Albuquerque Journal reports: Independent and minor party candidates were qualified to be on November's general election ballot by the state of New Mexico on Tuesday, including high-profile independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The deadline for independent, minor party and write-in candidates to submit materials like nominating petitions was last week. The Kennedy campaign said it submitted 11,202 signatures, more than the 3,561 signatures needed. New Mexico qualified Kennedy as a candidate, along with his running mate Nicole Shanahan. Kennedy is officially on the ballot in at least eight other states — California, Delaware, Hawaii, Michigan, Minnesota, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah — and has submitted signatures in at least 11 states. "People in the Land of Enchantment support Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for his efforts to revitalize the middle class and empower our youth," said Aaron Diaz, the campaign's New Mexico director. "With an alternative to the two-party system, New Mexicans can now cast their ballots with confidence and hope for a promising new future." Read the full article here.

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Fox 6 Milwaukee reports: It's not just Democrat-versus-Republican on your ballots. One familiar name – Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – is trying to get on Wisconsin's ballot as an independent candidate. The month-long process to get enough signatures kicked off July 1. July 1 was the first day campaign volunteers could start collecting signatures in Wisconsin. They have a little over a month to collect 2,000 signatures. As people basked in the sun at Milwaukee's Bradford Beach on Wednesday, Kennedy supporters tried to get him on the ballot with a tent, table, signs, pens and petitions. "I’ve never done anything like this, but I really feel like I have to step up," said Jean Collins. As a young voter, she once voted for President John F. Kennedy – the uncle of RFK Jr. Now, she's volunteering to help get another Kennedy elected. Read the full article here.

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NTD reports: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. held a campaign event broadcast at the same time as the first presidential debate last week. NTD spoke with Epoch Times reporter Jeff Louderback about what Mr. Kennedy called “The Real Debate,” during which the independent candidate answered the same questions as his two opponents at the same time. Watch the video here.

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NewsNation Now reports: Both Democratic President Joe Biden and former GOP President Donald Trump were criticized for their performance at the first presidential debate of the 2024 Election hosted by CNN. Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who didn't meet the news outlet's qualifications for the debate, hosted his own event where he answered the same questions. NewsNation's Nancy Loo reports Kennedy's event garnered 9 million views, as well as excitement for his campaign. Watch the video here:

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Newsweek reports:   Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hosted his own version of Thursday night's debate after the criteria set by CNN excluded him, and he took a podium alongside the two candidates in a virtual contest. Targeting both Biden and Trump, he was scathing at times and at one point condemned them saying: "Both these presidents swore to uphold the Constitution. They're both wearing American flag pins. That's easy to do. That's an accessory." "I don't believe they have the right to wear those American flag pins," he added. Kennedy staged his own event at a Los Angeles sound studio, in front of about 175 campaign volunteers and streamed it on X, formerly Twitter. Dubbed "The Real Debate," Kennedy took the stage alongside a giant screen streaming the debate between President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump. After each question, the debate was paused and Kennedy was allotted time for his answer, and he attempted to distance himself from Trump and Biden. Hosted by Emmy-winning journalist John Stossel, a well-known libertarian, the event afforded Kennedy the chance to address the issues raised in the debate while largely escaping criticisms heaped upon Biden and Trump. Read the full article here. If you resonate with this message, please subscribe to our newsletter to learn more.

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Daily Mail reports: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was forced to hold a solo event on Thursday night as Donald Trump went head-to-head with Joe Biden, but more than half of independent voters said he should have been allowed to join the top candidates on the debate stage. A J.L. Partners poll of 805 independent voters who watched the presidential clash found that 55 percent thought he should have been on the stage. "While traditionally third party candidates are squeezed as polling day approaches, the level of dissatisfaction with the two main candidates gives Robert F. Kennedy Jr. room to make a sizeable impact," said Joe Alder, senior research associate at J.L. Partners. Read the full article here.

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CBS News reports: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responded to the Trump-Biden debate Thursday night in real time, in what his campaign called "The Real Debate." CNN excluded RFK Jr. from the debate, determining he didn't meet criteria including a polling threshold and appearance on a sufficient number of states' ballots to win the presidency. Kennedy and his team argued that former President Donald Trump and President Biden aren't yet on any ballots, since the Republican National Convention and Democratic National Convention haven't yet taken place.  Kennedy's response was streamed on "X" and TheRealDebate.com from a studio in Los Angeles. John Stossel, who formerly worked for ABC News and Fox News, served in the role of a moderator during the one-man appearance. Kennedy blamed both Mr. Biden and Trump for inflation and the national deficit, the first two questions posed by CNN's moderators Thursday night, and also criticized both for their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for the closure of businesses. On the issue of border security, Kennedy said Trump was "more right" than Mr. Biden, but on foreign policy, he again had heavy criticism for both candidates. While Trump alleged Mr. Biden allowed Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine, Kennedy noted Trump also transferred weapons to Ukraine during his presidency and walked away from a nuclear treaty with Russia.  Read the full article here.

