The Latest: Trump signs executive order calling for spacing out childhood shots
President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order calling for revamped childhood vaccine recommendations that promote his long-held belief that certain shots should be spaced out into separate medical visits. The order will recommend separating the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three different shots administered in separate visits, and direct the nation’s health department to improve vaccine research. Even as the order calls for revised vaccine recommendations, states, not the federal government, have the authority to require vaccinations for schoolchildren.
Public health experts have raised concerns that spacing out shots as Trump suggests can lead to an increased risk that children become infected with a vaccine-preventable disease before returning for another visit.
Trump swore in Todd Blanche, his old personal lawyer, as attorney general Monday. Meanwhile, Iran says it will not reopen the Strait of Hormuz until the United States lifts its blockade on the strait, pays compensation for months of war damage, lifts economic sanctions and releases Iran’s frozen assets. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flatly rejected Trump's proposed exit strategy for Gaza.
Here’s the latest:
Doctors from the American Academy of Pediatrics said the executive order spreads uncertainty and confusion.
Dr. Aaron Milstone, pediatric director of infection prevention at Johns Hopkins Health System, said doctors want to reassure parents there are “many, many, many years of scientific data highlighting the safety of vaccines in children.”
The timing of vaccines has also been well-studied, he said.
“We give vaccines to children even when they’re young because we know that’s safe and because we know it’s the best time for their body to respond to that vaccine in a good way and to make their body stronger to fight off an infection if they’re exposed to that,” Milstone said.
The potential link between vaccines and autism has also also been studied exhaustively — in more than 40 well-designed studies in more than seven countries involving over five million children, said Dr. Andrew Racine, president of American Academy of Pediatrics.
“I’m not sure that there is anything that has been as thoroughly looked at as this question about whether or not there is a link between autism and vaccines,” he said. “And the answer is unequivocally no.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican, is strongly rebuking Trump’s executive order on vaccines.
“I’m a doctor. This executive order is wrong. The President does not have the expertise to make these changes,” Cassidy said in a social media post on X. “Vaccines are overwhelmingly safe. Vaccines are effective. Vaccines DO NOT cause autism.”
Cassidy chairs the Senate committee with oversight responsibilities for health care agencies. He went on to say that children will have to get more shots to get the same protection. It will increase hesitancy and make children less safe.
“Parents should listen to their child’s pediatrician about vaccines rather than listening to an inaccurate executive order. This is so wrong,” Cassidy said.
The National Institutes of Health started funding research teams over a year ago charged with unearthing the cause autism, a portion of them assessing vaccines’ claimed role.
Scientific consensus and decades of studies have firmly concluded there is no link between childhood vaccines and autism.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the head of the institute, spoke at Trump’s executive order signing and said that “science takes time” and “you don’t get answers immediately.”
Still, Bhattacharya was more tentative about claiming an evidence-based link between autism and vaccines, generally avoiding the suggestion altogether.
“What we’ve done in this administration,” he said, “is we’ve given permission to scientists to honestly answer this question, to find the link for the first time.”
In January, the American Academy of Pediatrics put out their 2026 childhood vaccine guidance, which included a jab for influenza, that got the green light from groups including the National Medical Association and Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society.
The AAP said in a press release at the time that over 80% of childhood deaths related to influenza were with unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated patients, adding that children under 5 years old are particularly vulnerable.
Trump said the vaccine is “no longer recommended for all children.”
The president was dismissive of Iranian officials’ demands after Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei stressed that Iran will not reopen the Strait of Hormuz until the U.S. meets its conditions, including paying reparations for the five-month-old war.
Trump during an Oval Office exchange with reporters claimed that the U.S. has “100% control” of the strait, but that the situation remains complex. He made the case that the U.S. Navy’s blockade of the strait is preventing Iran from selling its oil on the international market, a move that is effectively choking the Iranian economy.
“Now, can they make trouble? Yeah, they can make trouble, but they’re broke,” Trump said. “They have no money. You know, Iran is broke, totally broke. And they’re not paying their soldiers.”
At a time when the U.S. is facing its worst measles outbreak in more than 30 years, “we should be making it easier to protect children from preventable disease, not harder,” said Northe Saunders, president of American Families for Vaccines.
He said “RFK’s anti-vaccine agenda” shouldn’t pressure state leaders to abandon protections that work for their communities.
“States have long played a central role in setting school immunization requirements,” he said. “and parents, educators, healthcare professionals, and state leaders should be able to make decisions about protecting children without political interference from the federal government.”
