Under normal circumstances, a visit to the White House by the Kennedy family on St. Patrick’s Day — a storied political family with Irish roots, led by a president of Irish descent — might not be particularly newsworthy.

But this year’s meeting had an undertone of family drama and political rejection.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is making an independent bid to replace President Biden, breaking with the Democratic Party and many members of his family, who have condemned his campaign as “dangerous.”

They have also emphatically supported Mr. Biden. On Sunday, Kerry Kennedy, one of Mr. Kennedy’s sisters, spoke posted a photo of the family at X in the White House with Mr. Biden. “President Biden, you are making the world a better place,” she wrote.

Mr Biden commented on the post: “From one proud Irish family to another – it was good to have you all back in the White House.”

Among the other Kennedy family members in attendance was Joseph P. Kennedy III, the U.S. special envoy to Northern Ireland.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential candidate has brought him into conflict with his family, even as he repeatedly invokes their shared legacy and leans on Kennedy nostalgia during his campaign. Mr. Kennedy, 70, an environmental lawyer, rose to prominence during the pandemic as his longstanding skepticism about vaccines and embrace of political conspiracy theories came to the fore.

Mr. Kennedy had his own message for the Biden White House on St. Patrick’s Day: a complaint, shared in an email from his campaign Sunday morning, that his request for Secret Service protection had again been denied. The Secret Service protects the leading candidates for president, but it is up to the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with a congressional panel, to determine who qualifies.

Mr. Kennedy, the son of former Attorney General and Senator Robert F. Kennedy and a cousin of former President John F. Kennedy, also appeared Sunday on The Volpe Report, a public podcast in Pennsylvania, where he 60th anniversary from a speech his father gave in Scranton – Mr Biden’s hometown.

The prize is another not-so-subtle attempt to channel Camelot: salt water, wind and an afternoon of sailing with the scion of a liberal political dynasty.

Someone who runs for president, like his father and uncles did, but not as a Democrat.

As part of a sweepstakes organized by his campaign, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a participant and a guest the chance to join him for an afternoon of sailing on the Pacific Ocean.

“Imagine the wind in your hair, the sun kissing your face and the rhythmic sound of the waves beneath you as you sail together from Marina del Rey, California, on Saturday afternoon, May 11, 2024,” his campaign website says.

Mr. Kennedy, whose independent candidacy has rattled Democrats and raised fears he could spoil President Biden, has also promoted the contest on social media.

An environmental lawyer who has become better known for his anti-vaccine activism and pushing conspiracy theories, he entered the race last spring as a challenger for the Democratic nomination against Mr. Biden, but left the long path in the fall. to operate independently.

There is no fee to enter the sweepstakes, but contributors can make more entries for every $10 they contribute to Mr. Kennedy’s campaign, according to a long explanation of the competition rules. The maximum number of registrations is 300.

A campaign estimate put the prize’s value at $3,000.

The pastime of sailing is clearly intertwined with the Kennedys. Images of president John F KennedyMr. Kennedy’s uncle, at the helm of his beloved sailboat Victura off Cape Cod, and Mr. Kennedy’s father, Robert F Kennedyendured on the water.

And it was John F. Kennedy who once said, “We are connected to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea – whether to sail or to look at it – we go back from where we came.”

But Mr. Kennedy’s attempts to trade on his family’s name, likeness and mystique have not always been well received.

During the Super Bowl this month, some family members and Democrats criticized him for a $7 million campaign ad, a remake of a 1960 spot that put his uncle John F. Kennedy in the White House.

He apologized to X and said he was sorry “if the Super Bowl ad hurt anyone in my family,” while still promoting the commercial, paid for by an allied super PAC, on social media.

According to the Kennedy campaign, the sweepstakes winner will be chosen in a random drawing on March 5.

There is even a disclaimer for bad weather.

“In case of bad weather, the sailing experience in Marina del Rey will be replaced by an alternative indoor experience with Mr. Kennedy,” the contest page said.

Yes, that catchy jingle you heard on your television just before halftime of the Super Bowl was an ad supporting a Kennedy running for president, and it looked and sounded almost exactly the same as it did in 1960.

A super PAC supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s presidential bid. ran the ad, which was essentially a reboot of an ad supporting Mr. Kennedy's uncle John F. Kennedy in his 1960 presidential campaign. It features the same jingle, the same upbeat cartoons interspersed with candid photos of the candidate, showing the candidate's face of the younger Mr. Kennedy have been superimposed.

The PAC, American Values ​​2024, paid $7 million for the spot, said the PAC's co-founder Tony Lyons. Production took about 36 hours, he said.

