Forbes reports: Over the past year in his independent presidential campaign, Bobby Kennedy Jr. has sought to bring together members of both major political parties, with a form of economic populism that expands ownership opportunities. In contrast to Sanders, Kennedy’s goal is not to grow the welfare state or state control over the economy. His economic populism is free-market oriented, aimed at building a broader property-owning middle class. It is aimed at widening the number of worker-owners with a stake in the market system, through their ownership of homes, businesses, employee stock and profit sharing, and other assets. Whether Kennedy’s economic strategies can achieve the goals of ownership and the middle class he has set, remains to be determined. But his “ownership economy” is one that should be discussed and debated. Currently, it is largely ignored by the legacy media—or subsumed by the parade of articles speculating about of how many votes he will “take away” from President Biden or President Trump. I wrote about Kennedy’s heterodox jobs program late last summer. In the eight months since, he has sharpened his jobs agenda, and connected it to a broader platform of worker ownership. It is time to revisit the campaign’s economic themes, briefly noting three of the subjects Kennedy often speaks about in 2024: the abandonment of vast sections of the blue collar economy, low wage workforces, and the marginalization of small businesses. Read the full article here.

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The Atlantic reports: What if everyone’s wrong? What if Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign is savvier, more organized, and more cunning than it’s been given credit for? This past weekend, Kennedy’s “We the People” party gamed an Iowa loophole to secure his spot on the state’s 2024 election ballot. Instead of spending months gathering thousands of signatures, Kennedy’s allies persuaded hundreds of voters to show up in the same place on the same day and partake in something akin to a Potemkin political convention. The summit barely lasted two hours. It was a bold gambit, and it worked. Kennedy is officially on the ballot in Utah, and his team (and super PAC) says he has met the necessary qualifications in Nevada, Idaho, Nebraska, North Carolina, and New Hampshire, in addition to Iowa. The campaign has the requisite signatures to land Kennedy on multiple state ballots right now, but it’s waiting until closer to the final deadlines to submit the paperwork. This way, the DNC and RNC will have less time to mount their legal oppositions.

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Long Island Press reports: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, is coming to Long Island to host a political rally to support his presidential campaign. Kennedy is currently running an independent, third party bid for the 2024 presidential election against incumbent Democratic President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, a Republican. RFK Jr. started his campaign by challenging Biden in the Democratic primary, but dropped after dwindling poll numbers as well as Biden ignoring Kennedy’s calls for televised debates. “We have the field teams, volunteers, legal teams, paid circulators, supporters, and strategists ready to get the job done,” Stefanie Spear, Kennedy’s campaign press secretary, said. “We are exceeding all our benchmarks and will be announcing new states each week.” Kennedy, who is on the ballot in Utah and has collected signatures to be on the ballot in up to seven other states, now seeks to be on New York State’s ballot for the November election Read the full article here. If you resonate with this message please subscribe to our newsletter to learn more.

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Tablet reports: Outside Union Station in Los Angeles on the Saturday before Easter a small group of people display signs protesting Robert Kennedy, Jr. The presidential hopeful is at the train station holding a campaign event celebrating “the life and legacy” of civil rights and labor leader Cesar Chavez. The protesters outside the station do not speak. The signs—seemingly written by one hand—tend to share a theme: Kennedy is a “spoiler powered by MAGA.” As people stream into the venue, the station’s retired ticket concourse, the protesters—Black and middle-aged—hold their signs with visible unease. When I ask one of the protesters what brought him to the event, he simply turns his sign toward me. Disquietingly, two people nearby in full face coverings stand against the station watching the sign-holders. Something in the body language of these two suggest they are the managers of what appears to be a staged protest. Inside the vast, high-ceilinged concourse—part art deco, part mission revival—people don campaign buttons, eat chicken skewers, order drinks. Volunteers talk to passersby about getting Kennedy on the ballot in California. Short-haired bodyguards stand sentinel, aware, no doubt, that 56 years ago Kennedy’s father, Robert Kennedy, during his own run for the White House, was assassinated a few miles away at the bygone Ambassador Hotel. Members of an all-female mariachi band strum their instruments and sing their songs, paper flowers in their hair. Journalists, cordoned off in the back, scroll through iPhones, reposition cameras, type on laptops. Sunlight falls through the large cathedrallike windows onto the station’s shiny floor. When I ask a white man in his 30s—Garrett B.—what brought him to the event, he says he appreciates Kennedy’s “earnestness,” “respectable bloodline,” and that he is “against corruption.” A Latino man in his 20s came to the event because “no one is policing the different realms of government.” A Latina in her 50s, there with her elderly mother (who would later repeatedly utter “yes” as Kennedy spoke), says she likes Kennedy because he is “neutral around all the party politics” and has “been through a lot and is stronger because of it.” Read the full article here. If you resonate with this message please subscribe to our newsletter to learn more.

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ABC News reports:  Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has ruled out a run as a Libertarian candidate to assist in his efforts to get on the ballots in all 50 states -- a marked change from his prior posture, where he kept the door open. "We're not gonna have any problems getting on the ballot ourselves so we won't be running Libertarian," he told ABC News Kennedy spoke from West Des Moines, Iowa, where his campaign was taking a victory lap, touting their Saturday afternoon gambit to get on to the general election ballot in Iowa through a quirk in state law as a rollicking success. Its plan was to hold a small, one- day convention in West Des Moines with at least 500 eligible voters, who must hail from at least 25 of the state's 99 counties. The campaign says they surpassed that benchmark -- with a member of his team claiming it accrued 686 credentialed delegates representing more than 35 counties in Iowa. Read the full article here. If you resonate with this message please subscribe to our newsletter to learn more.

