WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Monday signed a sweeping executive order that aims to reshape guidance surrounding childhood vaccines, standing alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and was met with immediate pushback.
The order — which calls on federal programs and funding to “support maximal parental choice over childhood vaccines” — came as Trump continued to erroneously connect vaccines with autism during the White House event and his administration has sought to de-emphasize childhood vaccinations’ importance.
“This updated recommendation finally aligns the United States with other advanced and developed nations around the world,” Trump said during a signing ceremony in the Oval Office, joined by Kennedy, a longtime opponent of vaccines, as well as National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya and “Make America Healthy Again” advocate Jayme Franklin, also founder and CEO of The Conservateur lifestyle brand, and others.
“More importantly, it aligns us with common sense and knowledge,” Trump added.
What the order can legally accomplish was unclear as it’s up to states to decide which recommendations to follow.
GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician and chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, rebutted the new order on social media. “I’m a doctor. This executive order is wrong. The President does not have the expertise to make these changes,” Cassidy said. “Vaccines are overwhelmingly safe. Vaccines are effective. Vaccines DO NOT cause autism.”
Splitting up MMR vaccine
The order recognizes “gold standard childhood vaccine recommendations” and divides the childhood immunization recommendations into three categories.
The order recommends all children receive immunizations for 11 diseases, including for “measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, Haemophilus influenzae type B, pneumococcal disease, human papillomavirus, and varicella.”
Immunizations recommended for certain high-risk groups or populations include: “respiratory syncytial virus monoclonal antibodies, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, meningococcal B, meningococcal ACWY, and dengue.”
The order also lists “hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rotavirus, meningococcal disease, influenza, and COVID-19” as immunizations “based on shared clinical decision-making.”
Trump’s executive order also calls for splitting up the combined measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine into three separate single-disease shots and recommends that “all childhood immunizations should be administered at separate medical visits.” Such single-disease shots are not currently available in the United States, White House officials acknowledged on a background call, but said they believe work will occur in the private sector to make that option eventually available.
“For example, at one year, you should have five separate visits for vaccines rather than getting them all in the same day,” Trump said during the signing ceremony.
Trump said the order also directs the attorney general “to advance legal challenges against states that violate children’s rights to religious or medical vaccination exemptions.”
‘Uncertainty and fear and confusion’
Meanwhile, Dr. Andrew Racine, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, told reporters Monday during a press briefing after the Trump event that “the only thing that I can see is going to happen as a result of the announcement from today is an injection of greater amounts of uncertainty and fear and confusion, when there doesn’t need to be any of that.”
Many states rely on the AAP, rather than the federal government, for guidance surrounding childhood vaccines, according to the health research organization KFF, following earlier moves on vaccines during the Trump administration.
Rep. Frank Pallone, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, blasted Trump’s order, saying the effort “lets political appointees attempt to overrule decades of peer-reviewed science and dictate vaccine schedules to American families,” in a statement.
The New Jersey Democrat added that “parents deserve accurate, trusted medical guidance, not a White House-curated list designed to rubberstamp Secretary Kennedy’s radical anti-vaccine agenda.”
Democrats from a coalition of states filed suit earlier this year over Trump administration changes to the federal vaccine guidelines, as did medical groups, but White House officials said Trump’s recommendations were not related to the litigation and were within his authority.
