For a few months this spring and early summer, the White House appeared to be holding back Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr from publicly pursuing controversial vaccine policies ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Instead of vaccines, the administration had focused on putting more mainstream officials in key posts, talking up lower health costs and launching popular food policy reforms — including one heralded by Kennedy on Monday morning.
But that all came to a screeching halt later on Monday when Trump, flanked by Kennedy in the Oval office, signed an executive order on the “Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations.”
The order is aimed at reducing the number of recommended vaccines for the youngest children and breaking the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot into separate vaccines.
The president’s own pollsters have warned vaccine changes are unpopular and politically risky, but Trump has long shown a personal interest in the issue.
Much like what unfolded at a White House event last year when Trump, without evidence, warned about the dangers of Tylenol for pregnant women, Monday’s Oval Office announcement featured many false and misleading pronouncements from the president and the country’s top health officials.
Trump suggested multiple times that rising rates of childhood shots have led to an increase in autism diagnoses, and that the combined MMR shot could be "lethal." He emphasized the volume of shots given to children, calling it “vats of vaccine” and “the size of a bottle of soda poured into a little child’s body.”
There is no scientific evidence of a link between vaccines and autism; dozens of studies have disproven that any link exists.
Trump’s order on its own won’t change any recommendations, but it directs agencies to take action and suggests states should revisit their own policies.
While the order may be politically risky for some moderate and swing voters, GOP pollsters suggested it sent a message to Trump’s base and the antivaccine activist wing of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement that the president is serious about the issue.
MAHA voters helped Trump capture the White House in 2024, but many have publicly said they feel let down and betrayed by actions at odds with their goals, such as support for pesticides and a controversial weedkiller ingredient.
“It will I hope, re-engage a large block of MAHA voters who've been somewhat discouraged by certain policies,” said Jay Richards, the vice president of social and domestic policy and a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