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The Des Moines Register reports: Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he met the requirements to appear on Iowa’s general election ballot in November following a “convention” he held in West Des Moines Saturday. “Thank you for getting us on the ballot here in Iowa,” he told a crowd that was several hundred people strong. Kennedy is using a provision of Iowa law that allows independent presidential candidates to bypass the state’s standard requirement of 3,500 signatures by hosting a convention and identifying 500 eligible “electors” from at least 25 counties. Read the full article here. If you resonate with this message please subscribe to our newsletter to learn more.

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The Atlantic reports: Nicole Shanahan, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate, called Rep. Ro Khanna’s (D-Calif.) open letter asking her to step down ‘anti-democratic’ in a social media post Tuesday. Shanahan, a Silicon Valley attorney, said the California progressive has flipped his stance after initially encouraging her to run in conversations between the two. “In my conversation with Ro he congratulated me on the position and encouraged me to run, stating that every American has the right to run in this country,” Shanahan wrote Tuesday on the social platform X. “He stated that we live in a democracy, and it was wrong for anyone to threaten me against running.”  “Clearly, Ro has changed his stance based on pressure from the party,” she continued. “I hope he understands how anti-democratic it is to ask someone to step down from a race that empowers the American public to make their own decisions.”   “I am very disappointed that he has been pressured into issuing this letter to me publicly. He could have called me privately. He has my direct line.” Read the full article here. If you resonate with this message please subscribe to our newsletter to learn more.

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The Atlantic reports: Homeland Security Director Alejandro Mayorkas has for the fifth time denied Secret Service protection for independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., according to a letter dated March 28 that was reviewed by Newsweek. The latest in the string of denials appears to have initiated a threat of legal action from attorney Aaron Siri of the law firm Siri Glimstad, obtained by the Kennedy campaign. In the letter, which Kennedy posted to X, formerly Twitter, Siri says he will attempt to hold Mayorkas personally responsible should Kennedy or a bystander be injured as a result of a lack of Secret Service protection. The letter also claims that Mayorkas is refusing to disclose the names of the individuals that the Secret Service has already determined pose a threat to Kennedy. "If protection is not afforded, we have been authorized to commence an action on the grounds that the repeated denials have been politically motivated and are otherwise capricious," reads the letter to Mayorkas from Siri, dated one day after Mayorkas' latest denial. Read the full article here. If you resonate with this message please subscribe to our newsletter to learn more.

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6 News WOWT reports: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. says he has enough signatures to be on the 2024 general election ballot in Nebraska.  Kennedy is already on the ballot in Utah and has collected all the necessary signatures to be on the ballot in New Hampshire, Nevada, Hawaii, North Carolina, and Idaho. Watch the full video here:

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The Atlantic reports: Everybody loves Lynne. At least, that’s what all of her friends kept telling me last week, as they filed through Lynne’s front door in the Philadelphia suburbs, and sipped chardonnay in her crowded kitchen. When you meet her, you see why. Lynne Kelleher, a 66-year-old Bucks County Realtor, is utterly charming. Her pointed questions take you by surprise, and her impressive range of swear words makes you laugh until you snort. Kelleher’s magnetism is why I reached out to her in the first place. Through her work and the local charity group she founded, she has more friends than she can count. Pennsylvania will again be one of a handful of battleground states that will determine the outcome of the upcoming presidential election, and I’d been searching for women in the area to discuss that with. Kelleher was the ideal person to convene my own personal focus group of educated suburbanites, a crucial segment of the electorate that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are competing for in November. The problem for the two candidates: None of these women likes either of them.

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LA Times reports: There was a time before the turn of the millennium when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. gave a full-throated accounting of himself and the things he cared about. He recalls his voice then as “unusually strong,” so much so that he could fill large auditoriums with his words. No amplification needed. The independent presidential candidate recounts those times somewhat wistfully, telling interviewers that he “can’t stand” the sound of his voice today — sometimes choked, halting and slightly tremulous. The cause of RFK Jr.’s vocal distress? Spasmodic dysphonia, a rare neurological condition, in which an abnormality in the brain’s neural network results in involuntary spasms of the muscles that open or close the vocal cords.

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USA Today Reports: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent presidential candidate, announced that his campaign had gathered enough signatures to secure his spot on the Idaho ballot, marking his sixth win in nationwide ballot access. Kennedy, who recently announced Nicole Shanahan, a California-based attorney and entrepreneur, as his running mate in his long-shot bid for the White House, gathered over 2,000 signatures in Idaho—twice the number needed for a presidential candidate to secure ballot access in the state.  Just last month, Kennedy's campaign succeeded in its lawsuit against Idaho over what it said was an unconstitutional signature deadline. As a result of the lawsuit, the state legislature passed a bill moving the deadline to August. In addition to the Gem State, he's already collected enough signatures to get on the ballot in Hawaii, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada and Utah. Read the full article here.   If you resonate with this message please subscribe to our newsletter to learn more.

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