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A supporter of the Tea Party movement, Paul has described himself as a "constitutional conservative". He is generally described as a libertarian, a term he both embraced and rejected during his first Senate campaign. He supports term limits, a balanced budget amendment, and the Read the Bills Act, in addition to the widespread reduction of federal spending and taxation. He favors a flat tax rate of 14.5% for individuals and business, while eliminating the FICA payroll taxes, as well as taxes on inheritance, gifts, capital gains, dividends, and interest. Paul has frequently appeared on Infowars with radio show host and right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Ideologically, the American Conservative Union has given Paul a lifetime conservative rating of 96% and the Conservative Review gave him a 92% score. Since the 2016 Republican primary, when Paul was highly critical of Trump, he has "become one of the president's closest allies despite occasionally voting against Trump's nominees and legislative proposals." As of June 2020, according to FiveThirtyEight, Paul had voted with President Trump's position on congressional issues 70% of the time, the second lowest among all Republican senators.
Abortion
Paul describes himself as "100% pro life", believing that legal personhood begins at fertilization. In 2009, his position was to ban abortion under all circumstances. Since 2010, he has said he would allow for a doctor's discretion in life-threatening cases such as ectopic pregnancies. In 2011, Paul signed onto the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act which was intended to prohibit federal funding for abortion, with the notable exception of abortions in the case of rape, incest, and to save the life of the mother.
Immigration
In 2017, following President Trump's decision to repeal the previous Obama Administration's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) order, Paul outlined his own solution to the issue of undocumented immigration which included naturalizing DACA beneficiaries over a five-year period as part of the yearly immigrant quota, and also endorsed a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in general. Paul said he opposes gross spending on the border, and feels sympathy for most immigrants regardless of status, the DACA beneficiaries in particular.
Paul was one of 11 Republicans in 2019 to vote against Trump's demand for "emergency border funding".
LGBTQ+
Paul has said that same-sex marriage "offends [himself] and a lot of people" on a personal level, and said there is a "crisis that allows people to think there would be some other sorts of marriage." Prior to the Supreme Court's 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges legalizing same-sex marriage across the United States, Paul held the view that the decision to ban same-sex marriage should be in the hands of states. Following the Court's decision, Paul said in 2015, "While I disagree with Supreme Court's redefinition of marriage, I believe that all Americans have the right to contract. The Constitution is silent on the question of marriage because marriage has always been a local issue. Our founding fathers went to the local courthouse to be married, not to Washington, D.C. I’ve often said I don't want my guns or my marriage registered in Washington."
During Rachel Levine's confirmation hearing with the Senate HELP Committee to be Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Biden, Paul compared transgender medicine to "genital mutilation" and accused her of supporting “surgical destruction of a minor’s genitalia." Paul was rebuked by committee chairman Patty Murray, as well as multiple House and Senate Democrats, who were to vote on the Equality Act that same day.
Foreign policy
Unlike his more stridently "non-interventionist" father, Paul concedes a role for American armed forces abroad, including permanent foreign military bases. He has said that he blames supporters of the Iraq War and not President Obama for the growth in violence that occurred in 2014, and that the Iraq War "emboldened" Iran. Dick Cheney, John McCain and Rick Perry responded by calling Paul an isolationist, but Paul has pointed to opinion polls of likely GOP primary voters as support for his position. In 2011, shortly after being elected, Paul proposed a budget which specified $542 billion in defense spending. In 2015, he called for a defense budget of $697 billion.
Referring to ISIS, Paul stated: "I personally believe that this group would not be in Iraq and would not be as powerful had we not been supplying their allies in the war [against Syrian Bashar al-Assad's government]." Paul then supported airstrikes against ISIS, but questioned the constitutionality of Obama's unilateral actions without a clear congressional mandate. Paul has stated concerns about arms sent to Syrian rebels that wind up in unfriendly hands. In December 2018 he supported President Trump's decision to pull the US army out from the Syrian Civil war.
In 2016, Paul was one of the first members of Congress to come out in opposition to United States support for the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen. In June 2017, Paul tried to block Trump administration's plan to sell more weapons to Saudi Arabia. In April 2018, he again criticized the U.S.-Saudi Arabia alliance, highlighting that "Saudi Arabia has funded radical madrassas, teaching hatred of America throughout the world, and that Saudi Arabia also supplied arms to ISIS in the Syrian civil war." Paul said that U.S.-backed Saudi blockade of Yemen has further aggravated the humanitarian crisis in the country.
Paul, like his father, has also been a critic of neoconservatism, and urged Trump to not choose prominent neoconservative Elliott Abrams to serve as Deputy Secretary of State. In April 2018, Paul voted for the confirmation of Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State. Paul had previously insisted that he would not confirm Pompeo, citing Pompeo's hawkish foreign policy beliefs.
