Will Trump and RFK Jr. Try to Ban or Restrict Any Vaccines?

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Trump supports eliminating vaccines if they are ‘dangerous’ or ‘not beneficial’

In a pair of recent interviews, Trump has said that vaccines should be banned only if they’re dangerous. Asked on Meet the Press, “Do you want to see childhood vaccines eliminated?” Trump responded: “If they’re dangerous for the children.” Speaking with Time, Trump said he’d support getting rid of some vaccinations “if I think it’s dangerous, if I think they are not beneficial, but I don’t think it’s going to be very controversial in the end.”

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Trump seems sympathetic to Kennedy’s debunked claims about childhood vaccines and autism

During his recent Meet the Press interview, Trump said Kennedy, as Health and Human Services secretary, would investigate the possible connection between autism and vaccines, which Trump seemed open to believing was real:

If you take a look at autism, go back 25 years, autism was almost nonexistent. It was, you know, one out of 100,000, and now it’s close to one out of 100. I mean, what’s happening?… I’m open to anything. I think somebody has to find out. If you go back 25 years ago, you had very little autism … I mean, something is going on. I don’t know if it’s vaccines. Maybe it’s chlorine in the water, right? You know people are looking at a lot of different things. I want them to look at everything.

This “just asking questions” approach to vaccine safety is of course a longstanding tactic used by vaccine skeptics and anti-vaxx activists, and it rests on a presumption that these potential connections haven’t already been credibly examined. They have. There is no evidence that MMR or other childhood vaccines cause autism, and the increased number of autism diagnoses is attributable to multiple factors, including increased awareness and screening.

Asked by Time whether Trump agreed with Kennedy autism was linked to vaccinations, the president-elect said he wanted to see the data:

I want to see the numbers. It’s going to be the numbers. We will be able to do — I think you’re going to feel very good about it at the end. We’re going to be able to do very serious testing, and we’ll see the numbers. A lot of people think a lot of different things. And at the end of the studies that we’re doing, and we’re going all out, we’re going to know what’s good and what’s not good. We will know for sure what’s good and what’s not good.

A potential problem is that the federal health officials conducting the testing and providing the numbers could be vaccine skeptics or anti-vaccine activists with their thumbs on the scale.

Take, for instance, Trump’s pick for CDC director, former representative and longtime vaccine-safety skeptic Dave Weldon. The Washington Post conducted an extensive review of Weldon’s many comments about vaccines over the years and reports that he repeatedly promoted false claims that vaccines cause autism, and he routinely “emphasized the experiences of individuals while dismissing dozens of studies based on data from hundreds of thousands of patients that showed no link between vaccines and autism.”

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Trump and Kennedy have both tried to dismiss or downplay the idea that they are anti-vaccine

“I’m not against vaccines,” Trump said on Meet the Press, and not for the first time. “I think vaccines, certain vaccines are incredible — but maybe some aren’t,” he added. “We have to find out.” Trump has long expressed vaccine- skeptical views, including before he ever became a presidential candidate. More recently, he has seemed as sympathetic as ever to concerns about vaccine safety. That likely reflects both a post-COVID shift against vaccines within the MAGA GOP and Trump’s oft-stated admiration for RFK Jr., who very much appears to now have the president-elect’s ear on these matters.

Kennedy, for his part, insists that he is not anti-vaccine — even though he has been a leader in the anti-vaxx community for years. Before and after Trump won the 2024 election, RFK Jr. has publicly said that “I’m not going to take away anybody’s vaccines” and that they should be available to whoever wants them. He maintains that he just wants to reexamine vaccine safety and provide information to Americans.

Though he vowed to let RFK Jr. “go wild,” Trump is also trying to downplay the idea that his nominee would be an anti-vaccine disruptor, insisting that Kennedy won’t “reinvent the wheel totally” and that “he’s not going to upset any system.”

Whether you believe that or not, it’s a fact that Kennedy and a large number his allies and advisers, including other Kennedy-recommended Cabinet picks, are linked to activism against vaccines. These people clearly do want to “upset” the system, but how much they can get away with remains to be seen.

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Will the second Trump administration go after the polio vaccine?

The New York Times reports that attorney and RFK Jr. adviser Aaron Siri petitioned the FDA in 2022 to revoke its approval for Sanofi’s polio vaccine for children. He argued, on behalf of the anti-vaxx group Informed Consent Action Network, that the vaccine’s safety was in question and needed to be reexamined — despite the fact that vaccine has a widely accepted, decades-long safety record. Kennedy himself suggested in 2023 that the polio vaccine may have killed more people than polio ever did.

Siri was Kennedy’s personal attorney during his presidential campaign and is now one of the people advising him on personnel decisions for the incoming administration. The Times also reports that Kennedy has privately floated the idea of making Siri general counsel for HHS.

In response to the report, a Kennedy spokesperson told the Washington Post that the polio vaccine “should be investigated and studied appropriately” and that “we should be as transparent as possible, as it relates to vaccines, but it should be available to the public.”

Trump has repeatedly championed the polio vaccine, however — specifically calling it “the greatest thing” in his recent Meet the Press interview:

The polio vaccine is the greatest thing. If somebody told me, “Get rid of the polio vaccine,” they’re going to have to work real hard to convince me.

Kennedy is also now insisting he’s a fan, telling reporters on December 16 that “I’m all for the polio vaccine.”

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Will anti-vaccine views cost any of Trump’s picks Senate confirmation?

After Aaron Siri’s FDA petition against the polio vaccine was reported, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who battled the disease as a child, released a statement championing the vaccine and calling out irresponsible speculation about vaccine safety. He also suggested that associating with such ideas could be disqualifying for Kennedy or others facing Senate confirmation:

I have never flinched from confronting specious disinformation that threatens the advance of lifesaving medical progress, and I will not today. Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous. Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.

That doesn’t mean, however, that McConnell will or can lead enough GOP senators to oppose any of Trump’s Cabinet picks over their vaccine views. He’d need three, in addition to himself, if all Democrats are also voting against the pick. Another GOP senator, South Dakota’s Mike Rounds has also spoken out on the issue, commenting that “I do not want to lose our vaccine programs.”

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Can Trump and RFK Jr. just ban vaccines outright?

Not unilaterally or easily. Revoking science-based FDA approval for a vaccine, ostensibly for political reasons, would face a long review process and significant legal threats. That doesn’t mean such a move wouldn’t be successful in the end, but it’s far from a simple switch to be flipped.

But as I’ve noted before, even if the second Trump administration doesn’t try to ban any vaccines outright, there are a number of ways administration officials can work to discredit them and reduce how often the public uses them. That includes reexamining or challenging vaccine safety and effectiveness, which they are already openly planning to do, as well as potentially limiting or even sabotaging federal vaccine programs and research.