White House officials are drafting an executive order focused on the childhood vaccine schedule and autism, according to four people familiar with the matter. The order would continue to spotlight a divisive issue that Republican pollsters have warned carries political risk ahead of November’s midterm elections and would follow the confirmation of a new CDC director who has promised to uphold the scientific integrity of the agency.
The aim is to focus on the vaccine schedule, research around autism and parental choice, according to three people familiar with the matter, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal deliberations. Further details and timing of the order remain unclear, and it is subject to change.
The effort underscores President Donald Trump’s determination to elevate vaccine policy within the administration even as a federal judge has halted Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s sweeping overhaul on this front, including changes to the childhood immunization schedule.
The development also comes after a federal advisory committee on autism last month released a draft update to a federal strategic plan that sets priorities for autism research and serves as a blueprint for federal research funding.
In a statement Thursday, White House spokesman Kush Desai said, “President Trump has been clear: America must have the best childhood vaccine schedule in the world.”
He added: “The Administration remains steadfastly committed to delivering on this presidential priority with Gold Standard Science for the countless parents whose questions and concerns about vaccinations have been ignored or mocked.”
Trump has questioned whether the number of childhood vaccines can cause autism, despite decades of research finding no link. At a Cabinet meeting last week, Trump asked Kennedy for an update on autism research.
“We will have an answer for you,” Kennedy replied.
Kennedy, the founder of a prominent anti-vaccine group, has long disparaged vaccines and argued they have not been properly studied, including during an appearance on CNN over the weekend. The comments have alarmed medical experts who say commonly administered shots are safe and effective.
In recent months, Kennedy has publicly leaned into his health department’s quest to improve food and drug pricing instead of vaccines. But behind the scenes, Kennedy’s allies are continuing work to reshape the federal apparatus guiding vaccines, including crafting studies to research a wide range of vaccine-related questions, including whether routine immunizations are linked to autism, autoimmune disorders and other medical conditions.
After a federal judge halted the Department of Health and Human Services’ reduction of immunizations in the childhood schedule, the Trump administration released an executive order in late May directing the health department to realign the schedule with other developed countries that recommend fewer shots. It was not immediately clear how the new executive order would differ from the earlier directive.
‘It’s a personal issue for him’
Trump last year announced moves that he said would combat the rise of autism in the United States. The president in September warned pregnant mothers against taking Tylenol and touted the potential of leucovorin as an autism treatment.
“I told them … we have to find out” the causes of the condition, Trump said, flanked by Kennedy and other administration officials at the White House.
The warnings from Trump and U.S. health officials on acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol and hundreds of other medications, represented a major shift in public health guidance. Research has yet to bear out the president’s claims on Tylenol and leucovorin.
Trump has privately questioned why his administration has yet to release new recommendations on vaccines and urged his deputies to move faster, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions. The Wall Street Journal first reported that Trump was pushing to prioritize the study of vaccines and autism.
“It’s a personal issue for him,” said one of the people, an administration official with knowledge of Trump’s comments. Trump has repeatedly invoked his own theories on the rise in autism, shaped by conversations with friends and advocates. Trump has previously said that he and his wife, first lady Melania Trump, deliberately spaced out childhood vaccines for their 20-year-old son, Barron.
Trump has repeatedly pressed Kennedy on his agency’s autism efforts in public Cabinet meetings, including five minutes of back-and-forth during an October meeting.
“I’m addressing it the best I can as a non-doctor, but I’m a man of common sense,” Trump said then.
‘Never betray the science’
On Wednesday, the Senate confirmed Erica Schwartz to helm the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which makes recommendations on vaccines.
The CDC has been without a permanent leader for most of Trump’s second term. Susan Monarez, who served in the role for less than a month, told senators she was fired last year after Kennedy pressured her to support changes to the childhood vaccine schedule.
During her confirmation hearing, Schwartz was repeatedly pressed by senators on whether she would defend the CDC’s scientific integrity if political directives conflicted with the evidence. She pledged that she would “never betray the science” but stopped short of saying she would publicly oppose Kennedy if he directed the agency to take actions she believed were unsupported by scientific evidence.
Schwartz said she had not reviewed a CDC webpage that suggests a connection between childhood vaccines and autism, and declined to say whether it should be removed. She said, however, that the existing medical evidence does not support a link.
In July, the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee released a 336-page draft strategic plan. Some advocates say the draft from the federal autism advisory committee shifts the field toward investigating autism as a result of medical injury, despite decades of research showing that autism is primarily rooted in genetics and early brain development. Although the plan does not explicitly identify vaccines as a cause of autism, critics say references to a potential “exposure or biological event” that might lead to autism echoes the framework long advanced by Kennedy and others who have promoted the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism.
The autism advisory committee was reconstituted earlier this year by Kennedy, who appointed members who have echoed his controversial views and advocated for unproven treatments.
The draft strategic plan “doesn’t mention or describe the cause of medical injury, but we can read between the lines,” said Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation. “The President and the HHS Secretary have been very vocal in the past about their belief that vaccines cause autism, as have several public members of the new federal IACC in their past statements, despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary.”
Singer said the concern is less about what the draft says than the research agenda it establishes.
Current research suggests that autism is largely written into our biology. Scientists have identified hundreds of genetic variants that collectively shape the developing brain. The evidence now points more clearly in one direction: Autism begins before birth and is not caused by vaccines or any single environmental factor. Vaccines are the one environmental factor that have been studied most extensively, she said, and large studies across multiple countries have found no evidence that they cause autism.
But an executive order linking childhood vaccines to autism could be viewed as providing “backup ammunition and another legal document,” one administration official said on background, to revisit vaccine-related research in a final version of the strategic plan.
Kennedy is slated to visit the Atlanta-based CDC on Friday, where he will participate in a ceremony marking the first anniversary of a gunman spraying hundreds of bullets at the agency’s headquarters. Investigators said the gunman appeared motivated by distrust of coronavirus vaccines.
Ariana Eunjung Cha contributed to this report.
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