Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. voiced opposition to the removal of Confederate monuments, including the Robert E. Lee statue that was taken down and melted in Charlottesville, Virginia, adding he did not think “it’s a good, healthy thing for any culture to erase history.”

Kennedy appeared on the “TimCast IRL” podcast on Friday, where the host, independent journalist Tim Pool, asked the Independent presidential candidate about activists tearing down statues like those from the Civil War or of former slaves like Frederick Douglass, who fought against slavery.

The host particularly asked if he would condemn those who melted a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that was removed from Charlottesville in 2021.

“I don’t think it’s a good, healthy thing for any culture to erase its history,” Kennedy said. “I have a visceral reaction against, against the attacks on those statues.”

ROBERT E. LEE STATUE MELTED IN SECRET, ‘SYMBOLIC’ CEREMONY, TO BE REMADE INTO ‘INCLUSIVE’ PUBLIC ART

He said he grew up in Virginia, and that there were heroes in the Confederacy who didn’t have slaves.

“I just have a visceral reaction against destroying history. I don’t like it. I think we should celebrate who we are,” Kennedy said. “We should celebrate the good qualities of everybody…If we want to find people who are completely virtuous on every issue throughout history, we would erase all of history.”

A part of the discussion centered around Columbus Day, which Kennedy refers to as Indigenous People’s Day.

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A tow truck removes a statue of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, after it was toppled in front of the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul, June 10, 2020.  (Leila Navidi/Star Tribune via Getty Images)

Kennedy told Pool that he thinks it is important to recognize all kinds of people, whether Italian-Americans, who celebrate Columbus Day, or indigenous people.

“We can recognize the indigenous people who, you know, made the ultimate sacrifice as one of the greatest genocides in history,” Kennedy said. “My father always believed that our country would never live up to its ideals if we didn’t make some kind of amends…to the group that was exterminated in order for us to settle in this country, and I think it’s a good aspiration for every American.”

Kennedy did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for further comment on the matter.

PRO-NATIVE AMERICAN ACTIVISTS FIGHTING TO SAVE INDIGENOUS TRADITIONS IN NATIONWIDE WAR AGAINST WOKENESS

Workers remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, after years of a legal battle over the contentious monument, in Charlottesville, Va., July 10, 2021. (Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein)

The statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee that once stood in Charlottesville was secretly melted down at a ceremonial event.

After both cultural and legal battles, the statue of Lee that sparked the infamous Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally was reportedly melted in a secretive ceremony in order to ensure the safety of those involved. The Washington Post reported that the statue met its end “in a 2,250-degree furnace” when it was “secretly melted down” to become a new piece of public art.

Footage of Lee’s likeness being melted went viral across social media.

The “Unite the Right” rally took place in Charlottesville in August 2017, and participants included far-right White supremacist sympathizers upset over the proposed removal of Lee’s statue, as well as many counter-protesters. 

On Aug. 12, James Fields Jr. deliberately rammed his car into a group of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer and injuring dozens.

Fox News Digital’s Alexander Hall contributed to this report.

A measure that would have required schools to notify parents about their child’s gender identity and limited transgender youth medical care has failed to get enough signatures in support to qualify for the November ballot, proponents said Tuesday.

The proposal sought to notify parents if their child changes their name or pronouns at school or requests to use facilities or play sports that don’t match their gender on official records. It also would have banned California doctors from prescribing hormones or otherwise providing gender-affirming care to minors.

For the measure to qualify for the ballot, proponents had to submit the signatures of more than half a million registered voters by Tuesday, the deadline set by the California secretary of state.

The campaign fell short but gathered more than 400,000 signatures, according to Jonathan Zachreson, a Roseville school board member who was leading the initiative.

“If we had a little more time and a little more money, we would have easily qualified for the ballot,” he said.

Zachreson said the initiative had the support of tens of thousands of volunteers, with the most signatures collected from counties including Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino.

