Trump says he’ll defund schools that require vaccines

At a campaign rally on June 22, 2024, former President Donald Trump told a crowd, “And on day one, I will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing Critical Race Theory, and I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate.”

(Vaccines Stock Photos via Flickr Creative Commons)

Taken at face value, the promise seems to include any vaccine requirement, including vaccines for COVID, measles, and so on. It was said in the context of COVID, but the sloppiness of the language makes me wonder if he meant any vaccine mandate or just COVID vaccine mandates. It also makes me wonder if he truly understands school vaccination programs.

The fact that every public school in the US has vaccine mandates would mean his executive order would eliminate all federal funding for public schools. Will Mr Trump’s statement pressure schools to eliminate mandates?

Now, the very idea of withholding every penny of federal funding for schools is absurd, and no one actually believes this applause line. But there’s another way Mr Trump could weaken vaccine rates: he could cut the Vaccines for Children (VFC) Program, which launched in 1994 and provides vaccines for all uninsured or underinsured children. This alone would probably increase the number of children who would be hospitalized or die each year from preventable diseases.

PBS interviewed Dr Paul Offit, a pediatrician and professor of vaccinology at the University of Pennsylvania:

“Before vaccines, diphtheria was the most common killer of teenagers. Before vaccines, pertussis, or whooping cough, killed 8,000 people, mostly children, every year. Polio before vaccines would cause 30,000 people, mostly children, to be paralyzed every year and kill as many as 1,500,” he said.

“Rubella, or German measles, when it infected pregnant women, would cause 20,000 cases of birth defects every year. Is that what we want? Do we want to go back to that time, before vaccines saved our lives and prevented all this suffering and hospitalization and death?”