Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday apologized for past comments he made about Black children being “re-parented,” while maintaining that he didn’t make those remarks despite there being a recording of him doing so.

Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) asked Kennedy whether he could admit to saying that he had a plan of sending Black children to rural rehabilitation centers where they could be “re-parented.” Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.) had brought up these past remarks when Kennedy appeared before the House Ways and Means Committee last week.

In both instances, Kennedy outright denied ever making those remarks, even telling Sewell that he didn’t know what the term “re-parented” meant.

During his 2024 presidential campaign, Kennedy appeared on the “High Level Conversations” podcast in which he said, “Psychiatric drugs, which every Black kid is now just standard put on, Adderall, SSRIs, benzos, which are known to induce violence, and those kids are going to have a chance to go somewhere and get re-parented; to live in a community where there’ll be no cellphones, no screens you’ll actually have to talk to people.”

“I would have to see, hear that recording,” Kennedy told Alsobrooks after she read him his past remarks. “I have no memory of saying anything like that.”

“But if you ask me what my opinion is, I do not believe that every Black kid should be re-parented on a wellness farm or whatever, and I have never believed that,” he added. “I’m telling you, I don’t believe it. That’s not my vision for our country.”

“If I said it, I apologize but I’d have to see the transcript,” Kennedy said.

“Prior to his time as Secretary, he described these communities as spaces where individuals, particularly young people facing alienation, mental health challenges, and rising rates of despair could undergo a form of ‘reparenting,'” an HHS spokesperson said in a statement to The Hill when reached for comment.

“In psychotherapy terms, reparenting involves developing the emotional regulation, discipline, boundaries, and self-worth that may not have been established in childhood, through consistent care, accountability, and supportive relationships,” they added.

Kennedy has a history of making race-based comments. During the pandemic, he shared a conspiracy theory at a dinner in New York City that the COVID-19 pandemic was ethnically targeted to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.

“We’ve put hundreds of millions of dollars into ethnically targeted microbes. The Chinese have done the same thing. In fact COVID-19 — there’s an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” Kennedy said in the recording, suggesting the virus could have been developed to specifically target Black and white people.

He later denied supporting this theory, writing on social media, “I have never, ever suggested that the COVID-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews. I accurately pointed out — during an off-the-record conversation — that the U.S. and other governments are developing ethnically targeted bioweapons.”

“I do not believe and never implied that the ethnic effect was deliberately engineered,” he added.

He’s also previously suggested that Black people shouldn’t follow the same immunization schedule as others because “their immune system is better than ours,” a position he stood by when confronted by Alsobrooks last year.

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.