But the measure was always a political long shot in left-leaning California, home to some of the strongest LGBTQ+ protections in the nation.

The campaign raised $200,000, according to Zachreson, a paltry number in a state where some past ballot measure campaigns have had hundreds of millions of dollars in backing.

Supporters of the measure sought to bring Republican-backed debates over “parental rights” that have been playing out on school boards in conservative pockets of California to the statewide level. California Democrats in turn have fought to thwart gender notification policies considered by several school boards, measures they said are harmful to transgender students who may feel safe at school but not at home.

Last week, Democratic state lawmakers in Sacramento introduced a bill that seeks to ban such school policies and shield teachers from retaliation for supporting transgender students as lawsuits over the issue are pending across the state.

The legislation comes after California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit last year against the Chino school district alleging its parental notification policy was discriminatory and violated civil rights and privacy laws.

Bonta also challenged the ballot title of the proposed measure that fell short Tuesday. Last month, a Sacramento Superior Court Judge tentatively sided with Bonta, who titled the measure the “Restrict Rights of Transgender Youth” initiative, while backers wanted to call it the “Protect Kids of California Act.”

Zachreson said supporters plan to appeal that decision. They will “absolutely” continue to push for similar ballot measures in the future and are now throwing their weight behind opposing the state legislation introduced last week, he said.

They are hoping for the financial support of billionaire Elon Musk, who has criticized healthcare for transgender youth.

LGBTQ+ advocacy groups have warned that parental rights debates over gender identity are harmful to youth who already face high rates of suicide.

“Across the country and here in California, LGBTQ+ young people are under attack from extremist politicians and school boards seeking to ban books, terrorize teachers and make transgender youth afraid to be themselves at school,” Equality California Executive Director Tony Hoang said in a statement.

A new lawsuit filed Tuesday by a constellation of left-leaning groups in Pennsylvania is trying to prevent thousands of mail-in ballots from being thrown out in November’s election in a battleground state that is expected to play a critical role in selecting a new president.

The lawsuit, filed in a state court, is the latest of perhaps a half-dozen cases to challenge a provision in Pennsylvania law that voters must write the date when they sign their mail-in ballot envelope.

PENNSYLVANIA CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS TO MISS BALLOT AFTER LEGISLATIVE DEADLOCK

Voters not understanding that provision has meant that tens of thousands of ballots have been thrown out since Pennsylvania dramatically expanded mail-in voting in a 2019 law.

The latest lawsuit says multiple courts have found that a voter-written date is meaningless in determining whether the ballot arrived on time or whether the voter is eligible. As a result, rejecting someone’s ballot either because it lacks a date or a correct date should violate the Pennsylvania Constitution’s free and equal elections clause, the 68-page lawsuit said.

“This lawsuit is the only one that is squarely addressing the constitutionality of disenfranchising voters under Pennsylvania’s Constitution,” said Marian Schneider, a lawyer in the case and senior policy counsel for voting rights for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania.

Enforcement of the dating provision resulted in at least 10,000 ballots getting thrown out in the 2022 mid-term election alone, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit names Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s top election official, as well as the election boards in Philadelphia and Allegheny County, both heavily Democratic jurisdictions.

However, Democrats have fought to undo the dating requirement, while Republicans in the past have fought in court to ensure that counties can and do throw out mail-in ballots that lack a complete or correct date.

Roughly three-fourths of mail-in ballots tend to be cast by Democrats in Pennsylvania, possibly the result of former President Donald Trump baselessly claiming that mail-in voting is rife with fraud.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit include the Black Political Empowerment Project, POWER Interfaith, Make the Road Pennsylvania, OnePA Activists United, New PA Project Education Fund, Casa San José, Pittsburgh United, League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania and Common Cause Pennsylvania.

Currently, a separate challenge to the date requirement is pending in federal court over whether it violates the 1964 Civil Rights Act or the constitution’s equal protection clause. In March, a divided 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the date requirement does not violate the civil rights law.