By Nathaniel "Beltway" Steele
President Trump signed an executive order Monday directing federal health officials to pare back the list of vaccines universally recommended for American children, from 18 down to 11, and to separate the combined measles-mumps-rubella shot into individual injections.
The order formalizes an overhaul that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced earlier this year — changes that have already been challenged, and blocked, in federal court, according to NBC News.
The administration has not published the full clinical rationale behind the reduced list, and NBC News' reporting does not specify which of the 18 currently recommended vaccines would be dropped from the universal schedule. That is a gap worth noting: parents, pediatricians and school administrators who rely on that schedule will want the particulars, not just the topline number.
Critics of the broader push — which also includes new rules on food additives — say the administration's changes so far don't go far enough or, in the case of vaccines, go too far in the wrong direction, per NBC News. Courts have already intervened once. Whether this order survives further legal challenge, and what it means for school vaccination requirements that vary state to state, remains to be settled.
We are working from wire and network summaries of the order's substance; The American Times has not yet obtained the executive order's full text for independent review. Readers should treat the specific list of excluded vaccines as unconfirmed until the document itself is public.
— Compiled from reporting by NBC News and CBS News.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."