American kindergartners are skipping their shots at a record pace, CNN reporter Deidre McPhillips found, and the White House just turned up the pressure. New CDC data show 4.2% of kindergartners claimed a vaccine exemption last school year, leaving roughly 157,000 kids without full coverage against measles and other diseases. That rate has doubled in a decade.
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A Nudge, Not a Mandate Killer
Trump’s executive order doesn’t rewrite state vaccine laws, which stay a state matter. But it pressures the Justice, Education, and Health departments to tie federal funding to “parental choice,” and it recommends splitting the MMR shot into three doses, a move with no scientific backing. Only four states, California, Connecticut, Maine, and New York, still ban non-medical exemptions outright.
“If more and more parents choose not to vaccinate their children for non-medical reasons, we will no doubt see a rise in disease outbreaks,” says Dr. William Moss, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
MMR coverage now sits at 92.4%, just under the 95% threshold for herd immunity.
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