Trump signed order directing CDC to align child vaccine schedule with Kennedy-backed study

On May 29, 2026, President Trump signed an executive order directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to review and align federal childhood vaccine recommendations with a January 2026 HHS scientific assessment. The assessment, produced under HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., recommends vaccinating children against only 11 diseases as a universal core schedule, while moving several others — including flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A and B, some meningitis strains, and RSV — to case-by-case "shared decision-making" between parents and doctors. The order instructs CDC to "take any appropriate steps" to update its recommendations and to "provide maximum flexibility to parents and doctors."

The order follows an established pattern of using executive and secretarial authority to override the CDC's traditionally independent, expert-driven vaccine-schedule process. Kennedy has already ended the CDC's COVID-19 vaccine recommendation for healthy children and pregnant women over expert objection and replaced all 17 members of ACIP with his own appointees. A federal judge in Massachusetts separately blocked an earlier attempt to implement a substantially similar narrowed schedule through that reconstituted committee, and the administration is appealing that ruling.

Updates

2026-03-16 — Federal judge stayed the reconstituted ACIP's prior vaccine-schedule changes [4]

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy blocked implementation of the 2026 childhood immunization schedule changes made by Kennedy's reconstituted ACIP, reverting the schedule to its May 2025 version and staying the appointments of 13 ACIP members Kennedy had installed.

2026-04-29 — Administration appealed the ruling to the First Circuit [5]

HHS appealed Judge Murphy's stay to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, continuing to press for the narrower schedule this executive order also endorses.

2026-06-15 — Administration sought expedited appeal ahead of fall vaccine season [6]

Kennedy's administration asked the First Circuit to expedite its appeal, arguing ACIP needed to act before the fall respiratory-virus season; attorneys for the medical organizations that sued called the motion a "misleading attempt to shift blame" and said they would oppose it.