A running list of RFK Jr.'s controversies

In his first address to staff at the Health and Human Services Department this past February, then newly-confirmed HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. proudly proclaimed that "nothing is going to be off limits" in his effort to end chronic childhood illnesses. Intended as a rallying call for his agenda of vaccine skepticism and scientific revisionism, Kennedy's enthusiasm for working without "limits" has been evident throughout his long career in the public eye — first as an acclaimed environmentalist and now as one of the most consequential health care figures in the world.

While neither a physician nor a researcher himself, Kennedy has nevertheless been at the forefront of what he and President Donald Trump have dubbed the "Make America Healthy Again" movement, upending whole swaths of the country's health care and scientific infrastructure. At the same time, Kennedy's personal history of what his own siblings in 2019 called "dangerous misinformation" has cast a long shadow over his ongoing federal tenure, with critics worried that the secretary's scandal-filled past bodes ill not only for America's future, but for the world at large. Under Kennedy, the country has withdrawn from global health-focused organizations and opportunities, leaving the United States isolated and at a disadvantage in the face of worldwide health risks.

As Kennedy continues to reshape the nation's approach to illness and fitness, here are some of his most controversial moments.

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Spread falsehoods about the causes of autism, its history and impact

Speaking at his first official press briefing as the Health and Human Services Secretary, Kennedy in April 2025 claimed without evidence or further explanation that autistic children "will never pay taxes, they'll never hold a job, they'll never play baseball, they'll never write a poem, they'll never go out on a date, many of them will never use a toilet unassisted." The remarks were "plainly untrue," said Jessica Grose at The New York Times. By implying that "those who are not able to be gainfully employed are somehow lesser citizens," Kennedy has shown he is "not fit to be in charge of the health of the country," Grose said. The "backlash" over Kennedy's "anti-scientific, offensive and belittling remarks" comes as the secretary plans to launch a federal database of Americans with autism, said MSNBC. Not only do those plans raise a "host of data security concerns," but they also have alarmed advocates who worried about how Kennedy might use the data "to advance his conspiratorial and harmful health agenda."

Promoted anti-vaccine rhetoric

Though Kennedy vehemently insists he is not anti-vaccine, his record on the matter certainly suggests otherwise. Most notably, he has promoted the "scientifically discredited belief that childhood vaccines cause autism," The New York Times said, a notion that has "been rejected by more than a dozen peer-reviewed scientific studies across multiple countries."

Moreover, he has repeatedly questioned the safety of the Covid-19 vaccine, made numerous misleading claims about the way vaccines are tested, and even falsely alleged that HIV, the virus that later leads to AIDS if left untreated, originated from a vaccine program, CNN fact checker and reporter Daniel Dale said in an appearance on CNN. "So what do you call someone like Mr. Kennedy who devotes their time, energy, public remarks to devoting entirely fake claims about vaccines killing people in all manner of ways?" Dale added."I think 'anti-vax' is a fair descriptor."

Most recently, Kennedy "disregarded a scientific review process that has been in place for decades" when he announced that the government no longer recommends Covid-19 vaccinations for pregnant women and healthy children, said The Associated Press. "There's no new data or information," said Michael Osterholm, the director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, to the AP. "Just them flying by the seat of their pants."

Invoked Hitler when speaking out against vaccine mandates

Speaking at a rally against mandates in Washington, D.C. in early 2022, Kennedy invoked Hitler and Nazi Germany as he lampooned Covid-19 jab policies in the United States. "Even in Hitler Germany (sic), you could … cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic, like Anne Frank did," Kennedy said. "I visited, in 1962, East Germany with my father and met people who had climbed the wall and escaped, so it was possible. Many died, true, but it was possible." He quickly drew backlash for the comments, which critics saw as a suggestion that things were better for those alive during the Holocaust than they are today, said Politico.

