Washington D.C. – In a move to reenergize his deeply unpopular anti-vax agenda, on Friday night, Donald Trump signed an executive order directing ‘all executive departments and agencies’ to ‘align their policies’ with a January ‘study’ from RFK Jr.’s HHS that was widely-panned by public health experts for baselessly calling for a major downgrade of the CDC’s child vaccine schedule — cutting long-standing and well-founded recommendations to 11 shots down from 17 despite the massive health risks to kids. The Trump CDC enacted the vaccine rollback in January, but the policy was blocked by a federal court in March – a decision the administration is currently appealing.
In recent months, amid a wave of internal and external polling showing the Trump-RFK Jr. anti-vax agenda is politically toxic, White House insiders have aggressively pushed a media narrative that they’re ‘done’ with vaccines and that health secretary and prolific anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. has been “reined in.” Donald Trump himself has fully dispelled that notion by allowing his DOJ to appeal the court ruling that halted the crown jewel of his anti-vax policy — and now with this new executive order attempting to inject credibility into the dubious HHS ‘study’ that was the basis for gutting the child vaccine schedule.
“Donald Trump himself wants to remind everyone that he’s fully committed to putting millions of American kids at risk of catching harmful yet preventable diseases by pursuing his decimation of the child vaccine schedule,” said Kayla Hancock, Director of Protect Our Care’s Public Health Project. “The more polls, legitimate peer-reviewed studies, and medical experts tell Trump how unwanted, unwarranted, and unsafe his anti-vax agenda really is, the more determined he seems to endanger public health. Whether or not the administration keeps losing in court, Trump’s new executive order will unfortunately have the practical effect of sowing more unfounded distrust in vaccine safety and inviting more cases of preventable disease like measles stemming from declining vaccination rates.”
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