Fear and Re-Parenting in Sacramento

I was halfway through my third coffee at a Denny's off I-80 when the phone buzzed with the news: the Secretary of Health and Human Services of the United States of America — a man charged with the wellbeing of 341 million people — had, in 2024, on a YouTube show called High Level Conversations hosted by a “wellness and productivity influencer” whose name is, and I am not making this up, 19Keys, proposed that Black children on ADHD medication be shipped to an Italian addiction compound and re-parented.

I read it twice. I read it three times. I ordered another coffee. The vibes, as they say, were immaculate.

This is a dispatch from the California front, where Governor Gavin Newsom spent Friday filing his latest formal demand that somebody, anybody, explain what the Secretary of Health actually meant. The answer sits on YouTube, which is the problem. Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did not mumble. He did not say it once and walk it back. He said it twice, in the tone of a man describing the weather.

“Every Black kid is now, just as a 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 cell phones, no screens, you’ll actually have to talk to people.”

I would like to pause here, on behalf of all 341 million Americans whose vaccines, prescriptions, and public-health guidance are now determined by this man, to note the following: this is a real thing a real Cabinet Secretary said on a real podcast hosted by a person whose legal-branding appears to consist of a number followed by a noun. Kennedy’s source material was a “family member” who went to San Patrignano, an Italian addiction program where, Kennedy explained with evangelical warmth, the residents come out “extraordinarily productive workers.” Sir, this is a democracy. Allegedly.

Now let us talk briefly, as a matter of historical record, about San Patrignano. It is a real commune in the Italian countryside. It has been the subject of decades of journalism about alleged abuse and a Netflix documentary. The last time a major American public-health figure looked at this place and said yes, this, for our children, it was the year never. There has been no such figure. Until the Cabinet.

The Governor of California filed his statement on Friday. He used the words racist mentality and absolutely unacceptable. He added that the country “cannot go numb to the insanity of this federal administration.” This is what one calls, in the trade, a restrained response. Personally, if my HHS Secretary had proposed shipping schoolchildren to an Italian compound for re-parenting, I would have reached for a stronger adjective. I would have reached for a fire extinguisher. The Governor reached for a statement. Sacramento is tense but measured. The vibes there, I'd estimate, are at a 4.

Kennedy, for his part, was questioned Thursday by Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama before the House Ways and Means Committee. She read the quote back to him, which is a thing you should never have to do to a Cabinet Secretary about his own public remarks. Kennedy looked at her and said, quoting the transcript verbatim because I could not invent this if I tried:

“I don’t even know what that phrase means and I doubt that I said that phrase. I’m not going to answer something that I didn’t say … because it doesn’t even make sense.”

The phrase was re-parented. The phrase he said twice. The phrase was, in fact, the actual English-language word he used on camera, in his own voice, in 2024. Kennedy then accused Rep. Sewell of “making stuff up,” which is a bold rhetorical move when the footage is sitting at the top of a YouTube search. There is a 94% chance the intern who runs his TikTok can pull the clip faster than he can deny it. Anyway.

What we have here is the peculiar spectacle of a public-health official who believes that benzodiazepines cause violence, that Black parents cannot raise their own children, and that the cure for American youth lies in an Italian commune best known to Italians as a place you try very hard not to get sent to. The Secretary has built his public identity on bodily autonomy — your body, your choice, your refusal. That autonomy, as it turns out, stops at the Italian border and shifts with skin tone. There is a word for this. It is the word the Governor used. The Secretary denies knowing the other word — the one he said on camera — so perhaps we should not push our luck on vocabulary.

Meanwhile in northern Los Angeles County, another recent arrival to the Cabinet — CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz, a daytime television cardiologist whose previous engagements with expertise involved miracle supplements and green coffee beans — has suggested that Armenian hospice centers in the area are fronts for a “Russian Armenian mafia.” Newsom filed a civil rights complaint against Oz in January. Oz is still the CMS Administrator. One gets the sense that the administrative structure of American healthcare is being staffed, at this moment, entirely from the guest chairs of afternoon cable.

I filed this record from a motel outside Sacramento. The television is on with no sound. A commercial for Ozempic is playing. The man in the commercial is smiling and the commercial has the structural integrity of a screen door on a submarine. Somewhere in an Italian hill town there is a compound full of people doing manual labor in silence because they are, depending on who you ask, being re-parented. The Secretary of Health of the United States thinks this is the model. The Governor of California thinks the Secretary should answer some questions. The Secretary thinks the phrase he used does not exist. The vibes, if you are keeping score, are felonious.

There is a prophecy here and it is this: the administration will keep going numb, because numbness is the business model. Each week the Secretary will propose something worse, retract a phrase he definitely said, and move on. Each week a state attorney general will file something. Each week the paperwork will pile up in Sacramento. Each week Italy will not answer the phone. And somewhere, quietly, the children they are talking about will keep existing, keep going to school, keep being raised by their own families — which, I must remind you, is the standard human practice, and has been for approximately every year on record.

You can’t re-parent people, Secretary. You can barely parent yourself.

Sources: The Hill, The Hill on RFK Jr. testimony, The Hill on Oz & Armenian complaint.