U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley is knocking Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. over what she called “reprehensible” comments concerning Black children.
Democrats in Congress have used recent hearings to press Kennedy on comments he made in a 2024 podcast interview, where he touted the idea of “wellness farms,” rehabilitation facilities in rural areas.
On the podcast, he said many Black children are regularly taking ADHD medication and other psychiatric drugs, and those children could have an opportunity through such a program to “to go somewhere and get re-parented, to live in a community where there’ll be no cell phones, no screens, you’ll actually have to talk to people.”
Kennedy, who was sworn in as President Donald Trump’s health and human services chief in February 2025, was running his own presidential campaign at the time. He said the idea for wellness farms came from a family member’s experience at a program in Italy.
Pressley, a Boston Democrat, brought up Kennedy’s remarks after visiting Horizons for Homeless Children in Roxbury with U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu. The congresswomen and Wu talked up the importance of early education, spoke with parents and read the book “Ambitious Girl” by Meena Harris (niece of former Vice President Kamala Harris) to a daycare class.
“If he met the loving, brilliant, and dedicated parents that I’ve met here today, he would certainly not be saying something as obscene and offensive as Black children needing to be re-parented and re-homed,” Pressley told reporters after the visit. “I mean, just reprehensible.”
Under questioning during a Capitol Hill hearing this week, Kennedy apologized for the remarks and said he didn’t remember making them.
Photos captured Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, and Kennedy in a seemingly intense discussion after that same hearing.
“That conversation happened immediately following my questioning of him regarding the administration’s reimbursements of UnitedHealthcare, which is under criminal investigation by the Department of Justice for Medicare fraud,” Ocasio-Cortez, a Boston University alumna, said Friday. “I want to make sure that our public dollars are going to public health care and that they aren’t going to the pockets of CEOs or unethical business practices, and I was making that clear to the secretary.”
