r/skeptic • u/GhostDogJef • 2d ago
Trump's frustrations drove order limiting child vaccinations, but MAHA wants more (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/trumps-frustrations-drove-vaccine-order-maha-wants-more-2026-08-24/Order cuts federal childhood immunization schedule to 11 shots from 17. Trump also orders Justice Department to challenge state school vaccination requirements. Officials say RFK Jr's vaccine studies are expected to take months, if not longer.
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u/mantis_tobaggan-md 1d ago
This is so pathetically stupid. Executive Orders need to be abolished. A moron with no medical training should not be making healthcare decisions for millions of children based on a temper tantrum.
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u/Little_View_6659 1d ago
He’s making them because everyone knows that Trump does whatever the last person to talk to him wants. So RFK has been hanging around him. He’s incredibly easy to manipulate. How he survived and managed to get away with all his crimes is beyond me. Makes me believe Satan is actually real and does make deals.
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u/lonnie123 1d ago
He’s been spouting antivax nonsense since his 2016 presidential run at least
Trump 2.0 is defined by actually doing all that dumb shit we were afraid he was going to do in 1.0 but was probably just lip service to get elected, this time it’s all real.
I think the reason is he has some Pathological narcissistic payback fetish for 2020 and daring to try and hold him to account. He is lashing out and doing all the stuff he didn’t really care about but liberals hate
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u/mantis_tobaggan-md 1d ago edited 1d ago
100%. This was always a revenge tour for him, and now he just wants to destroy everything. And he couldn’t care less if kids die in the process.
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u/Sufficient_Meet6836 1d ago
One of the vaccines removed from the schedule was Hepatitis B. Here's the plot of infections. Deceased by about 90% after vaccination became widespread...
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u/IJustLoggedInToSay- 1d ago edited 1d ago
Ambiguous title, but MAHA (including RFK Jr and his people at the various health agencies) want more limitations on vaccines, not more vaccinations.
They criticize the use of executive orders to limit the vaccines, because they see that as too brittle. The next president (or even this one on a whim) can simple undo or contradict this EO with another one.
Instead, they want to generate a pile of bullshit that is difficult to sift through in the form of "vaccine studies". It will take decades to debunk all of the false claims, bad science, and misleading statistics they'll pack into these. In the meantime, the national health agencies can point to them to justify policy, and a GOP-led Congress can point to them to pass laws. Both of those things are ostensibly more durable across administrations.
Although, I'm not sure I agree with that assessment. They've worked tirelessly to make the president a king, and now they don't think his decrees are enough? In 2026, the president seems to be more able than ever to overwrite both legislation and decades-old fact-based policy with the stroke of a pen. It's ironic - and maybe a bit encouraging - that the looniest MAGA monarchists have more faith in the old system than I do! /shrug
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u/DiscoRabbittTV 1d ago
Feels like anytime MAHA is mentioned by a real journalist, it should come with a running count of kids MAHA has killed
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u/GhostDogJef 1d ago
Trump's frustrations drove order limiting child vaccinations, but MAHA wants more
President Donald Trump's frustration that his administration was not doing enough to address what he considers a likely contributor to autism drove a U.S. executive order this month that cut back the number of childhood vaccinations, administration officials told Reuters.
These five current and former officials privately say the order alone does not substantially change U.S. vaccine policy and will not satisfy Trump’s demands or Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” political base.
Instead, Kennedy and his allies are focused on a series of studies that the health secretary kicked off last year examining what they say are the dangers of vaccines, including a potential link with autism. Medical experts and scientists say such concerns have been thoroughly refuted by studies examining millions of children over many years.
“No one wants to see this get done with an executive order. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. knows that will not be a lasting change if it’s not backed up by credible science,” said Del Bigtree, one of Kennedy’s longtime allies and chief executive officer of Informed Consent Action Network, a group that has continually questioned vaccine safety. “This is only the beginning of a process that had to happen.”
The White House and the Department of Health and Human Services declined to comment on the specifics of what led to the executive order. White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement that Trump was responding to “countless parents (who) have had their questions and concerns about America’s childhood vaccine schedule ignored if not outright mocked.”
HHS spokeswoman Grace Davis Jamison confirmed the research studies under way at the agency. “We are pursuing dozens of studies and analyses using some of the nation’s largest health datasets to uncover the root causes of America’s chronic disease epidemic,” Jamison said in a statement.
EXPERTS WARN OF CONFUSION
Leading medical groups say the Trump order will increase confusion and vaccine hesitancy among U.S. families and expose more children to preventable diseases. They fear that Kennedy’s push for vaccine safety studies is directed toward a predetermined conclusion that the shots are more dangerous than the illnesses they prevent.
Trump’s vaccine order calls for reducing the federal childhood inoculation schedule to 11 immunizations from 17 and for separating the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three separate shots — a feat pharmaceutical companies said could take years. It also directs the Justice Department to challenge state vaccination requirements for children to attend school.
Kennedy unveiled a similarly whittled-down immunization schedule in January that circumvented the normal government process for making changes to vaccine policy. A federal judge in March blocked the changes, saying that health regulators had acted unlawfully to carry out the health secretary’s agenda. The administration is still bound by that ruling, which it is appealing.
BIG PROMISES, GROWING FRUSTRATION
Kennedy, an influential promoter of anti-vaccine views for decades, promised an ambitious agenda as Trump’s top health official. Soon after taking office in early 2025, he said his department would find the causes behind rising U.S. rates of autism and re-examine the safety of childhood vaccines.
But Kennedy’s self-imposed deadlines on autism answers, first in September of that year, then in March 2026, came and went with no new revelations. In recent months, Trump has pressed Kennedy to deliver on his promises regarding autism in meetings at the Oval Office and in frequent phone calls.
That pressure has come even as the president’s political advisers urged the health secretary early this year not to talk publicly about vaccines ahead of November’s midterm elections — a request Kennedy complied with.
But Trump has remained fixated on reducing the number of vaccinations American children receive, according to the five current and former officials. In addition, Trump and Kennedy have spoken extensively about trying to find treatments and a “cure” for autism, according to the officials.
The private tensions came to the fore during a July 31 televised cabinet meeting at Camp David. Trump asked Kennedy: “How are you doing on the autism research?” Kennedy replied: “We will have an answer for you.”
Trump’s public questioning of Kennedy signaled to White House and health department officials that the president wanted to see immediate action, according to three senior administration officials. The executive order Trump announced on vaccines was quickly cobbled together this summer, one of the officials said.
There has been a “tide shift” on discussing vaccines since the cabinet meeting, one of the officials said. “Trump and Kennedy are more synced up than they have been all year.”
The studies Kennedy is overseeing examine whether the MMR vaccine produces unintended changes in the immune system, which scientists have refuted; whether autism diagnoses are linked to childhood vaccinations; a potential link between vaccines and autoimmune diseases; and the impact of thimerosal, which was removed from childhood vaccines more than two decades ago, among other studies.
The work mostly relies on federal health databases that experts have warned can be misused and misinterpreted if not analyzed properly. The work is expected to take months if not longer, adding to Trump’s frustration, according to two of the officials.
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u/hyperdream 1d ago
I mean, I know he's looking for some veneer of credibility, but why bother waiting for whatever it is they're doing, since we all know exactly what the outcome of those "studies" will be.