President Donald Trump signed an executive order at the White House overhauling the way children in the United States are vaccinated, saying his administration is now recognizing what he called gold standard childhood vaccine recommendations for only 11 core vaccinations against the most serious and dangerous diseases, along with the measles, mumps and rubella shot. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stood alongside the president as he set out the changes before signing the order. Trump framed the move as bringing the country into line with other advanced nations and with what he described as common sense, while opponents cast it as a break with decades of established medical guidance.
At the centre of the order is a call to break up the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine into three separate single doses, administered in separate visits rather than together. Trump argued that given together the three components could be lethal in some cases, while separately he claimed they appeared not to be. He said that at one year of age a child should have five separate visits for vaccines rather than receiving them all on the same day, describing the current approach as pumping large amounts of vaccine into a small child's body all at once. Under his proposal, he said, roughly 20 percent of that would be given at each visit, with time allowed to elapse between them so the body could handle what he called the massive amount being introduced.
The order also reshapes which shots are advised for every child. Trump said the hepatitis B vaccine, currently given to infants and newborns, should not be administered until a child is 14 or 15 years old, arguing it was being given far too early. Vaccinations for hepatitis B, COVID-19 and influenza, among others, would no longer be recommended for all children under the new approach. Officials stressed that parents could still choose to give their children all of the vaccinations if they wished, that the decision would rest with the parents, and that the shots would continue to be covered by insurance. Trump said the updated recommendation finally aligned the United States with other developed nations around the world.
Beyond the schedule itself, the executive order directs the attorney general to advance legal challenges against states that violate what the administration described as children's rights to religious or medical vaccination exemptions. The move builds on a change already made earlier in the year: on January 5, officials said, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised the childhood immunization schedule, reducing the number of diseases universally recommended for vaccines from 17 to 11 and establishing distinct categories of recommendation based on the scientific evidence. Kennedy said the administration had examined the country's vaccine recommendations against the best available science and the practices of other developed nations before acting.
Trump and Kennedy tied the order to their concerns about autism, which the president said had risen to what he called epidemic rates. Trump said children now received 72 jabs before the age of 18, while Kennedy put the figure as high as 94, both arguing the United States recommended more childhood vaccines than any other developed nation. Kennedy pointed to a 1970 study of around 900,000 eight-year-olds in Wisconsin that he said found an autism incidence rate of 0.8 per 10,000, contrasting it with current CDC figures he cited of one in every 31 children nationally, one in 19 in California and one in 12.5 boys. He said the increase was only being seen in children born around 1989 or later, that the cause was not known, and that the administration was pursuing dozens of studies, including comparisons of vaccinated and unvaccinated children, examinations of aluminium adjuvants and the timing of the hepatitis B vaccine, and vaccines administered during pregnancy.
The order drew immediate and forceful opposition, including from within the president's own party. Senator Bill Cassidy, who is himself a doctor, said the executive order was wrong and that the president did not have the expertise to make such changes. He insisted that vaccines were overwhelmingly effective, that they did not cause autism, and that breaking them up would mean children had to receive more shots to gain the same protection, not fewer. Such a move, he warned, would increase hesitancy and make children less safe, and he urged parents to listen to their child's pediatrician rather than to what he called an inaccurate executive order.
Other officials and public health experts joined the criticism. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro accused Trump and Kennedy of interfering with the childhood vaccine schedule, ignoring decades of science, sowing chaos and confusion and spreading dangerous misinformation, and said his state had already taken Kennedy to court over vaccine policy. Dr. Richard Besser, a former acting director of the CDC, said he found the politicisation of the wider vaccine schedule deeply concerning and predicted the courts would throw the order out. He also questioned the practicality of spreading the shots out further, noting that children already have to visit their pediatrician for vaccinations and would now have to go more often, adding to the burden on families.