Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician, called President Trump's executive order on childhood vaccines "a stupid thing to do" Sunday, delivering one of the sharpest rebukes of the directive from within the president's own party.
Trump signed the order Monday, recommending fewer vaccinations for children and directing that the MMR vaccine — which combines protection against measles, mumps and rubella into a single shot — be separated into three individual vaccines. Under the current CDC schedule, children receive two doses of the combined MMR vaccine: the first between 12 and 15 months, the second between four and six years old. Splitting the vaccine into its component parts means children would require six separate injections instead of two to be considered fully vaccinated against all three viruses.
Cassidy laid out the practical math in blunt terms during an appearance on ABC News' "This Week." "Now, instead of your child getting two shots, she has to get six shots. Instead of you missing work to take your child to the doctor two times, you're doing it six times, and instead of the insurance company paying for two visits, it's now paying for six visits," Cassidy said. "This is going to drive up the cost of your life, inconvenience you tremendously, and your child's getting six jabs, not two."
Cassidy said the MMR vaccine was combined in the first place specifically to reduce the number of injections and make vaccination more convenient for families. Undoing that consolidation, he argued, reverses a deliberate public health decision that benefited parents and children alike.
"As a physician, but as a parent — as a human — I know that all that is wrong for the family," Cassidy said.
At the Oval Office signing, Trump repeatedly linked the MMR vaccine to autism. Researchers have conducted large-scale studies over decades and found no connection between vaccines and autism. Cassidy addressed the claim directly. "There's no evidence that vaccines cause autism, which I think is where this is supposed to come from, so it's stupid policy," he said. He also cited Jay Bhattacharya, the current director of the National Institutes of Health, as sharing that view — saying Bhattacharya has similarly found no connection between vaccines and autism.
Cassidy did not stop at the scientific critique. He tied the order to what he described as a broader political problem for the president. "This is why the president's poll numbers are down, because you've lost sight of affordability for the parent, you've lost sight of the convenience for the American family, you've lost sight of that which is driving higher costs in healthcare," Cassidy said.
The senator expressed particular frustration with what he called a misallocation of attention on autism. "We've got to have compassion for those families who have a child with autism. Believe me, I'm a doctor. I've treated patients. I understand the kind of trauma that this brings to a family," he said. "Instead of spending resources, effort, and attention trying to truly find what is truly the cause of autism, or how to truly prevent, we're in this little cul-de-sac of something which has been thoroughly disproven."
Cassidy's standing on health policy gives his criticism particular weight inside the Republican conference. He played a central role in confirming the Health and Human Services secretary and has been one of the Senate's most vocal voices on public health questions. His willingness to call the order "crazy, stupid" — a characterization carried by multiple news outlets — puts him at direct odds with a White House that has made vaccine skepticism a recurring policy theme.
The executive order does not mandate changes to the vaccine schedule on its own — that authority rests with the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — but it applies presidential pressure on the agencies that set those recommendations.
