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      Kennedy Sent Apologetic Text to Woman Who Accused Him of Sexual Assault

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      The independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. privately apologized last week to a woman who accused him of sexual assault in a recent magazine article, The Washington Post reported on Friday.The woman, Eliza Cooney, now 48, had 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.Ms. Cooney told The Post that Mr. Kennedy had called her twice on July 3 of this year, after the Vanity Fair article had run, and then sent her two text messages, which she also showed to The New York Times.“I hope you are well,” he wrote in the first message. “Please call me if you have a moment.”In the second, sent shortly after midnight, he wrote: “I read your description of an episode in which I touched you in an unwanted manner. I have no memory of this incident, but I apologize sincerely for anything I ever did that made you feel uncomfortable or anything I did or said that offended you or hurt your feelings.”He said he hoped she would be willing to speak to him over the phone or in person.Mr. Kennedy declined to comment on the messages or on Ms. Cooney’s allegations. In a podcast interview last week, after the Vanity Fair article came out, he declined to address her allegations but said he was not a “church boy.” He added, “I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world.”Ms. Cooney did not respond to his outreach, and did not welcome it, she told The Times. “Sending a text at 12:33 a.m. is not considering his actions’ effects on someone else — me,” she said. “At that time, on Fourth of July weekend, the last thing I wanted to do was talk to him.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Raises Just $2.6 Million

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign has depended heavily on contributions from Nicole Shanahan, his vice-presidential pick, who did not make major new donations in May.Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign raised just $2.6 million in May, a paltry sum that speaks to how reliant his bid has become on his running mate, the wealthy Silicon Valley lawyer Nicole Shanahan.The Kennedy campaign raised less in May than it had in any previous month in 2024, according to filings on Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission. That was in large part because Ms. Shanahan, who has poured millions into their independent presidential campaign, barely contributed any additional money in May.The total raised by Mr. Kennedy was essentially the same as what he raised in April, not counting Ms. Shanahan: He brought in $10.7 million that month, but $8 million came from her. Earlier, when he announced her as his running mate in March, she almost immediately threw $2 million behind the campaign.Mr. Kennedy ended May with $6.4 million on hand. And yet that figure is only somewhat revealing about his financial position because of the looming possibility that Ms. Shanahan, at a moment’s notice, could inject more money into their bid. She has been able to do so directly because while campaign finance laws bar people from donating more than $3,300 to a campaign, candidates themselves can give unlimited sums of their own money.And Ms. Shanahan, a philanthropist who was once married to the Google co-founder Sergey Brin, is said to have access to over $1 billion. She has not signaled if there is a limit to how much she might spend.Mr. Kennedy and his allies have some unique costs associated with their campaign — primarily ballot-access work that can be expensive.His campaign spent about $6.3 million in May, but almost half of that was routed through a limited liability company that focuses on ballot access. The money laid out was labeled “campaign consulting,” making his precise expenditures somewhat opaque. More

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      Kennedy Vows to Cut Military Budget in Half

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent presidential candidate, said this week that he would cut military spending by half by the end of his first term as president, and said the United States should have a reduced role in global affairs.“Military spending is a constant drain on our nation’s vitality,” Mr. Kennedy said in an hourlong speech on Wednesday evening at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in California, adding that “obsessed with the idea of our nation’s strength, we ignore the growing infirmity at our core.”Mr. Kennedy has long assailed American military spending and defense contractors, but his speech at the Nixon Library, which partly focused on foreign policy, painted a grim picture of American decline over the last 60 years and laid out a radically different vision of America’s place on the world stage.He said the United States should accept a diminished role in global affairs, divert much of the nation’s security spending to domestic programs, and prepare for a multipolar world — where other powerful countries like China and Russia would have increased influence and America would not be the sole global superpower.“We seem to think that we’re still where we were — in the same world as in 1991,” Mr. Kennedy said, referring to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. He added: “We are stuck in that past. Any nation, or for that matter any individual, can maintain an illusion like that only at an ever increasing cost.”Mr. Kennedy’s vow to aggressively reduce national security spending stands in stark contrast to the trajectory of global military spending, which has reached a 35-year high, driven in part by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Mr. Kennedy, as an independent, would also have few allies in Congress to help him fulfill that promise, and there has typically been strong support for military spending in Congress. The defense budget for 2025 is currently capped at about $895 billion, though Democrats and Republicans are mulling a further increase.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Robert F. Kennedy Jr. le va bien con los latinos en las encuestas