In late July, the number of measles cases in the U.S. has surpassed the record-breaking tally for all of 2025. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has logged more than 2,318 cases of measles this year.
The president, at an executive order signing on new childhood vaccine recommendations, said that, “very importantly,” jabs for hepatitis B, COVID-19 and influenza “are no longer recommended for all children.”
Those vaccinations, however, are still recommended by the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American Academy of Pediatrics, among other medical groups.
While the latter organization recommends childhood vaccines for 18 diseases, Trump’s executive order limits that to prioritizing just 11.
That includes the presidents recommendation announced Monday to space out childhood vaccine shots instead of getting all of them on the same visit.
Public health officials say that could lead to children becoming infected with a vaccine-preventable disease in the periods between jabs.
Michael Osterholm, executive director of the Vaccine Integrity Project, said parents should continue to rely on vaccine recommendations developed by trusted medical and public health experts, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, when making decisions on shots for their kids.
“Today’s Executive Order does not change the underlying scientific evidence supporting childhood immunization. That data has been built over decades — through large clinical trials, real-world effectiveness studies and continuous safety monitoring involving millions of children,” he said in a statement.
“Parents deserve clear, evidence-based guidance about how to protect their children, not competing recommendations issued through political processes. When families receive conflicting messages, confidence in vaccination suffers, and children ultimately bear the consequences.”
In announcing his executive order on vaccines, President Donald Trump said “bad things happen” when children get the combined MMR vaccine.
“I’ve seen proof of it, where they have a vaccination that looks like the size of a bottle of soda poured into a little child’s body, and bad things happen in, many cases-in too many cases,” he said.
But experts say the risk of serious side effects is extremely low and years of real-world data proves the vaccine is safe and effective. Common side effects include soreness and a mild rash or redness at the injection site, a fever, and temporary pain or stiffness in the joints.
Decades of studies have concluded there’s no link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
Besides genetics, scientists have identified various possible factors, including the age of a child’s father, the mother’s weight, and whether she had diabetes or was exposed to certain chemicals.
Any concern that vaccines could be linked to autism has been long debunked, according to scientists and leading advocacy groups for people with autism.
Childhood vaccines — and how and when to give them in combination — go through rigorous studies, and safety tracking continues for years as the shots are used.
Trump, who suggested connections between autism and vaccines despite a scientific consensus that their isn’t a link, issued new guidance for childhood vaccines that space out shots and limit the number of recommended routine jabs.
Still, the authority to require vaccinations for schoolchildren rests with state governments.
President Donald Trump on Monday will sign an executive order calling for revamped childhood vaccine recommendations that promote his long-held belief that shots should be spaced out into separate medical visits, according to a White House fact sheet.
The order will recommend administering each vaccine in its own visit and separating the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three different shots and direct the nation’s health department to improve vaccine research, says the fact sheet, first reported by The Daily Caller. Separate measles, mumps and rubella vaccines for children are not available in the U.S.
Public health experts have raised concerns that spacing out shots as Trump suggests can lead to an increased risk that children become infected with a vaccine-preventable disease before returning for another visit.
The Congressional Budget Office is projecting that this fiscal year’s deficit will be $2.1 trillion, about $200 billion more than what it predicted in early February.
The major reason for the change has to do with less revenue coming into the Treasury than projected as a result of the Supreme Court finding that the tariffs President Donald Trump imposed under an emergency powers law were unconstitutional.
The fiscal year runs through September 30.
Revenue totaled $4.5 trillion through the first 10 months of the fiscal year. That’s about 3% more than during the same period a year ago.
Meanwhile, spending increased about 5% from last year, rising to $6.3 trillion. Spending in the federal government’s major health care programs, Medicare and Medicaid, each increased by about 8%.
Trump on Monday extended a waiver for 90 days for foreign ships to transport goods, including oil, fertilizers and other fossil fuel products, among U.S. ports.
The president first waived the Jones Act on March 17 so that it would be easier to transport oil and refined fuels among ports, reducing price pressures after the start of the war with Iran.
The extension will take effect on August 17.
Unlike previous extensions, the Pentagon will consult with the Maritime Administration to decide which voyages are exempt from the 1920 law containing the Jones Act. The waiver will only apply to cargo are sources of energy and commodities related to agriculture and food, such as soybean oil.
Former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said Monday that he’s talking to lawyers after the Trump administration revoked his security clearance last week.
