Trump signs executive order aimed at reducing number of recommended childhood vaccines
By Adam Cancryn, Sarah Owermohle, CNN
(CNN) — President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday aimed at reshaping the federal government’s approach toward childhood vaccines, according to a draft of the document obtained by CNN.
The sweeping order proposes reducing the total number of immunizations recommended for children in their earliest years and dividing the nation’s childhood vaccine schedule into three categories.
It also advises that the mumps, measles and rubella (MMR) vaccine be separated into three individual shots, against broad scientific consensus but in keeping with Trump’s insistence in recent months that the widely administered shot be altered.
“We’re reducing them,” Trump said from the Oval Office. “It’s not only that you’re doing fewer vaccines, or jabs, as they say, but you’re doing them in a series of visits to the doctor.”
Under the draft order, the administration’s new policy states that all children are recommended to receive vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, Hib, pneumococcal disease, HPV and varicella, or chicken pox.
Only high-risk populations are now advised to receive respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) monoclonal antibodies and vaccines against hepatitis A, hepatitis B, meningococcal B, meningococcal ACWY and dengue. That marks a change from the current schedule, which recommends that all children receive most of those shots.
Several of those, such as the hepatitis immunizations, will be subject to shared decision-making, or conversations with a child’s doctor. Those include shots for rotavirus, meningococcal disease, influenza and Covid-19.
The Washington Post first reported on the draft executive order.
Trump’s announcement hews closely to a US Department of Health and Human Services effort in January to whittle down the number of recommended vaccines in the childhood schedule. Medical groups sued to challenge that revised schedule, and a judge ruled in their favor.
Trump in recent months has pressed HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for more action on the childhood vaccine schedule, as well as for stepping up efforts to search for links between vaccines and autism.
There have been extensive scientific studies of vaccines that have yielded no evidence of a connection to autism.
The executive order signing comes despite long-running reservations among Trump’s political advisers that advancing controversial vaccines policies is widely unpopular and could alienate voters ahead of November’s midterms.
This story has been updated with additional reporting and context.
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