Trump’s got 99 problems, but fast-tracking RFK Jr.’s bid to strip Hep B vaccine from newborns is somehow at the top of the White House agenda

Of all the crises demanding presidential attention—you know, economic instability, international tensions, actual governing, the usual—President Trump decided this Friday that the real emergency is too many babies getting vaccinated against a potentially deadly liver disease.

Mere hours after his hand-picked CDC vaccine advisory panel (RFK Jr. got rid of all 17 sitting members in 2025) voted to gut decades-old hepatitis B recommendations for newborns, Trump signed a presidential memorandum ordering the health secretary to fast-track a comprehensive review of childhood vaccine schedules, because apparently, what America really, really, really needs right now is more unvaccinated infants.

This Friday, the advisory committee, whose members were all personally selected by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., voted 8-3 to end the recommendation that newborns receive the Hep B vaccine within 24 hours of birth, a policy that has been in place since 1991 and resulted in reducing hepatitis B infections in children by 99%. To give you a better sense of the scale, before the vaccine became a recommendation (and not a mandate), around 20,000 newborns were infected with the virus annually, a figure reduced to fewer than 20 according to Sen. Bill Cassidy, who not only chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, but is also a physician with a practice focused on hepatitis B.

Now, as if this development isn’t concerning in and of itself, Trump has directed RFK Jr., a noted vaccine skeptic, to align the United States vaccination schedule for infants with “best practices from peer, developed countries.”

The presidential memo specifically cites Denmark as an example. “Denmark recommends vaccinations for just 10 diseases with serious morbidity or mortality risks; Japan recommends vaccinations for 14 diseases; and Germany recommends vaccinations for 15 diseases,” it read.

That’s a gross oversimplification of the facts according to medical experts. Adam Langer, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s hepatitis expert, explained that countries like Denmark boast a much smaller population and have access to universal healthcare. “In the United States, many of these infants are lost to follow-up as soon as they leave the hospital,” Adam claimed. “Denmark and, for that matter, virtually all other high-income countries are not really peer nations.”

But, of course, having a rational conversation about universal healthcare with MAGA is like screaming into the void. Except the void occasionally tweets back to call you a communist.

Trump’s administration is currently beleaguered by several controversies, including bipartisan backlash over potential war crimes in the Caribbean, a Pentagon watchdog report on Pete Hegseth’s security violations, and plans to expand the travel ban list to over 30 countries. But sure, let’s talk about how Hep B vaccines give kids autism, despite the fact that it’s been debunked so many times the only people still believing it are politicians looking to score culture war points.