Mr. Kennedy is running for president as an independent after quitting the Democratic Party in October, arguing that the Democratic primary system was rigged against him. His candidacy is worrying many Democrats who fear that Mr. Kennedy — an environmental lawyer who has become a prominent purveyor of conspiracy theories — could siphon votes away from President Biden.

The super PAC has increased suspicion about Mr. Kennedy's support. A substantial portion of the PAC's funding, about $15 million, came from Timothy Mellon, a Republican who has also given $10 million to a super PAC supporting former President Donald J. Trump.

Super Bowl ads are often heavily nostalgic: Sunday night commercials feature vintage Volkswagen footage, a “Scrubs” reunion and Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in Boston.

But the Kennedy ad struck a different tone. While John F. Kennedy was running as a 43-year-old Democrat in 1960, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 70 years old and active as an independent – ​​a self-proclaimed spoiler. (Despite Mr. Kennedy's age, the ad still portrays him as youthful and athletic, including a photo of him on skis.)

Mr. Kennedy has drawn on his storied political family and its legacy during his candidacy. But many of his relatives have denounced him.

In July, the former president's grandson, Jack Schlossberg, posted a video “embarrassing” his uncle's campaign, saying the younger Mr. Kennedy “trades Camelot, celebrity conspiracy theories and conflict for personal gain and fame.'

The Super Bowl ad received a mixed reception on the social media platform X. Ben Shapiro, a right-wing writer, called it “shockingly politically astute.”

Robert Shrum, a longtime Democratic political consultant who worked with former Senator Edward M. Kennedy, wrote: “This RFK Jr. Super Bowl ad is a straight plagiarism of the 1960 JFK ad. What a fraud – and to quote Lloyd Bentsen with a minor amendment: “Bobby, you're no John Kennedy.” Instead, you are an ally of Trump.”

In a federal election complaint filed Friday, the Democratic National Committee accused Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a super PAC backing his independent presidential bid of illegally coordinating a $15 million petition aimed at qualifying him for the vote in several states that could do that. are crucial to President Biden's reelection prospects.

The 11 page complaint to the Federal Election Commission described the scheme as an in-kind contribution to Mr. Kennedy's campaign by the super PAC, American Values ​​​​2024, a campaign that violated federal campaign finance laws and long-standing financial barriers between candidates and third parties groups broke through.

“This is an attempt to undermine our election laws and put a stalker horse in RFK Jr. afloat,” Lis Smith, a senior adviser to the DNC, said on a Zoom call with reporters.

Mr. Kennedy, the scion of a liberal political dynasty and an environmental lawyer better known for his anti-vaccine activism and promotion of conspiracy theories, entered the race last spring as a challenger for the Democratic nomination against Mr. Biden, but he left the long-distance trail in the fall to perform as an independent.

Tony Lyons, the co-chair of American Values ​​2024, rejected accusations that the group broke the law.

“The Biden administration and the DNC are clearly uncomfortable with democracy, want to suppress dissent and do not believe their candidate can win a free, open and fair election,” Lyons said in a statement on Friday.

While the complaint will set off a chain of events, the FEC, which is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, is often deadlocked on whether campaigns broke the law.

Kennedy campaign manager Amaryllis Fox Kennedy pushed back in her own statement on Friday. She said the campaign's petition drive was separate from the super PAC's activities.

“This is a non-issue raised by a partisan political entity that appears increasingly concerned about its own candidate and viability,” said Ms. Kennedy, who married Mr. Kennedy's son, Robert F. Kennedy III, in 2018.

Mr. Kennedy's supporters are collecting signatures from voters in a dozen states to try to secure his place on the ballot in the November election, raising fears among some Democrats that he could spoil Mr. Biden. Some national polls have Mr. Kennedy in the high single digits.

The petition drive has largely focused on populous states, which are among the biggest prizes on the Electoral College map. The states include Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, New York and Texas. In some of those states, Mr. Kennedy has also filed paperwork to form his own political party, an effort to get on the ballot with fewer voter signatures.

He is not the first presidential candidate to scrutinize the role of super PACs this cycle.

Before Florida Governor Ron DeSantis withdrew from the Republican primary last month, he had delegated many traditional campaign activities to his main super PAC, Never Back Down. The group spent $130 million and coordinated many of his appearances on the trail, blurring the lines between the campaign and his super PAC. A campaign watchdog group filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission in December accusing Mr. DeSantis and his super PAC of illegal coordination, a complaint similar to the DNC's against Mr. Kennedy.

And former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican front-runner, raised eyebrows with his recent revelation that his super PACs had spent about $50 million in donor money on legal bills by 2023.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running as an independent president, will be on the ballot in Utah, his campaign announced Wednesday at an event in Salt Lake City, capping a weekslong signature-gathering effort.

