Schrier, Schumer, and Bennet Lead 88 Colleagues in Demanding the Rescission of Trump’s Dangerous Childhood Vaccine Executive Order

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congresswoman Kim Schrier, M.D. (WA-08), alongside Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO), led 88 colleagues in demanding President Donald Trump rescind his executive order that directs federal health agencies to overhaul longstanding childhood vaccine recommendations and encourages states to reconsider school immunization requirements. 

 

Trump’s anti-science executive order creates more chaos and confusion as millions of families across the country are preparing for the school year and are relying on science-based vaccine recommendations to protect their children and communities from preventable diseases. 

“At a moment when the United States is experiencing the highest surge in measles cases in thirty-five years and an increasing number of states are forced to declare public health emergencies - your administration is placing more children in harm’s way rather than protecting them. This Executive Order overrides decades of scientific evidence and sows fear, chaos, and confusion. The result will not be safer or healthier children; it will be a continued decline in vaccination rates, recurring disease outbreaks, higher healthcare costs, and school disruptions that cause learning loss. Vaccines are rigorously tested and monitored for safety, and save millions of lives each year - especially the lives of children,” wrote the lawmakers. 

Since being confirmed, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has unleashed a methodical campaign to substitute decades of science with an anti-vaccine ideology. 

 

Specifically, Trump’s latest directive pushes to break up combination vaccines into single-disease doses, ignoring the medical community’s long-standing, evidence-backed agreement that combination vaccines are safe, effective, and specifically timed to protect children when they need it most. Forcing families to schedule multiple doctors’ appointments, with multiple co-pays adds unnecessary chaos, confusion, and financial strain. Compounding this issue are the deep Medicaid cuts under Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Big Act that have drastically cut access to care and increased cost burdens for low-income families. 

Notably, single-disease shots for routine childhood vaccines - like measles, mumps, and rubella - simply do not exist in the U.S. market. Demanding that parents and pediatricians switch to non-existent vaccines creates mass confusion, stalls routine care right as children head back to school, and forces drug manufacturers into a years-long regulatory pipeline. It is an unfeasible policy based on scientifically disproven theories that are being peddled by discredited individuals, and it sacrifices practical reality and children’s health for political grandstanding.  

“The health and safety of America’s children must not be sacrificed for political theater and ideology. American children and their families deserve robust evidence-based immunization recommendations that are rooted in science. The administration’s politicization of vaccines makes American families less safe, threatens to return the U.S. to an era before routine vaccination prevented millions of infections, and is already resulting in unnecessary suffering and preventable deaths, particularly among children,” continued the lawmakers. 

“Every day this Executive Order remains in effect, more children go without the vaccines that would protect them, additional outbreaks become more likely, and lives are put at risk. We urge you to rescind this Executive Order immediately and restore evidence-based decision-making to federal public health policy,” concluded the lawmakers.