By Yasmeen Abutaleb and Bo Erickson
WASHINGTON, Aug 24 (Reuters) - 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.
(Reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Bo Erickson in Washington; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Matthew Lewis)
