National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya speaks during a meeting to sign an executive order about vaccines, Monday, Aug. 10, 2026, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington.
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President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that calls for spacing out childhood vaccines into separate medical visits and splitting the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine into three different shots. Trump has long suspected that the number or timing of vaccines could play a role in autism spectrum disorder, even as scientific consensus and decades of studies have firmly concluded there is no link. Childhood vaccines go through rigorous studies and safety tracking continues for years as the shots are used. The renewed focus on vaccines marks a departure from his administration’s recent efforts to emphasize less controversial health policies related to healthy eating, drug price negotiations and medical fraud crackdowns ahead of November’s midterm elections.
