During the signing of an executive order on vaccines, President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a deluge of false and misleading claims about the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule.

The executive order establishes “Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations” and directs federal agencies and states to advance them. The new recommendations attempt to repeat prior administration changes to the routine vaccine schedule through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reducing it from targeting 17 to 11 diseases. At the time, we explained that HHS had justified this decision with a variety of incorrect or misleading assertions. A judge subsequently blocked these changes after the American Academy of Pediatrics sued HHS.

During the Aug. 10 signing, Trump repeated claims about the childhood vaccine schedule and autism that he has made in the past, often bolstered by comments from Kennedy.

• Trump misleadingly claimed that the changes to the vaccine schedule align the U.S. with peer nations. When counting diseases the schedule protects against, the changes would put the U.S. at the low end of peer nations in the size of its vaccine schedule, exceeding only Denmark.
• The president falsely claimed that the U.S. requires “72 jabs for our beautiful, healthy, lovely, delicate little children.” States require certain vaccinations to attend school, but none come close to mandating 72 doses. And there are no federal vaccine mandates.
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