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HHS Deputy Secretary O'Neill and Assistant Secretary Adams Read Viewer Comments While Pressing Child Care Fraud Fight

January 22, 2026 · U.S. Department of Health and Human Services · 0:01:59

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill and Alex Adams, the department’s Assistant Secretary for the Administration for Children and Families, presented a short video in which they read viewer comments about their earlier appearances while updating their child care fraud work, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Adams said he had returned from Minnesota, where he met with whistleblowers, confronted state officials about welfare and Medicaid fraud, and visited a former cannery that, he said, claims to house dozens of Medicaid providers, as he described the trip.

The two officials said they are stopping Minnesota and other states from allowing federal funds to be diverted into scams and are closing Biden-era loopholes in child care regulations that, they said, made fraud easy to perpetrate and harder to catch, as they characterized the rules. They said a tip line at childcare.gov, promoted in an earlier episode, had already produced more than 500 tips that are being investigated, as they stated the figure.

Between the updates, they read a selection of unsolicited viewer comments about their on-camera style — ranging from comparisons to late-night legal commercials to supportive messages crediting them with finding the policies that enabled the fraud — and closed by repeating that every dollar stolen from these programs is stolen from working families and urging continued reporting at childcare.gov, as they stated the appeal.

Why it matters

The video is an unusual artifact of the fraud campaign — two senior HHS officials using a mean-tweets format to keep a tip line in circulation — but its substantive core is specific: a Minnesota confrontation, regulatory loophole closures, and a stated 500-plus tips under investigation.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the officials’ statement that more than 500 suspected-fraud tips had been received through childcare.gov and were under investigation, as stated in the January 22, 2026 video — flagged for the scoreboard editor; no verdict is entered here.

Sources: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Deputy Secretary O’Neill and Assistant Secretary Adams Read Mean Tweets| 1/20| January 2026|”, 2026-01-22 (official upload, embedded above; published 2026-01-22). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.