Utah is the first state to give Mr. Kennedy a spot on the ballot, and he has a long and expensive road to his stated goal of getting on the ballot in all fifty states and the District of Columbia. He left the Democratic Party in October to make an independent bid for the White House.

Mr. Kennedy, who turns 70 this month, is the scion of America’s political royalty and an environmental lawyer who has gained notoriety in recent years for promoting conspiracy theories, including unproven claims about widespread government corruption and the danger of vaccines.

Mr. Kennedy has drawn support from some disaffected Democrats, Republicans and independents, many of whom are attracted to his anti-establishment message. A poll published in November by The New York Times and Siena College found that unfavorable views of President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump could provide an opening for independent candidates like Mr. Kennedy.

Mr. Biden’s supporters worry that Mr. Kennedy could siphon votes away from him, tipping the election toward the Republican candidate.

States make their own rules for ballot access. Independent candidates must navigate a labyrinthine network that handles signature gathering and financial reporting requirements. The effort is time-consuming and expensive.

Last month, a super PAC backing Mr. Kennedy said it would spend at least $10 million to get him on the ballot, focusing on 10 states. Two weeks later, commission leaders said they would scale back that effort to seven states. Mr. Kennedy’s campaign is pursuing its own ballot access efforts.

The campaign met Utah’s signature threshold last week but signed the official paperwork on Wednesday, Mr. Kennedy said.

In his remarks, Mr. Kennedy complained about “the undemocratic blockade the major political parties have on this process” and the “arbitrary and capricious” rules states have put in place for independent presidential bids.

“It’s all to prevent third parties from getting to the ballot box,” he said.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running as an independent president, will be on the ballot in Utah, his campaign announced Wednesday at an event in Salt Lake City, capping a weekslong signature-gathering effort.

Utah is the first state to give Mr. Kennedy a spot on the ballot, and he has a long and expensive road to his stated goal of getting on the ballot in all fifty states and the District of Columbia. He left the Democratic Party in October to make an independent bid for the White House.

Mr. Kennedy, who turns 70 this month, is the scion of America’s political royalty and an environmental lawyer who has gained notoriety in recent years for promoting conspiracy theories, including unproven claims about widespread government corruption and the danger of vaccines.

Mr. Kennedy has drawn support from some disaffected Democrats, Republicans and independents, many of whom are attracted to his anti-establishment message. A poll published in November by The New York Times and Siena College found that unfavorable views of President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump could provide an opening for independent candidates like Mr. Kennedy.

Mr. Biden’s supporters worry that Mr. Kennedy could siphon votes away from him, tipping the election toward the Republican candidate.

States make their own rules for ballot access. Independent candidates must navigate a labyrinthine network that handles signature gathering and financial reporting requirements. The effort is time-consuming and expensive.

Last month, a super PAC backing Mr. Kennedy said it would spend at least $10 million to get him on the ballot, focusing on 10 states. Two weeks later, commission leaders said they would scale back that effort to seven states. Mr. Kennedy’s campaign is pursuing its own ballot access efforts.

The campaign met Utah’s signature threshold last week but signed the official paperwork on Wednesday, Mr. Kennedy said.

In his remarks, Mr. Kennedy complained about “the undemocratic blockade the major political parties have on this process” and the “arbitrary and capricious” rules states have put in place for independent presidential bids.

“It’s all to prevent third parties from getting to the ballot box,” he said.

He has promoted a conspiracy theory that coronavirus vaccines were developed to control people through microchips. He has endorsed the false idea that antidepressants are associated with school shootings. And he has pushed the decades-old theory that the CIA killed his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer, is a leading vaccine skeptic and purveyor of conspiracy theories who relied heavily on misinformation in building his long-running campaign for the 2024 Democratic nomination.

But as voters voice their discontent over a likely rematch between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Kennedy has as much as 20 percent of the vote in the recent Democratic primary.

Mr. Biden and the Democratic National Committee have not publicly acknowledged Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy and have declined to comment on his campaign. Nevertheless, the public scrutiny that comes with a White House bid has raised other questionable beliefs and statements that Kennedy has put forth over the years.

Here are five of the many baseless allegations Mr. Kennedy has spread on the campaign trail and beyond.

He has falsely linked vaccines to various medical conditions.

Mr. Kennedy has promoted many false, misleading or unsubstantiated claims aimed at public health and the pharmaceutical industry – most notably the scientifically discredited belief that childhood vaccines cause autism.

