Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told a podcast audience in 2024 that Black children should be "re-parented." Taken from their homes. Sent to rural facilities. No cellphones. No screens. On Thursday, Rep. Terri Sewell played the recording back to him in front of Congress. He said he did not remember saying it.
The tape remembers.
This is not a congressman with an opinion. This is not a lobbyist with an agenda. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. He controls the single largest federal agency that touches American families. And he has told you, in his own words, what he thinks should happen to Black children.
Everything He Controls
HHS is not one program. It is the entire architecture of family life in America. Kennedy's agency administers:
Title IV-D of the Social Security Act, which funds every child support enforcement program in every state. Every Friend of the Court office. Every garnishment. Every enforcement action against a parent who falls behind.
The foster care system, where Black children are already removed from their homes at twice the rate of white children. More than 368,000 children sit in foster care in America. Black children make up 23 percent of them while representing 14 percent of the child population. The money that funds this system flows through Kennedy's department.
Medicaid, which provides healthcare to 40 million children in low-income families. Families who lose coverage lose access to mental health treatment, pediatric care, and the prescriptions Kennedy was ranting about on that podcast.
TANF, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the federal welfare program that determines whether a mother can feed her children while a father is locked up for child support debt he could not pay.
Head Start, the early childhood education program serving nearly one million children from low-income families. The program that gives kids a chance before the system decides they need to be "re-parented."
SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The agency that funds addiction treatment and mental health services. Kennedy stood on a podcast and said Black children are "standardly put on Adderall, SSRIs, benzos." His agency controls the funding for every treatment alternative. He has proposed none.
One man. One agency. Every program that determines whether a family stays together or falls apart. And that man said the quiet part out loud.
What Michigan Families See
Michigan residents do not interact with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. They interact with the systems his department funds.
They interact with Friend of the Court offices that suspend driver's licenses from parents who fall behind on child support without verifying whether those parents can afford the order. Federal law requires ability-to-pay hearings. HHS administers the federal audit that is supposed to ensure compliance. Michigan passes that audit with a 99.9 percent accuracy rate. The audit does not check whether a single hearing occurred.
They interact with a grievance system that the Kalamazoo Transparency Act has documented as denying 100 percent of complaints filed by parents over five years. Every grievance. Every parent. Denied.
They interact with a child welfare system where caseworkers make life-altering decisions about whether children stay in their homes. Those caseworkers are funded by Kennedy's HHS. The training standards, the reporting requirements, the incentive structures that reward removal over reunification all flow from federal policy that Kennedy has the power to change.
They interact with Medicaid offices that determine whether their children see a doctor. They interact with TANF offices that determine whether the lights stay on. They interact with Head Start programs that determine whether their child gets a classroom or a waiting list.
Every one of those interactions traces back to the same building in Washington. Every one of those programs answers to the same man. The man who said Black children should be re-parented.
The Denial
Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama did not let him hide from it. During Thursday's House Ways and Means Committee hearing, she reminded Kennedy of the history he was invoking. Slavery separated Black children from their parents. Jim Crow separated Black children from their parents. The child welfare system continues to separate Black children from their parents at disproportionate rates.
She asked him to explain his words.
"I don't even know what that phrase means," Kennedy told Congress. "And I doubt that I said that."
He accused her of making it up. The video is public. The words are his. And the department he runs continues to fund the systems that do exactly what he described, every day, in every state.
A Name That Used To Mean Something
President John F. Kennedy proposed the Civil Rights Act of 1963 and told the American people that the rights of every citizen are diminished when the rights of one are threatened. He sent federal marshals to protect Black Americans exercising their constitutional rights.
Robert F. Kennedy Sr. walked through Indianapolis the night Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. He spoke to a crowd that had every reason to burn the city down and gave them a reason not to. The city did not burn.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. runs the federal agency that funds the removal of Black fathers from their families through economic punishment. He oversees the system that places Black children in foster care at twice the rate of white children. He controls the programs that determine whether struggling families get help or get torn apart.
And when asked about Black children, his answer was to send them to camps.
John F. Kennedy stared down governors who blocked schoolhouse doors. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. funds the system that blocks fathers from coming home.
Who To Blame
Michigan families have spent years fighting local systems that seem impossible to move. FOC offices that deny every grievance. Courts that suspend licenses without hearings. A state that passes every federal audit while families fall through every crack.
Now you know why nothing changes. The man at the top does not want it to change. The federal audits do not check for hearings because HHS does not require them to. The foster care system removes Black children at disproportionate rates because federal incentive structures reward it. The child support enforcement machine punishes poverty because the man running it thinks the answer is to take the children away.
Every broken system in Michigan traces back to federal funding. Every federal dollar traces back to HHS. HHS traces back to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Now you know who to call.