Kendall, who has been critical of the administration, said in a post on LinkedIn that he’s “talking to lawyers and will have more soon.” He said he’s had his clearance for 60 years and was careful to say nothing classified.
The Pentagon revoked Kendall’s “eligibility” to access classified information and barred him from holding “any sensitive position,” alleging Friday that he disclosed sensitive information about Air Force One’s capabilities to the media.
It follows reporting last month, including from The New York Times, on security concerns over the new, Qatari-gifted Air Force One, including that it lacked the advanced antimissile capabilities of its predecessor.
A U.S. military base in South Carolina was renamed after the late U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham Monday, with Defense Department Sec. Pete Hegseth praising Graham’s dedication to the military and for “taking on a radical leftist ideology” in the armed forces.
Joint Base Charleston is now Joint Base Lindsey Graham, which includes an Air Force base and a Naval Weapons Station. Graham, who died last month, served in the Air Force, Air National Guard and reserves.
Hegseth praised Graham’s support of President Donald Trump’s historic $1.5 billion defense budget proposal. In praising Graham, Hegseth also employed the Trump administration’s strategy of linking Democrats to communism.
“The hard left declared war on our own military,” Hegseth said, adding that “it seems that many people have forgotten the reality of what communism looks like.”
Trump is scoffing at the Iran’s call for reparations for devastation caused to the country by the U.S. and Israeli bombardment over the last five months, a demand he said hadn’t been raised by Tehran’s negotiators until now.
The Republican president, in a social media post, added that in response to the Iranian demand he’s directing negotiators to include “compensation from Iran, for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their roadside bombs and many conflicts.”
The U.S. government says Iran-backed militants have been responsible for the deaths and injuries of hundreds of Americans over the last several decades, including the 1983 bombing on a Marine compound in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. military personnel, the 1996 truck bombing of a U.S. Air Force housing complex in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. troops and wounded hundreds more, and the deaths of at least 603 U.S. troops in Iraq between 2003 and 2011.
President Donald Trump announced Sunday that his new White House counsel will be Will Scharf, the staff secretary who as the Trump-appointed head of the National Capital Planning Commission helped secure approval for the $400 million ballroom project.
Trump said that, beginning Sept. 1, Scharf will be replacing David Warrington, who will be leaving the administration to join the private sector. Trump noted that Scharf previously served as a federal prosecutor and represented him in a number of cases, including at the Supreme Court.
“Will is Tough, Strong, and Smart! He also loves our Country, and respects the Law,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Will Scharf will do a great job as White House Counsel!”
The shakeup in the White House counsel’s office comes at a critical juncture — just months ahead of the midterm elections, where Trump’s Republican Party will be fighting to hold on to control of Congress. Democrats have vowed to pursue investigations into Trump and his administration if they are successful in November.
U.S. health officials on Monday proposed a rule change that would require food manufacturers to notify regulators before introducing new ingredients or additives into processed or packaged foods.
The proposal would change a decades-old policy that advocates have called a regulatory loophole, blaming it for allowing thousands of unvetted ingredients into the U.S. food supply.
Under the proposed rule from the Food and Drug Administration, companies would have to document and submit their safety findings for new ingredients, giving regulators the opportunity to investigate if they see a potential safety risk. Currently companies can decide for themselves if an ingredient or additive is “generally recognized as safe” and there is no requirement for companies to notify or submit evidence to the FDA, although some do.
The revoked visas had been granted to more than 175,000 foreigners who have endangered American citizens, broken laws or threatened U.S. national security, according to a statement issued Monday by the State Department.
The statement says most were revoked “due to law enforcement encounters for a range of criminal activity,” including assault, child abuse, drunken driving, drug violations, and embezzlement. It doesn’t say how many of those visa holders had been convicted of such crimes.
Some of the revocations involved “foreign nationals who celebrated the assassination of Charlie Kirk, including one who stated ‘when fascists die, democrats don’t complain’ and another who said he ‘died too late’, the statement said.
Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont’s try for a third term must first clear a challenge by state Rep. Josh Elliott. And U.S. Rep. John Larson faces his first primary challenge in nearly 30 years, from former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, Hartford Board of Education member Ruth Fortune and state Rep. Jillian Gilchrest.
Both contests could help redefine the Democratic brand by replacing old guard figures with younger alternatives. Tuesday’s primaries also could extend a progressive winning streak in New York City, Colorado and the Michigan U.S. Senate primary.
Larson turned 78 in July. Concerns over his health and age arose last year after he suffered a seizure while delivering a speech on the House floor.
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