That idea has been rejected by more than a dozen peer-reviewed scientific studies in multiple countries. The National Academy of Medicine reviewed eight vaccines for children and adults and found that, with rare exceptions, the vaccines are very safe, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Seen by many as the face of the vaccine resistance movement, Mr. Kennedy claims he is “not anti-vaccine” and is trying to make vaccines safer. But he has promoted misleading information about vaccine ingredients and distributed retracted studies linking vaccines to various medical conditions.

At a meeting last year in Washington, he compared vaccination records that some called “vaccination passports” to life in Germany during the Holocaust, a statement he later apologized for. And he falsely told Louisiana lawmakers in 2021 that the coronavirus vaccine was the “deadliest vaccine ever made.”

Children’s Health Defense, an organization Mr. Kennedy originally founded as the World Mercury Project, has regularly campaigned against vaccines. Facebook and Instagram removed the group’s accounts last year for espousing vaccine misinformation, and Mr Kennedy has since often lamented the dangers of “censorship” in campaign speeches.

He has made unfounded claims about a link between gender dysphoria and chemical exposure.

In an interview last month with Jordan Peterson, a conservative Canadian psychologist and public speaker, Mr. Kennedy falsely linked chemicals in water sources to the identity of transgender people.

“Many of the problems we see in children, especially boys, are probably underestimated as to how much of it is due to chemical exposure, including a lot of the sexual dysphoria that we see,” he said. He was referring to research on a weed killer, atrazine, in which scientists found it “induces complete feminization and chemical castration” in certain frogs.

But there’s no evidence that the chemical, typically used on farms to kill weeds, causes the same effects in humans, let alone gender dysphoria. And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention“Most people are not regularly exposed to atrazine.”

He has falsely linked antidepressants to school shootings.

Based on longstanding dubious claims, Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly endorsed the idea that mass shootings have increased because of the increased use of antidepressants.

“Kids always had access to guns, and there was no time in American history or human history when kids went to schools and shot their classmates,” he told comedian Bill Maher on a recent episode of the podcast, “Club Random With Bill Maher.” “It really started to happen simultaneously with the introduction of these drugs, with Prozac and the other drugs.”

While both antidepressant use and mass shootings have increased in recent decades, according to Ragy Girgis, an associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, the scientific community has found “no biological plausibility” to support a link between the two. .

Antidepressants often have warnings that refer to suicidal thoughts, Mr Girgis said. But those warnings refer to the possibility that people who already have suicidal thoughts may be able to share pre-existing beliefs out loud once they take the drug as part of their treatment.

However, Mr. Kennedy has pointed to such warnings as evidence of the false idea that the drugs could induce “homicidal tendencies”.

Several prominent figures, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, have reinforced similar claims following recent mass shootings.

Most school shooters weren’t prescribed psychotropic drugs before committing acts of violence, a 2019 study found. And even when they were, researchers wrote“no direct or causal relationship has been found.”

He has supported a conspiracy theory that the CIA killed his uncle.

Mr. Kennedy has long promoted a conspiracy theory that the CIA assassinated his uncle, President John F. Kennedy.

He claimed, without evidence, during a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity in May that Allen W. Dulles, the director of the CIA at the time of President Kennedy’s assassination, helped cover up evidence of the organization’s involvement.

Referring to a 1976 House committee inquiry, he said, “Most of the people in that inquiry believed it was the CIA that was behind it because the evidence was so overwhelming to them.”

But even that investigation, which found that President Kennedy was “probably” the victim of some kind of conspiracy, concluded bluntly that the CIA “was not involved.”

And the Warren Commission, convened in 1963 to investigate the Kennedy assassination, found that the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, acted alone and was not connected to any government agency.

And he has said that the Republicans stole the 2004 presidential election.

Mr. Kennedy told The Washington Post in June that he still believed John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, had won the 2004 presidential election.

Mr. Kennedy first promoted that idea in a 2006 Rolling Stone article, claiming that Republicans had mounted “a massive, coordinated campaign to undermine the will of the people” and the re-election of President George W. Bush to assure. He claimed that their efforts “stopped more than 350,000 Ohio voters from casting their ballots or having their votes counted.”

But it’s one thing to complain about vote suppression; it is another to show that Mr. Kerry won more of the votes cast.

Mr. Bush defeated Mr. Kerry by a 35-vote national electoral college margin; he carried Ohio and its 20 electoral votes by more than 118,000 votes.

The Times reported in 2004 that an electronic voting machine malfunction in Ohio added 3,893 votes to Mr. Bush. That error was caught in preliminary vote counts, officials said. But the event, among other nationwide voting controversies, sparked widespread questions about election integrity that appealed to the likes of Mr. Kennedy.

However, Mr Kerry conceded the race a day after the election.