RFK Jr. denies saying Black children are ‘standardly’ put on drugs that ‘induce violence’ in House hearing: Live updates – UK Times

Beth Van Duyne, a Texas Republican, sharply criticized her Democratic colleagues for questioning Kennedy’s qualifications.

She told Kennedy that, throughout history, there had been “zero” Democrat-appointed HHS secretaries with medical degrees.

Rep. Judy Chu, a California Democrat, criticized a decision by a vaccine advisory panel to reverse a longstanding recommendation that newborns get vaccinated for hepatitis B within one day of being born.

“You’ve done an incredibly harmful thing to our community,” Chu told Kennedy. “You eliminated the mandatory hepatitis B vaccine for newborns, and it disproportionately threatens Asian Americans, because while we make up 7 percent of the population, we account for 60 percent of all hepatitis B cases.”

Kennedy responded that babies have “essentially have zero risk” of getting hepatitis B unless the mother is infected.

“I am wondering if you could just talk a little bit about what the administration’s plan is to reduce health disparities in rural areas,” Rep. Michelle Fischbach, a Minnesota Republican, said.

“The administration would love to work with Congress on the wage area index,” Kennedy said.

He added: “We made the biggest investment in history on rural health care, we’re continuing to make additional investments.”

The exchange was one of many focused on rural health care.

Rep. Greg Steube, a Florida Republican, asked Kennedy about claims that numerous children went missing during former President Joe Biden’s administration.

“It was a humanitarian crisis, what my predecessor engineered,” Kennedy said, referring to Biden’s immigration policies. “They lost 425,000 children because they ended verification of sponsors.”

“We are now in the process of trying to find those children,” the secretary added. “We’ve been able to locate 138,000 of them…many of them, as you say, have been trafficked.”

Republicans have long claimed that more than 300,000 unaccompanied children had been “lost” after an August DHS report showed ICE did not serve notices to appear in court to 291,000 children between 2019 and 2024.

Some experts have disputed this characterization.

“This is not a ‘missing kids’ problem; it’s a ‘missing paperwork’ problem,” Jonathan Beier, an associate director of research at the Acacia Center for Justice’s Unaccompanied Children Program, told CBS News.

Watch Kennedy’s heated exchange with Rep. Terri Sewell about Black children on medication below.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican, questioned Kennedy about artificial food dyes, which the secretary has worked to crack down on.

“We need to really make sure that any ingredient in our food is safely tested first,” Kennedy said. “That’s what they do in Europe, that’s what they do in other nations.”

“We would love to work with you on that legislation,” he added.

Fitzpatrick then turned to the subject of microplastics.

“The amount in our brains has doubled over this last five years,” Kennedy said. “It is an existential crisis.”

He said his department is working to identify specific microplastics and trace their pathways in order to “better regulate them.”

Rep. Terri Sewell, an Alabama Democrat, got into a heated exchange with Kennedy over comments he previously made on a podcast about black children.

“You said every black kid is now just standardly put on Adderal, SSRIS, benzos, which are known to induce violence and that those children are going to have to go somewhere to get reparented,” Sewell said. “There is a lot to unpack in that comment.”

She then asked the secretary if he had ever “reparented” a black child.

“I don’t even know what that phrase means,” Kennedy responded. “I can’t answer something that I didn’t say.”

“You absolutely said it,” the lawmaker shot back.

“I’d like to hear the recording,” Kennedy responded.

Rep. Linda Sanchez, a California Democrat, tore into the HHS secretary of his remarks about vaccines.

“You espoused numerous disproven theories,” she said, adding that he specifically expressed skepticism about the measles vaccine.

“A deadly measles outbreak in Texas killed a six-year-old, the first such death in a decade,” Sanchez. “As a mother, this horrifies me.”

She then accused Kennedy of having the wrong priorities, mocking a recent video of the secretary drinking milk in a hot tub with Kid Rock.

“You’ve got a lot of misinformation there,” Kennedy shot back. “We’ve done better at preventing measles than any country in the world.”

Rep. Danny Davis, an Illinois Democrat, slammed Kennedy over the White House’s proposed budget cuts, claiming they pose a danger to pregnant women.

“Black women are nearly three times as likely to die from pregnancy related causes as white women,” Davis said. “Yet the Trump administration is undermining black maternal health. President Trump just proposed cutting maternal and child health programs by over $800 million.”

Rep. Mike Thompson, a California Democrat, accused Kennedy of undermining vaccines and putting Americans at risk.

“Kids have died because measles is running rampant under your watch in large part because President Trump allowed your conspiracy theories to run our public health,” he said.

Since January 2025, there have been 3,564 confirmed measles cases in the U.S., marking the largest number of cases since 2000, according a report last month from Harvard University.