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      Los analistas atribuyen la fuerza del candidato independiente al notable reconocimiento de su apellido y a la frustración con los dos principales contendientes.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]Cuando Joe Biden y Donald Trump se enfrentaron en las elecciones presidenciales de 2020, Alexis Figueroa, trabajador de un hospital de Phoenix, afirmó que habría votado por Biden, porque parecía el menos controversial de los dos candidatos.Pero ahora que esos dos hombres están de nuevo en la papeleta en noviembre, Figueroa está considerando una tercera opción: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Figueroa, que ahora tiene 20 años, dijo sobre Kennedy: “Va a por los que acaban de empezar a votar, la generación más joven a la que no se le escucha”, y añadió que no quería votar por Biden porque no creía que el presidente hubiera cumplido muchas de sus promesas.En una contienda en la que el entusiasmo por los dos principales contendientes es bajo, más votantes latinos como Figueroa se están inclinando hacia candidatos de terceros partidos, según muestran encuestas recientes. Para los encuestadores y los observadores políticos, Kennedy, que está presentando una candidatura presidencial independiente con pocas posibilidades, está obteniendo resultados sorpresivamente positivos entre los votantes hispanos en los estados indecisos, aunque hasta ahora solo está oficialmente en las papeletas de California, Utah, Míchigan, Oklahoma, Hawái y Delaware.Las encuestas muestran que Kennedy está llevándose apoyo que solía ser para Trump y Biden, pero cuando se trata de los latinos, quienes tienden a votar a los demócratas, podría suponer una mayor amenaza para Biden.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is Polling Surprisingly Well Among Latino Voters

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      When Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Donald J. Trump faced off in the 2020 presidential election, Alexis Figueroa, a hospital worker in Phoenix, would have voted for Mr. Biden, he said, because he seemed like the least controversial of the two candidates.But with those men back on the ballot in November, Mr. Figueroa is considering a third option: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.“He’s going after those who are new to voting, the younger generation not being heard,” Mr. Figueroa, now 20, said of Mr. Kennedy, adding that he did not want to vote for Mr. Biden because he did not believe that the president had fulfilled many of his promises.In a race in which enthusiasm for the top two contenders is low, more Latino voters like Mr. Figueroa are leaning toward third-party candidates, recent surveys show. Mr. Kennedy, who is running a long-shot independent presidential bid, is polling surprisingly well among Hispanic voters in battleground states, though so far he is officially on the ballot only in California, Utah, Michigan, Oklahoma, Hawaii and Delaware.Polls show Mr. Kennedy drawing support away from both the Trump and Biden campaigns, but when it comes to Latinos, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic, he may pose a bigger threat to Mr. Biden.“It’s a trend we see over and over — in a forced choice between Trump and Biden, Biden does better than on a ballot where there are other options,” said David Byler, the chief of research at Noble Predictive Insights, a national polling firm that works in Arizona and Nevada. “For most of this election, his support has simply been softer than Trump’s.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kennedy Calls for Secret Service Detail on Anniversary of Father’s Killing

