The Dictatorship
RFK Jr. tried to apologize for this horribly racist remark —without actually owning it
In an episode of the “High Level Conversations” podcast that premiered on June 30, 2024then-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told host 19Keys (also known as Jibrial Muhammad), “Every Black kid is now, just as a standard, put on Adderall, [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors]benzos, which are known to induce violence.” Kennedy, who later ended his campaign, endorsed President Donald Trump and later became his health and human services secretary, went on to reveal a dystopian vision: “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 cell phones, no screens, you’ll actually have to talk to people.”
And those kids are going to have a chance to go somewhere and get re-parented.
robert f. kennedy jr. in 2024 speaking about black children prescribed aderrall
Appropriately, Kennedy’s threat of reparenting Black children on “wellness farms” was met last week with intense pushback when he testified multiple times on Capitol Hill last week. Sen. Angela AlsobrooksD-Md.; Sen. Rafael WarnockD-Ga.; and Rep. Terri SewellD-Ala., all expressed outrage. California Gov. Gavin Newsoma Democrat who’s considered likely to run for president in 2028, also demanded answers from Kennedy regarding his horribly racist remark.
Initially, Kennedy vehemently denied making it. But on Wednesday, he offered a non-apologetic apology.
“I would have to see, hear that recording,” Kennedy told Alsobrooks after she quoted his remark to him. “I have no memory of saying anything like that.”
“If I said it, I apologize but I’d have to see the transcript,” he added.
As public health professionals, we demand that apology, even if Kennedy manages to avoid looking at the transcript. His words were offensive and inexcusable.
Kennedy misrepresented studies that have made some connections between violent behaviors and varied psychiatric medications in children. New-age antipsychotic medications, in fact, are shown to reduce aggressionnot induce aggression. And Black children are often underdiagnosed, if not misdiagnosed. Sewell, to her credit, used her time questioning Kennedy to call out a truth far more nefarious: the long history of the government separating families of color. To be clear, we are not talking about separations that were the collateral damage of other policies, but explicit policies of separation.
From slavery to Indian boarding school to immigration enforcement policies to even mass incarceration and the rules governing child protective service agencies, removing children from their families — if not also their culture, language and history — is what America does. Kennedy’s remark about Black children being reparented, then, was not pulled out of thin air. It was his expressed desire to repeat some of the worst of this country’s history.
The period of enslavement in the United States, during which half of all children were ripped from their families, begets a still-visible pattern for the removal of Black children from parental care. Indeed, half of all children held in juvenile facilities before or after criminal trial are Black, while half of all Black children will have an investigation opened by child protective services. As a result, Black children are removed from their homes at a disproportionate rate relative to their peers. The idea, then, to reparent an untold number of Black children may sound like an isolated and strange suggestion from a political candidate-turned-government public health official, but our various branches of government have been removing Black children from their families.
But not just Black children. At this point we are more likely to think of Latino families when we think of children being separated from their parents. In 2018, the Trump administration made it a felony to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, and, in a cruel effort to discourage Central American migrants from traveling north, the administration separated hundreds of parents from their children. Because no investment was made in tracking the families, many of those parents have yet to be reunited with their children. And while family separation as a border enforcement policy was halted that summer due to public pressure, mass deportation efforts across the country have continued to remove parents from their homes, forcing some children into the same child protective services system that have separated so many Black families.
There’s more history, still. Church- and state-run boarding schools resulted in the removal of more than 100,000 Indigenous children from their families between the late 19th and early 20th century. This reparenting attempt to force Indigenous youth to adopt the morals and character of a “superior” culture resulted in a host of negative psychological-, cognitive- and health-related outcomes. The horrors of those schools have been made evident in the unidentified remains that have been unearthed during recent land excavations. The inability of so many Indigenous children to make it out alive, and the schools’ pattern of prohibiting cultural expression, has resulted in intergenerational trauma within Indigenous communities.
Life in the home, with parents, siblings, cousins and larger community, is where children learn the language of their culture. And, perhaps most pertinent to the current discussion, it is where they learn about the power structures that have oppressed their people and learn how to do something about them.
Children of color deserve to live in homes where these traditions live on, in communities where they are seen and in a country where their existence is not perceived as a threat. They should be in the capable hands of parents and families who are not written off as negligent for following a pediatrician’s advice. As public health research has shown time and time again, individuals are best able to thrive when they are allowed to be with their families — families that are healthy, happy and whole.
These children don’t need to be reparented. They already have exactly the parents they need.
Riana Elyse Anderson, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical and community psychologist, associate professor at Columbia University’s School of Social Work and affiliate with Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research and FXB Center for Health and Human Rights. She is a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project in Partnership with National Black Child Development Institute.
