“While we don’t know exactly what the cause is with respect to autism, it is essential to our research efforts that we have the very best vaccine recommendations in the entire world,” Trump said.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during the press conference that autism rates are not increasing because of better diagnostic or screening tools but rather because of an environmental exposure, likely due to the increased number of vaccines that have been recommended since 1990.

“We’re only noticing it in kids who were born around 1989 or after,” Kennedy said. “The older generations are not seeing those increases. So something happened in the mid ’90s that changed our children, and it has to be an environmental exposure because genes don’t cause epidemics.” 

“Every year gets higher, higher, higher, autism,” Trump added.

Dr. Andrew Racine, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, told members of the press following the White House announcement that scientists have not found a link between vaccines and autism.

“The potential link between vaccines and autism has been studied in over 40 well-designed, methodology well-designed studies in over seven countries involving over 5 million children,” Racine said. “I’m not sure that there is anything that has been as thoroughly looked at as this question about whether or not there is a link between autism and vaccines. And the answer is unequivocally ‘no.’”

Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines

The executive order requires Kennedy, via the new HHS Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines, to provide the president guidance within 90 days for more specific recommendations on the number of vaccine appointments parents ought to make for their children and the ideal timing for the core childhood vaccines.

White House officials who spoke with the press following the executive order signing said the new task force would also be providing the president with information on the increased costs for families for multiple vaccine visits, such as increased co-pays and costs for uninsured families.

Trump repeatedly said it is important to break up childhood vaccines into five separate visits to prevent children from getting “what seemingly looks like gallons” in one visit.

“For too long, America recommended more childhood vaccines than any peer nation, and even twice as many doses as some European countries, and even more than that,” Trump said at the signing ceremony. “In many cases, we were requiring 72 jabs for our beautiful, healthy, lovely, delicate little children, including giving the hepatitis B shot to infants and newborns, on top of many other vaccinations.”

Racine said that each vaccine dose has roughly one-tenth of a teaspoon of fluid, contradicting the president’s description of the amount of fluid in each injection.

The CDC’s recommendation to lower the number of childhood vaccines and remove recommendations for COVID-19 and flu vaccines for children has been stalled by lawsuits from medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics. A federal judge ruled that the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices did not follow proper administrative law procedures when making its recommendation to cut the number of childhood vaccines.

The director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, said the move will not prevent parents from vaccinating their children beyond the 11 diseases but rather “restores autonomy to families and parents to make good decisions for their kids.” 

“It allows and continues to emphasize the importance of science in recommendations about vaccines and fundamentally restores a sort of a healthy relationship between public health and parents more in line with what happens in European countries than in the United States, where the childhood outcomes are often much better than we see here,” Bhattacharya said.

White House adviser Stephen Miller, whose wife gave birth to their fourth child on June 3, said at the ceremony that new parents are pressured by the healthcare system to vaccinate their children very early.

“The pressure from the pharmaceutical industry and from aspects of the medical industry to pump your kids full of shots days after birth with no understanding of the long-term consequences has been a medical travesty,” Miller said.

The order also recommends separating the combined MMR vaccine into three separate shots to be done over several visits. Currently, three separate vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella are not offered in the U.S.

“We want it in three separate vaccinations, given at separate times,” Trump said. “Together, there could be a possibility they’re quite lethal, and separately, it looks like they are not at all lethal, but just very effective.”

Later, in response to a question from a reporter, Trump backtracked on calling the MMR vaccine “lethal,” instead saying that some people think there are severe complications from the combined vaccine.

Dr. Aaron Milstone, pediatric infectious disease physician with John Hopkins Medicine and a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, told reporters multivalent vaccines are an essential part of achieving sufficient inoculation rates to prevent the spread of highly infectious diseases.

“I’m concerned about an unintended consequence of people under-vaccinating because of fear that giving a single dose of the MMR is going to put their child at risk, when there’s no evidence to suggest that’s the case,” Milstone said.

Racine told reporters that the industry “is not in a position currently to be able to provide vaccines that separate out the measles and the mumps and the rubella components of the MMR vaccine.”

“They wouldn’t be able to do that probably for another 10 years,” Racine said. “And there’s no indication that they have any interest in doing that from the standpoint of what it would take for them to invest that kind of time, effort, and resources to do it.”

White House officials confirmed to reporters that the administration is working with pharmaceutical industry partners to expedite actualizing the recommendations from the executive order.

FDA TIGHTENS FOOD TRANSPARENCY RULES IN MAJOR MAHA VICTORY

The Washington Examiner last fall contacted both Merck and GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceutical companies that make the MMR vaccines sold in the U.S., about the possibility of making single-virus vaccines. Neither company responded to requests for comment.

Japanese pharmaceutical company Daiichi Sankyo produces a monovalent mumps vaccine that is voluntary in Japan, and Russian company Microgen makes a monovalent rubella vaccine. Neither company sells products in the U.S.

Republicans push back

Republican critics of the Trump administration’s vaccine policy sharply condemned the new executive order, saying it is going to not only cause fear and anxiety for parents, but also harm the GOP in the November midterm elections.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who has stood in the way of multiple Trump health agency nominees because of their stances on vaccines, posted on X that the effect of the order will only “increase hesitancy and make children less safe.”

“I’m a doctor. This executive order is wrong. The President does not have the expertise to make these changes,” Cassidy said, urging parents to listen to their pediatricians for vaccine advice.

Dr. Jerome Adams, Trump’s first-term surgeon general, also criticized the executive order, saying the president “is getting really bad advice in regards to the impacts this is going to have on vaccine confidence and vaccine preventable diseases.” 

“Clearly this is going to be an issue citizens vote on in the midterms and in 2028,” Adams said.