Trump Orders CDC To Trim Childhood Vaccine List From 17 To 11 To Match Denmark, A Country Whose Universal Health Care He Is Not Copying

WASHINGTON. Citing a patriotic desire to bring American children in line with their peers in Denmark, President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order late last week directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its vaccine advisory committee to review a December 2025 federal assessment and take, in the order's words, "any appropriate steps" to pare the recommended childhood vaccine schedule from 17 vaccines down to 11.

The order, titled "Realigning United States Core Childhood Vaccine Recommendations with Best Practices from Peer, Developed Countries," elevates a Department of Health and Human Services analysis that concluded the United States simply recommends more childhood vaccinations than nations such as Denmark. "The scientific assessment, with its proposed updates to the categories of the vaccine schedule, is acknowledged as a guiding resource for the Federal Government," the order states, stopping carefully short of adopting any other feature of Danish health policy, including its universal, government-funded health care system.

The assessment underpinning the order originated with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who built a career questioning vaccines before being placed in charge of the nation's vaccines. In January, the acting CDC director signed a memorandum announcing the agency would adopt the smaller schedule, a process expedited by the fact that Kennedy had already fired the entire 17-member advisory committee and replaced it with 13 members, several of whom a federal court would later note possessed no discernible vaccine expertise.

That court is the reason the order changes nothing for the moment. In March, a federal judge in Boston ruled that the administration's revised schedule had skipped required administrative procedures and blocked it, reverting the country to the recommendations in place before June 2025 and barring the reconstituted advisory committee from meeting at all. Public health groups noted the order therefore carries no operational force today, a distinction the administration appeared willing to accept in exchange for the announcement. At least 23 states and the District of Columbia have said they will continue following the American Academy of Pediatrics schedule, which still recommends protection against 18 diseases, several of which are currently circulating amid a measles outbreak approaching 2,000 cases.

"The point is to get the recommendations aligned with the best science from countries that have figured this out," said one official within the administration, declining to specify which diseases American children would be aligning themselves closer to. The official added that the review process would continue until the committee, once permitted to convene, arrived at the schedule the assessment had already written.

At press time, the President had directed aides to identify any remaining areas in which the United States could be made more like Denmark, provided none of them cost money or covered anyone.