William Lopez, Ph.D., is a clinical associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. He is the author of “Raiding the Heartland: An American Story of Deportation and Resistance,” and “Separated: Family and Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid.” Lopez is a regular media contributor to public discussions on deportation, diversity and Latino culture. He is on the boards of Health in Partnership and The Latino Newsletter.
FBI agents on Thursday raided the Cleveland offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a pro-democracy organization that helps register voters in that state, according to three people briefed on the search.
Agents also fanned out across the state, showing up at the homes of the group’s leaders and staff members, carrying some subpoenas and seeking information and electronic devices, according to the people, two of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive ongoing investigation. Members of the group had made contact with lawyers on Thursday to determine their legal options, the people said.
Prentiss Haney, a board member for Ohio Organizing Collaborative, told MS NOW Thursday night that agents approached people with connections to Ohio Organizing Collaborative, including some who had performed basic canvassing and volunteer work for the group, and began pressing them for information.
Agents were “basically trying to fish for information,” said Haney.
“They had agents all across the state going to civil rights leaders and community leaders’ doors intimidating them, coming and demanding that they talk about literally anything they would ask,” Haney said, adding that agents “asked them if they’re committing voter fraud, just on their doors, in front of their houses with their children, and just following them to work and school.”
Haney said some of the people said the agents approached without warrants.
“Just straight-up intimidation tactics,” he said.
Spokespeople for the FBI and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Thursday night.
Those sources familiar with the investigation said they are concerned this new effort in Ohio is part of the Trump administration’s efforts to sow doubt and distrust in voting integrity in key swing states ahead of the midterm elections.
Federal agents have in recent months launched inquiries and investigations into voting protocols in Georgia and Wisconsin, have subpoenaed voting records in Arizona and sought reviews of voting machines in Puerto Rico.
According to its website, the Ohio Organizing Collaborative facilitates statewide voter registration through grassroots, community-led programs, including its “Democracy Builders” initiative. This collaborative works in Ohio’s major metropolitan areas, such as Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, to help underrepresented communities register to vote and provides other support.
The group has also joined lawsuits challenging redistricting efforts that it argues reduce Black voters of representation. These lawsuits also “stand your ground” laws that allow a person to shoot someone if they feel threatened.
Haney said the Cleveland raid and harassment of staff are unjustified and that investigators lack any evidence of wrongdoing.
“How can they distract and intimidate civil rights leaders and voters and community leaders who are helping people get registered to vote and create a national spectacle about it?” he said.
“That is the only reason why they would choose to do that, do it now, in the middle of a contested political election in the state. There’s no other reason. They have no evidence of that.”
Carol Leonnig is a senior investigative reporter with MS NOW.
Will McDuffie is a reporter for MS NOW.
Alex Tabet is a reporter for MS NOW.
Laura Barrón-López covers the White House for MS NOW.
The Supreme Court rejected Alabama’s attempt to execute Jeffery Lee with nitrogen gas after lower courts stopped the state from executing him with that method.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch voted to side with the state, according to the court’s unexplained order on Thursday night denying the state’s emergency application.
On Tuesday, a Trump-appointed judge in Alabama blocked the state from executing Lee under its nitrogen-hypoxia protocol. U.S. District Judge Emily Marks found that Lee proved the state’s method violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
She emphasized that although she was issuing a permanent injunction against the nitrogen method, she wasn’t banning the state from executing Lee. She said the record showed his alternative proposal of the firing squad “significantly reduces a substantial risk of severe pain as compared to nitrogen-hypoxia.”
Under precedent adopted by the Supreme Court’s GOP-appointed majority, an inmate who challenges an execution method as unconstitutional must propose an alternative method that is feasible, readily implemented and significantly reduces a substantial risk of severe pain.
Having scheduled Lee’s execution for Thursday, Alabama officials moved to lift Marks’ injunction in an effort to proceed as planned. Procedurally, they first had to ask Marks herself for relief. In their motion to the judge, they said she downplayed the risks of the firing squad, as well as the state’s concern about finding willing and able executioners for the shooting method.
State officials further said the fact that they scheduled Lee’s execution for Thursday “should have sunk his claim.” They said that “however easy or hard it would be to implement a firing squad in the abstract, there’s no support for the view that it could be done two days from the Court’s decision that it satisfies the Eighth Amendment test.”
Marks rejected the motion to lift her injunction, noting that the state’s urgent motion did “little more than repeat the arguments it made previously,” which she also had rejected. She added that the state had no right to complain about the timing because it was the state that set Lee’s execution while litigation was pending.
A divided three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit declined to disturb Marks’ ruling. The panel’s majority recounted that a judge’s permanent injunction like the one Marks issued is entitled to deference and can be overturned only if the judge abused her discretion. With that in mind, the majority said her findings were “amply supported by the evidence presented.”
And noting that courts reviewing motions for urgent relief consider the “irreparable harm” at stake, the majority observed: “It goes without saying that Mr. Lee would suffer irreparable harm if he were executed pursuant to a method that the district court has found unconstitutional.”