In June 2019, Paul criticized the Trump administration for escalating tensions with Iran. Said Paul: "One of the things I like about President Trump is that he said the Iraq War was a mistake. I think an Iran war would be even a bigger mistake than the Iraq War." In January 2020 he criticized the U.S. airstrike on Baghdad International Airport which killed high-level Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. Paul stated that the attack will increase tensions between the two countries.
On June 12, 2017, U.S. senators reached an agreement on legislation imposing new sanctions on Russia and Iran. The bill was opposed only by Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders. In July 2018, shortly after 12 Russian intelligence officers have been charged with hacking and leaking emails of senior Democrats, he described the Special Counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election as a "witch hunt on the president". That same month, Paul blocked a Senate resolution that backed the intelligence community's assessment of Russian election interference and that called on President Trump to speak with special counsel Robert Mueller. In August 2018 Paul traveled to Moscow and met with several Russian senators, including Sergey Kislyak. In May 2019, Paul opposed the decision of the Senate Intelligence committee, chaired by Republican Senator Richard Burr, to subpoena Donald Trump Jr., a close friend of Paul's, to testify in front of Congress about his involvement with Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign. In July 2018, Paul was among only two Senators to vote against a Senate motion supporting NATO.
On July 1, 2020, the Senate rejected Paul's amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act which would have required the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Afghanistan within a year and brought an end to the 19-year war.
Criminal justice issues
Paul speaking with former U.S. Congressman Allen West.Paul has focused on criminal justice reform as a legislative priority. He introduced the Justice Safety Valve Act in 2013 to provide judges with greater sentencing flexibility, the Civil Rights Voting Restoration Act in 2014 to restore voting rights for non-violent felons, the REDEEM Act in 2014 to allow sealing and expungement for non-violent crimes, the FAIR Act in 2014 to rein in police use of civil asset forfeiture, the RESET Act in 2014 to address the crack sentencing disparity and how drugs are weighed, the Police CAMERA Act in 2015 to increase the use of body cameras by police, the Stop Militarizing Our Law Enforcement Act in 2015 to reduce the use of military equipment by police, the MERCY Act in 2015 to restrict the use of solitary confinement on juveniles, the Pretrial Integrity and Safety Act in 2017 to encourage states to reform bail policies, the Pregnant Women in Custody Act in 2018 to protect the health and safety of pregnant women in prison, and the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act in 2020 to end the use of no-knock warrants. Paul says policies such as the war on drugs and mandatory minimum sentencing have particularly harmed minorities.
In 2020, Paul held up bipartisan legislation that would make lynching a federal crime. Paul said that he thought lynching should be "universally condemned", but wanted an amendment to clarify that the causation of non-fatal injuries would not be considered lynching.
Paul was one of six Republican Senators to vote no on expanding the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, which would allow the U.S. Justice Department to review hate crimes related to COVID-19 and establish an online database.
On May 28, 2021, Paul voted against creating an independent commission to investigate the 2021 United States Capitol attack.
Cannabis
On cannabis legalization, Paul says the issue should be left up to the states and that "you ought to be able to pretty much do what you want to do as long as you don't hurt somebody else". Regarding medical use, Paul has endorsed efforts to legalize in Kentucky and introduced the CARERS Act in 2015 to legalize medical cannabis at the federal level. Paul has also supported states' rights-focused cannabis legislation, introducing the Rohrabacher–Farr amendment in 2014, cosponsoring the STATES Act in 2018, and introducing other amendments. Paul introduced the Marijuana Businesses Access to Banking Act in 2015 to allow cannabis businesses increased access to banks.
Regarding industrial hemp cultivation, Paul has supported efforts to legalize in Kentucky and at the federal level as well, introducing the Industrial Hemp Farming Act in 2013. In 2020 he introduced the Hemp Economic Mobilization Plan (HEMP) Act to increase the THC limit of hemp from 0.3% to 1%.
Government surveillance
As a critic of warrantless surveillance of Americans, Paul says "the Fourth Amendment is equally as important as the Second Amendment" and has called for conservatives to more strongly defend Fourth Amendment rights. In 2015 Paul spoke for ten and a half hours on the Senate floor against renewing provisions of the PATRIOT Act that he said were unconstitutional. Paul has called Edward Snowden a "whistleblower" and called for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to resign for "lying" about the phone metadata program that Snowden exposed. He also filed a class action lawsuit against the Obama administration seeking to end the program. Paul gave a speech at the University of California, Berkeley in 2014 titled "The N.S.A. vs. Your Privacy".
Climate change
Paul has not definitively accepted the scientific consensus on climate change, which states that global warming is real, progressing, and primarily caused by humans. Paul has said pollution emissions are subject to "onerous regulation." In 2018, Paul called for an investigation of a National Science Foundation grant that went towards educating meteorologists about the science of climate change. Paul said the grant was "not science" but "propagandizing".
Disease control
Paul has spread false claims about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. In 2009, Paul was interviewed by conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones, and suggested mandatory vaccination would be akin to martial law. On February 2, 2
