplace of RFK, JFK and the American Revolution. The “campaign is being born in Boston,” his team said in an email.
  • Who else? In the field of long shots, Kennedy joins fellow Democratic primary challenger Marianne Williamson.
  •  The big picture: Most voters think Biden is too old for a second term. But the White House isn’t too worried — mostly because they see 2024 as a choice, not a referendum in a vacuum.

The Massachusetts Air National Guard member accused of being behind a major leak of classified Pentagon documents is due back in court today. WBUR’s Ally Jarmanning reports that a Boston judge will decide whether Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old Dighton resident, should remain in custody ahead of his trial. [Update: The court agreed Wednesday to delay Teixeira's detention hearing for approximately two weeks after his public defender asked for more time to prepare.]

The MBTA is inspecting all 24 of its newer “Type 9” Green Line trolleys after a mechanical failure during Marathon Monday resulted in long downtown delays and even a partial suspension of service. T officials are looking for the “root cause” of the breakdown.

  • The silver lining: The T isn’t pulling the trolleys off the track, so there shouldn’t be any additional impacts on service.

P.S.— Our own Barbara Moran made her debut on Vox’s daily podcast Today, Explained this week to talk about PFAS and the Biden administration’s new plan to reduce the amount of those so-called “forever chemicals” in our drinking water. Give it a listen!

This article was originally published on April 19, 2023.

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Nik DeCosta-Klipa Newsletter Editor
Nik DeCosta-Klipa is the newsletter editor for WBUR.

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