On the other hand, the majority said the state’s preferred Thursday execution timing “is not a magical date” and that “the injury to the State caused by a delay would not be irreparable because the district court’s injunction allows it to execute Mr. Lee by any other authorized method (including lethal injection or the electric chair).”
Trump-appointed Judge Robert Luck was the panel dissenter. He began by recalling that Lee was sentenced to die for robbing and murdering Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson 26 years ago. “Unlike his victims, Lee was allowed to choose his method of execution,” he added, referring to Lee’s initial choice of nitrogen hypoxia as an alternative to lethal injection during a previous round of litigation.
“For as long as we’ve had an Eighth Amendment, the Supreme Court has never held that a state’s method of execution qualifies as cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment,” Luck wrote. “Because we shouldn’t do so here, I would grant the state’s motion to stay the injunction.”
Lee’s jury had recommended a life sentence, but the judge sentenced him to death under Alabama’s “judicial override” option, which has since been abolished.
The state cited Luck’s dissent in seeking emergency relief from the Supreme Court on Thursday. Officials told the high court that if the lower court ruling in Lee’s favor stands, it would be “unprecedented in American history.” The state said it would not only “portend the first-ever permanent ban on a legislatively enacted method” but would also “expand the concept of cruelty well beyond the bounds of the Eighth Amendment.”
Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck, an expert on the Supreme Court’s so-called shadow docketsubmitted an amicus brief opposing the state. He said Alabama was trying to do something procedurally that it shouldn’t be allowed to do. He explained that unlike in other emergency challenges that states have brought to the justices, Alabama wasn’t challenging a temporary execution stay issued by a lower court, but rather a permanent injunction.
“After all,” Vladeck said in the brief, “allowing Alabama to execute Mr. Lee through a grant of emergency relief would necessarily frustrate this Court’s ability to conduct plenary review of the district court’s final, permanent injunction.”
Highlighting that point, Lee’s lawyers told the justices that the case was “in a procedural posture unlike every previous method of execution challenge that this Court has considered.” They noted that unlike other emergency litigation in capital cases, “this case comes to the Court following a full three-day bench trial on the merits — the first such trial anywhere on the constitutionality of nitrogen asphyxiation.”
They said Lee wasn’t challenging his death sentence or the state’s ability to execute him but rather “only the method that Alabama intends to employ.” They said the state wanted to make the case moot by executing Lee “using an unconstitutional and permanently enjoined method,” but that the state hadn’t “cited a single case in which this Court has intervened in a capital case in such an extraordinary way.”
Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro,” a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
The Dictatorship
Kennedy Center board seeks delay of ruling on removal of Trump’s name by Friday deadline
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’shandpicked board at the Kennedy Center is mounting a last-minute effort to keep his name on the facade of the iconic performing arts facility before a court-ordered deadline to remove it by Friday.
The board voted on Thursday to seek a stay of U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper’s May 29 ruling that said Trump’s name was illegally added to the Kennedy Center, according to a person familiar with the move who requested anonymity to discuss a private meeting. The formal stay will be filed on Friday, the person said.
Cooper ruled that only Congress could institute a change to the Kennedy Center’s name and ordered references to Trump be removed by Friday. He also blocked the administration from closing the cultural and arts venue for major renovations that had been planned to start in July and last for two years.
The board move marks a shiftfrom a June 4 memo to staff from the Kennedy Center’s Office of General Counsel saying email signatures, letterhead and other documents must reflect the name as “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts” or “Kennedy Center.”
The Kennedy Center’s website has dropped the president’s name. And an email earlier this week sent to membersoffering ticket packages for the June 28 Mark Twain Award for American Humor ceremony came from the Kennedy Center without including Trump’s name.
After ignoring the Kennedy Center for much of his first term, Trump has wielded tremendous influence over the venue during his return to office. Just a month into his second term, he oustedthe center’s previous leadership and replaced it with a hand-picked board of trustees that named him chairman. He brought in Richard Grenell to serve as president, a position he held until March when Matt Floca assumed the role.
The center’s lineup has included more Trump-friendly programming, serving as the venue for events such as the premiere of first lady Melania Trump’s documentary, “Melania.”
The board also announced it had renamed the facility the Trump Kennedy Center, a change scholars and lawmakers say must be initiated by Congress, and physically added the president’s name to the building’s facade.
The fallout from the arts community was swift and intense. Actor Daddy Rae,musician Bela Fleck and author Louise Penny were among the numerous artists who withdrew from appearances, while consultants such as musician Ben Folds and singer Renée Fleming resigned. Earlier this month, the executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra, Jean Davidson, left to head the Los Angeles-based Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.
In addition to voting on the stay on Thursday, the board backed a resolution recognizing Trump’s “commitment to uphold this cherished American institution.”
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