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      On the 56th anniversary of his father’s assassination, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent presidential candidate, again pleaded on Wednesday to be granted Secret Service protection, arguing in an interview on Fox News that he was at an elevated risk of being targeted because of his family history.“I was with my dad when he died in Los Angeles in 1968,” said Mr. Kennedy, who was 14 at the time of the shooting. He then asserted that the White House “is involved in this decision” to deny his requests for Secret Service protection and argued that his campaign was significant enough to deserve that protection.A spokesman for the White House declined to comment.Mr. Kennedy has made requests for Secret Service protection for more than a year, predating his independent candidacy. Last July, when he was still running against President Biden in the Democratic primaries, he said a request for a Secret Service detail had been denied by Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, who has the authority to approve those requests.Mr. Kennedy has since repeatedly made the request, circulating an online petition in support of it, and has been denied each time. In his interview on Wednesday, Mr. Kennedy pointed to several incidents that demonstrated his need for additional security, including break-ins at his home in California and an episode in September in which an armed man was arrested at a campaign event and charged with gun crimes after he tried to meet Mr. Kennedy.Mr. Mayorkas has previously said that he has declined Mr. Kennedy’s requests at the recommendation of a panel of top congressional leaders.“It is ultimately my decision, but I have followed their recommendation each time,” he said in May.Mr. Mayorkas can consider several factors in determining who should receive protection, and those criteria give preferential treatment to major-party candidates. Before Nikki Haley ended her Republican presidential campaign, the congressional panel recommended that she receive Secret Service protection, in part for her strength in national polling. The Secret Service also notes that “some candidates have received protection earlier in the campaign pursuant to presidential memoranda.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Echoing Trump, Calls Manhattan Case Politically Motivated

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      The independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. criticized the Manhattan district attorney’s prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump shortly after it ended in a conviction on Thursday, describing it as a politically motivated and “profoundly undemocratic” case that would only strengthen Mr. Trump’s support.“The Democratic Party’s strategy is to beat President Trump in the courtroom rather than the ballot box,” Mr. Kennedy said in a statement on X. “This will backfire in November.”His response echoed many of Mr. Trump’s Republican allies, who have for months described the charges against him as a partisan “witch hunt.”In recent weeks, Mr. Kennedy has amplified his criticism of Mr. Trump, focusing particularly on his Covid-19 policies and his “coziness” with corporate America. Mr. Trump, in turn, has attacked him, with recent polling indicating that Mr. Kennedy could draw voters equally from Mr. Trump and President Biden in swing states.But Mr. Kennedy has stayed largely silent on Mr. Trump’s legal troubles, occasionally appearing to suggest that the Justice Department under Mr. Biden has been used to political ends. In April, Mr. Kennedy questioned the motivations of the federal prosecutors who had brought charges against Trump supporters who participated in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Mr. Trump has been charged in a federal case related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, a case entirely separate from the one brought in Manhattan.In his statement on X on Thursday evening, Mr. Kennedy said that he was also “running against President Trump in this election,” adding, “The difference is I’m challenging him on his record.”Earlier, shortly after the verdict came down, Mr. Kennedy was speaking at a cryptocurrency conference in Austin, Texas, where he was asked about the conviction.“I think this is probably the weakest case that people brought against him,” Mr. Kennedy told the audience. “My belief is that it will end up helping President Trump among a large part of the American public, who believes that the judicial system and the enforcement system have been weaponized politically.” More

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is Worse Than a Spoiler

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      Lately, you’ve probably been asking yourself: What does it mean that Nicole Shanahan has been chosen as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate?OK, maybe not.I know, you’ve got a full and busy life. Still, the Shanahan thing is sorta serious. Let’s discuss.R.F.K. Jr. is, as we all know, running for president as an independent — an effort that will further publicize his anti-vaccination views and perhaps provide a point to his life.Shanahan, a lawyer who has never won elective office, is notable for being really, really rich. She’s a billionaire, thanks to her five-year marriage to Sergey Brin, one of the founders of Google. Many of us first heard of her when she put $4 million toward financing a Super Bowl ad for Kennedy that superimposed his face on some clips promoting his assassinated uncle. Which drove his siblings further into the arms of President Biden, the recent host of a White House St. Patrick’s Day party that included a mega-Kennedy guest list.“Nearly every single grandchild of Joe and Rose Kennedy supports Joe Biden,” R.F.K. Jr.’s younger sister Kerry said in a speech a few weeks after the gathering.In many presidential contests, a third-party candidate like Kennedy wouldn’t make a difference. Every four years, people you’ve never heard of manage to get themselves on the presidential ballot in one state or another. Never works — the last time we had a president who wasn’t affiliated with either the Democratic or the Republican Party was Millard Fillmore, who was the vice-presidential nominee of the Whig Party and got to be president in 1850 when Zachary Taylor died from supposedly eating too many cherries and drinking too much milk at a Fourth of July celebration.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More