Downplayed the Texas measles outbreak while touting medically questionable alternatives to vaccinations

After a measles infection killed an unvaccinated child in Texas in February, 2025, the then-newly confirmed Secretary Kennedy downplayed the seriousness of the ongoing outbreak as "not unusual" during a cabinet meeting. Measles has a "very, very low infection fatality rate," Kennedy said in a lengthy Fox News interview shortly thereafter. Kennedy's measles responses have "strayed far from mainstream science" and relied heavily on "fringe theories about prevention and treatments" such as cod liver oil and vitamin A, The New York Times said. Kennedy's insistence on alternate measles treatments are "concerning some infectious disease doctors," said National Public Radio, as he "didn't strongly encourage people to get their children vaccinated, which is usually a key part of the public health response during an outbreak."

Suggested Covid was designed to spare Jews and Chinese people

In July 2023, Kennedy claimed that Covid could have been a bioweapon designed to target and disproportionately attack "certain races," like Caucasians and Black people, and spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, who he said are the "most immune" to the virus. "We don't know whether it was deliberately targeted or not," he said during a press dinner captured on video, "but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact." He later insisted that he never "suggested that the Covid-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews" and was instead referring to a study that "serves as a kind of proof of concept for ethnically targeted bioweapons," CNN said.

Blamed gender dysphoria on chemicals in the environment

Kennedy has repeatedly alleged that exposure to chemicals — endocrine disruptors, namely — is causing gender dysphoria in children and contributing to a rise in LGBTQ+ youth. Speaking on a June 2022 episode of his podcast, Kennedy said he wants to "pursue just one question on these … endocrine disruptors" because "we're seeing these impacts that people suspect are very different than in ages past about sexual identification among children and sexual confusion, gender confusion."

His comments were based on a study that found that one endocrine disruptor, in particular, can cause a small percentage of male frogs to become female, though experts say there is no evidence that such chemicals cause gender dysphoria in human children. Kennedy's remarks have been "mischaracterized," a spokesperson said to CNN. He was "merely suggesting that, given copious research on the effects on other vertebrates, this possibility deserves further research."

Linked school shootings with antidepressants

Speaking to comedian Bill Maher on an episode of the podcast "Club Random with Bill Maher," Kennedy linked an increase in school shootings to the increased prescription of antidepressants. "Kids always had access to guns, and there was no time in American history or human history where kids were going to schools and shooting their classmates," Kennedy said, repeating a claim he previously made to Canadian broadcaster Mark Steyn. "It really started happening conterminous with the introduction of these drugs, with Prozac and the other drugs." Scientists have found "no biological plausibility" of a link between the use of antidepressants and mass shootings, Ragy Girgis, an associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, said to The New York Times. Were there a link, "one would expect it to be pronounced, or at least much greater than we are seeing," Dr. James Knoll of SUNY Upstate Medical University said to Politifact in 2019.

Mistreated animal corpses

During the 2024 presidential election, Kennedy blamed "the little bit of the redneck in me" for his decision to dump a dead bear carcass in Central Park in 2014, admitting to the convoluted scheme in an interview with comedian Rosanne Barr he shared to his X account. "Maybe that's where I got my brain worm," Kennedy later said to The New Yorker, referencing his 2012 admission in a court deposition obtained by The New York Times that he had once contracted a parasite which "got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died."

Shortly after Kennedy fessed up to his ursine adventure, daughter Kick Kennedy said in an interview with Town & Country that when she was six, her father had heard a dead whale had washed ashore near Hyannis Port. The elder Kennedy "ran down to the beach with a chainsaw, cut off the whale's head, and then bungee-corded it to the roof of the family minivan," Town & Country said. "Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet," Kick added.

Earlier that summer, Kennedy emphatically denied a Vanity Fair report that he'd eaten dog while on vacation in Korea in 2010. "The article is a lot of garbage," Kennedy said on the "Breaking Points" podcast. "The picture that they said is of me eating a dog, it's actually me eating a goat in Patagonia on a whitewater trip many years ago on the Futaleufu River."