New York Defies Trump’s Vaccine Executive Order

Let me tell you something. I have four kids. Four. I have sat in that pediatrician’s office holding a baby on my lap while the nurse rattles off a list of six shots they want to give a six-month-old in one visit. And every single time I asked, “Can we space these out?” I got the same condescending smile. Same pamphlet. Same tone they use when they think you’re too stupid to understand big words.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

So when President Trump signed an executive order Monday calling for fewer childhood shots and spacing out the MMR vaccine into three separate visits, I about fell off my kitchen stool. Finally. Finally someone in Washington is saying what every mom in my group chat has been saying for years: maybe, just maybe, pumping a toddler full of combination shots in a single afternoon isn’t the only way to do this.

Trump called it “common sense and knowledge.” And the experts lost their minds. CNBC couldn’t get through a single paragraph without slapping the word “falsely” in there twice. Decades of scientific evidence, they say. No link between vaccines and autism. That’s the official story and they’re sticking to it, no matter how many parents have watched their perfectly typical toddler change after a round of shots.

Shealeah Craighead (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

I’m not a doctor. I’m not pretending to be one. But I’m a mom who has spent more hours reading vaccine inserts than the nurse who administered them. And I have questions. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now running Health and Human Services, has questions too. He promised Trump he’d have answers on autism research. “We will have an answer for you,” Kennedy told the president at a Cabinet meeting last month. That’s all we’ve ever asked for. An answer. Not a pamphlet. Not a smirk. An answer.

Jet Lowe (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

Now here’s where it gets rich. The order also directs the Department of Justice to investigate states that aren’t honoring vaccine exemptions. Religious, medical, parental. You know, the exemptions that exist on paper but get fought at every school registration desk in this country. And what does New York do? The same thing New York always does. They puff up their chest and talk about states’ rights. Because apparently states’ rights only matter when they’re overriding your parental choices, not when they’re protecting them.

Here’s the part nobody in the press wants to talk about. The separate measles, mumps, and