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The Hill reports: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sees the first presidential debate of the cycle — an event for which he didn’t qualify — as momentum-building for his third-party campaign.  Amid the fallout from the CNN showdown between President Biden and former President Trump, Kennedy sounded a hopeful note about what Biden’s lambasted performance could mean for his own longshot candidacy. “They are tired of choosing the lesser of two evils,” Kennedy told NewsNation host Elizabeth Vargas in a post-debate recap about voters who see Biden and Trump as imperfect options. “Hopefully some of them are going to start looking at me,” he said.  Kennedy held a counterprogramming event, which his campaign promoted as “The Real Debate,” on Rumble and X, which ended after the main Biden-Trump matchup. Read the full article here.

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TIME reports: A livestream behind the scenes showed dozens of people hooting, clapping, and chanting "Bobby!" from plastic chairs in a dark studio as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stood behind a lit-up blue podium with a screen behind him reading "The Real Debate."  Kennedy used his shadow debate to offer live commentary on his rivals, saying they represented the "vitriol, the division, the polarization that makes [Americans] disgusted with politics.” "If you want more of the same, you should vote for President Biden, President Trump—you know what's going to happen, you know that they're going to give you four more years of the same stuff," he said. "If you want things to completely change, then you're going to vote for me, because I'm going to change everything." When Trump and Biden —who are 78 and 81 years old, respectively—insulted each other's health and cognitive ability, Kennedy, 70, took the opportunity to boast about his fitness. "All I can say is I hope they let me on the stage for that contest," he responded, to loud cheers from the audience, in response to Biden's invitation to play golf with Trump if the former President could carry his own bag. "I hike every day, I go to the gym every day, I don't eat processed foods, and I do intermittent fasting." Kennedy, who failed to qualify for the presidential debate hosted by CNN, said his exclusion was due to "collusion between two establishment parties." The network says he didn't meet their criteria to qualify, which required he reach at least 15% in four national polls. “This is something that’s important for our democracy because Americans feel like the system is rigged,” Kennedy said in his opening remarks before the debate. “This is exactly the kind of merger of state and corporate power that I’m running to oppose.” Read the full article here.

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Fair Observer reports: Robert Kennedy Jr. is the most successful American third-party candidate in 30 years. He’s also a member of one of the biggest families in politics with contacts in all the most important circles. So why is he being shut out of the debate stage? US President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump excluded RFK Jr. from today’s televised presidential debate. That is, I believe, the most logical explanation for why RFK Jr. won’t be appearing on stage with the major party candidates this Thursday. FK Jr. needed to surpass CNN’s arbitrary 15 percent threshold in at least four national polls. He got three. So close! Busted on a technicality. Never mind that Kennedy is polling higher than any third-party candidate since Ross Perot in the early 1990s. That Kennedy could come so close to this arbitrary goal and be excluded is clear proof of bias against him. Read the full article here.

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NBC News reports: It’s not just a protest vote. That’s one thing a group of Georgia voters considering third-party presidential candidates wanted to make clear during an NBC News Deciders Focus Group this week, produced in collaboration with Engagious, Syracuse University and Sago. Seven out of the 10 voters in the battleground state who participated, all of whom voted for either Donald Trump or Joe Biden in 2020, are currently planning to back independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., while two support professor Cornel West and one backs Libertarian Chase Oliver. But as Margaret Talev, one of our partners in this project, told me: While we’ve heard from RFK Jr.-curious voters before, this group went further.  “We’ve been asking our focus group participants about RFK each month, and most until now have seen him as an alternative to Biden or Trump or know the Kennedy name, but admit they don’t know much about his record or platform. The Georgia voters seemed different,” Talev said. “They indicated they’re learning details about his positions from vaccines to foreign policy and having opportunities to listen to or see more of him.”  Watch the video here: 

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CBS reports: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is planning to respond to the Trump-Biden debate Thursday night in real time, in what his campaign is calling "The Real Debate." CNN has excluded RFK Jr. from the debate, determining he doesn't meet criteria including a polling threshold and appearance on a sufficient number of states' ballots to win the presidency. Kennedy and his team argue that former President Donald Trump and President Biden aren't yet on any ballots, since the Republican National Convention and Democratic National Convention haven't yet taken place.  Kennedy's campaign filed a complaint last month with the Federal Election Commission accusing CNN, Mr. Biden, Trump and their campaigns of violating federal election law.  Read the full article here.

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