Trump Order Urges States to Revisit School Vaccination Laws and Backs Cuts to Childhood Vaccine Schedule

The combined MMR vaccine is currently given at 12 to 15 months of age and again between ages 4 and 6. In the order, Trump also urges states to revisit their school vaccination laws and instructs the Justice Department to challenge state rules on religious and medical exemptions. The order is the latest move in the administration's effort to dismantle the U.S. childhood immunization schedule, a set of recommended vaccines given from birth through adolescence to prevent a range of serious infections that has been in place in some form since 1995. It endorses the January 2026 decision by the Department of Health and Human Services that cut universally recommended childhood vaccines from 17 diseases to 11, despite the fact that those changes were blocked by a federal court in March 2026. An executive order cannot by itself change which vaccines are recommended or required, but it sets the administration's direction and puts federal agencies to work on it.