On Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to recommend adjustments to the childhood vaccine schedule. In a move advocated by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the suggested schedule would be reduced to 11 vaccines (down from 17); the remaining six (COVID, flu, dengue, Hep A, Hep B, and rotavirus) are optional but recommended for high-risk kids. It also proposes that the “combined measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine should be administered in three separate single-disease shots.”

This new vaccine schedule is essentially an FDA proposal and not a formal rule. As a result, states and schools are not forced to follow Trump’s recommended vaccine schedule, though he has promised to back parental rights and religious freedom and to address any other obstacles arising from state pushback.

President Trump also announced on Tuesday that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is withholding federal funding from parents for the use of gender-denying measures on their children. A child cannot receive any Medicaid money for hormone therapy, puberty blockers, or gender mutilation surgeries. Children will still receive funding for mental healthcare.

Why Are Leftists Mad?

The new vaccine schedule put a bee in the Left’s bonnet. Democrats object mainly because they believe that Trump and HHS aren’t following the science, but also because they see the White House’s interference as increasing the likelihood of vaccine skepticism.

According to them, following Europe’s example by putting off the Hep B vaccine is folly. Even The Wall Street Journal editorial board asserts, “Echoing HHS’s January report, Mr. Trump claims American children receive more vaccines than those in many European countries. That’s true, but the U.S. also has a more diverse population. Hepatitis B — which often spreads via contaminated drug needles and can be transmitted from mothers to newborns — is much less common in western and northern Europe than in the U.S.”

What do the editors mean by a “more diverse population”? That we have a serious drug culture problem?

Hepatitis B is also mainly spread as a sexually transmitted disease and is administered to newborns just in case their mothers were sexually promiscuous and carrying the disease.

Democrats are further frustrated because Trump alluded to the alleged vaccines-autism connection. While research is ongoing, it is worth noting that the link between vaccines and autism is unsubstantiated. The original research that sparked the suspicions was a 1998 Lancet paper by Andrew Wakefield and others. Ten of the 13 authors later retracted their support for the paper’s thesis that there was a causal link between autism and childhood vaccines. The Lancet retracted the study, and Wakefield eventually lost his medical license.

There has been a sharp increase in autism diagnoses in the past 10-15 years. It could be argued that people are more aware of this neurodivergence; therefore, more people are getting diagnosed. All in all, the field of autism and its cause are topics worth delving into, but as of now, we have more questions than we do answers.

Why Are the Groomers Mad?*

Dr. Andrew Racine, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, called Trump’s vaccination order “dangerous.” This is the same AAP, you may recall, that supports actually dangerous gender mutilation of children.

Naturally, the groomers are also furious at CMS’s Medicaid decision.

According to the Human Rights Campaign, “The Trump administration’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued an outrageous new rule barring Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) benefits from being used on behalf of transgender youth to pay for best-practice health care recommended by their physician.” Moreover, HRC President Kelley Robinson claimed that Trump was “terrorizing  trans youth and their families.”

American Academy of Pediatrics former president Susan J. Kressly called this stipulation “a baseless intrusion into the patient-physician relationship.”

These are utterly ridiculous tantrums. President Trump and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, who collaborated on this, are protecting children from leftist social experimentation. They are also protecting doctors from potential lawsuits from adults who were “transitioned” as kids.

This is also an 80-20 issue. Most Americans, including many on the Left, don’t agree with transing the kids.

Dr. Oz commented on the measure, saying, “Children deserve our protection, not experimental interventions that pose serious risks and convey no proven benefits.” He continued, “By cutting off federal funds for these sex-rejecting procedures, we’re following the science, saving taxpayer dollars, and, most importantly, protecting children from potentially irreversible harm so they can truly flourish.”

Trump stated, “We are not going to pay for our innocent children to undergo these barbaric surgeries and practices, which result in unthinkable and irreversible harm to their young bodies.”

Most voters probably won’t be affected by the new vaccine schedule all that much. No state is being forced to go with it. As for withholding Medicaid funding, most voters support this. But isn’t it telling that the people screaming loudest about “the science” on vaccines are the ones advocating for medical experimentation on kids?

It’ll be interesting to see if there are any effects in the November midterms. The issue that will carry the day will likely be the economy, not an alternative vaccine schedule or CHIP reform.