WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Member of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Health Care, joined U.S. Senator Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), U.S. Representative Kim Schrier (D-WA-08), and 87 bicameral lawmakers in demanding President Trump reverse his executive order directing federal health agencies to overhaul longstanding childhood vaccine recommendations and encouraging states to reconsider school immunization requirements. 

President Trump’s order comes in the wake of Republicans’ tax bill, the so-called one One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, which gutted Medicaid, limited access to care in rural communities, and increased cost burdens for low-income families. The executive order forces families to schedule multiple doctors’ appointments with multiple co-pays to get their kids vaccinated, which adds unnecessary chaos, confusion, and financial strain. 

Notably, single-disease shots for routine childhood vaccines, like measles, mumps, and rubella, do not exist in the U.S. market. Recommending 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. Families rely on science-based vaccine recommendations from the federal government to protect their children and communities from preventable diseases. 

In their letter to President Trump, the lawmakers emphasize how his executive order creates chaos and confusion as millions of families across the country are preparing for the school year: “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 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 (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has unleashed a methodical campaign to substitute decades of science with anti-vaccine ideology, including firing every member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which provides critical guidance on vaccines, and replacing them with handpicked allies more sympathetic to his views.  

Now, the Trump Administration wants to break up combination vaccines into single 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. At a time when the U.S. is experiencing the highest surge in measles cases in thirty-five years, and an increasing number of states have been forced to declare public health emergencies, Secretary Kennedy and the Trump Administration could set public health back decades. 

“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.  

The lawmakers concluded: “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.” 

Read and download the lawmakers’ full letter to President Trump.  

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