Critics target Trump vaccination order, fear deaths
By: Michael Loria
USA Today
..... President Donald Trump hailed his new order on childhood vaccines as a win for parental choice as doctors slammed the move, saying it could lead to greater risk of diseases that were rarely seen for generations.
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Trump signed an executive order August 10 [2026] aimed at giving American parents more control over what vaccines their children take, according to the White House. It urges U.S. states and territories to follow a new blueprint for administering vaccines that would upend decades of public health practices.
..... The order aims generally to lower the number of vaccines children receive. It narrows the number of people for whom the White House recommends some vaccines, offer support to parents who don't want their children to be vaccinated, and recommends that vaccines that have been administered in a single shot instead be split across separate shots in multiple doctor's visits.
..... "Nothing bad can happen from what we're doing," Trump said. "It;s possible it doesn't work. I don't think that's much of a possibility, frankly. We're going to learn a lot."
..... But critics, including elected Republican Party officials, say the new White House policy will make children less safe and will increase health care costs for parents.
..... Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican and physician, said the White House directive trades on a claim unsupported by science that vaccines are harmful and cause autism.
..... "Parents should listen to their child's pediatrician about vaccines rather than listening to an inaccurate executive order," Cassidy said in a statement on his official X page. "This is so wrong."
..... Health experts also criticize the plan. "This upends decades of public health practice and consensus, and it's been done unilaterally without reason and without evidence," Lawrence Gostin, a global health law professor at Georgetown University, told USA Today.
..... Trump's "Delivering Gold standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations for Americans" is the White House's latest effort to change the landscape in vaccines across the country. Previous efforts have been blocked in court.
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The White House's order has no binding effect as law and should not be taken as a change in federal vaccine policy. but given the president's sway in Republican-led states, the order is expected to have a potentially broad impact, especially as the number of unvaccinated children aorta the country rises.
..... The president told reporters in the Oval Office on August 10 [2026] that some vaccines are "quite lethal" and "explosive" when taken together, through he said he does not have evidence to support such claims.
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Trump said the order does not force parents to limit vaccinations.
..... "Parents can still choose to give their children all of the vaccinations if they wish," Trump said on August 10 [2026] before signing the order. "They will be covered by insurance."
..... Among the recommendations, Trump's order calls for repasting the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine into separate shots that would be administered across several doctor's visits. The combination shot is widely known as the MMR vaccine.
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White House officials did not have an immediate answer on how federal officials would address rising medical bills resulting form additional doctor's visits.
..... Health experts prefer combination formulations, including the MMR vaccine, because they target mer than one pathogen and require fewer shots. Research shows patients are more likely to complete recommended vaccine series when fewer shots are involved.
..... It's clear how soon the MMR separation recommendation could be implemented. The combination shot has been administered since 1971, and most vaccine makers manufacture the shot as a combination, not as individual vaccines.
..... According to the new order, the Department of Justice will support parents aiming to challenge in court existing public standards. White house officials said the order aims to "Maximize parental choice."
..... According to experts, chancing federal vaccine recommendation is a rigorous process based upon reviews of evidence.
..... Many said they expected new waves of disease among children.
..... "None of it [is] based in science," Peter J. Hotez, a pediatrician and vaccine scientist at Texas Medical Center, said of the White House order in a statement. "Measles has already returned, and we should expect congenital rebuella syndrome to follow, Pertussis is at risk and even polio wouldn't surprise me." Pertussis is more commonly known as whooping cough.
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Said Gostin, of Georgetown, "Childhood vaccines have been the greatest public health achievement in our lifetimes and hey have b=the best track record of any medical intervention for safety and effectiveness, and by reducing the number of vaccines and also requiring many addition doctor's visits, it's going to open up even wider gaps in immunization coverage among children."
..... He predicted that major outbreaks of measles, mumps, rubella and other childhood diseases are inevitable and that some children will die.
..... Dorit Rieiss, a law professor at the University of California college of the law, San Francisco, noted that there are ongoing outbreaks of measles and whooping cough.
..... "Did @SecKennedy not tell the president about the ongoing Trump/Kennedy measles and pertussis outbreak, the deaths from them, and the fact that we will likely lose our measles elimination status on his watch?" Reiss said on X. "Someone should tell the President about that."
..... Measles was rare until 2025, when some 2,280 cases were seen across the country, reported Johns Hopkins University. there have been nearly 2,500 cases so far in 2026. almost all cases are reported among people who are uvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown.
..... Cording to Johns Hopkins, 2025 saw the greatest number of whooping cough cases since 2012 with 29,500, amid failing vaccination rates. Newborns and infants are particularly vulnerable to the disease.