The campaign is right to backtrack: If voters take Trump’s repeated words at face value, this reckless policy could become a serious political weakness.
Every state in the country, including Washington, DC, requires children to be vaccinated as a condition of attending school. Most universities also require vaccinations, and President Trump has included vaccinations in his pledge to withhold federal funding. The consequences of President Trump’s stated policies could range from significant cuts in federal support for K-12 and higher education to sweeping changes to government and educational policy across the country.
And such a change would be pointless. It’s up for debate how many vaccinations should be required, which vaccines, or the appropriate scope of religious exemptions. But the basic reason for vaccination is clear: to prevent transmission.
The Supreme Court explained this rationale in 1905 with regard to smallpox: “Based on the principle of the most necessary self-defense, a community has a right to protect itself against infectious diseases which endanger the safety of its members.” This is why, during his presidency, Trump abandoned his earlier fanatical claims about a link between vaccinations and autism, and instead urged Americans to get vaccinated against measles.
The saving grace of Trump’s proposal is that it probably won’t come to fruition. Executive branch lawyers from both parties will creatively dig for new powers hidden in old statutes for their bosses. But even top lawyers wouldn’t be able to figure out how the president could unilaterally decide on vaccination policies for states and private agencies. Trump’s campaign has said it would strengthen the president’s power to ignore Congress on spending issues, but the courts seem unlikely to go along with it.
Trump has not been shy about making promises at rallies that he cannot keep, such as his pledge to grant “immunity from prosecution” to police for alleged misconduct, and his vaccine policy may be another of those promises.
But Democrats are under no obligation to downplay the threat of Trump’s stated policies. They have the right to say that’s what Trump wants to do and to condemn it. If they choose to do so, they have multiple lines of attack.
One is to emphasize the public health impact: Many suburban parents who are unhappy with Biden because of inflation are also making sure their kids are up to date on vaccinations and want to avoid meningitis outbreaks on school grounds.
The prospect of cuts to the education budget could also alienate some swing voters. Even before his vaccine comments, Trump had promised to abolish the Department of Education, as he did during the 2016 campaign. This isn’t as significant as it sounds, because abolishing it wouldn’t end the programs it oversees (as Republicans have proposed for years). But the idea is politically risky, so many Republicans have backed away from it. The Republican platform hasn’t explicitly called for a Department of Education since 1996.
When Trump pushed for abolishing the agency in 2016, Hillary Clinton had criticized him for many other reasons, so abolishing it didn’t really matter. But cutting federal funding to schools would be a more disruptive change than abolishing the agency. Most parents are happy with their local schools, and suburban parents often spend a lot of money to live near good schools because that’s the most widespread form of school choice in the United States, and they’re wary of their local schools being threatened.
One can only speculate as to why Trump is taking such a politically risky position. Perhaps he feels he needs to make amends among anti-vaccination advocates disappointed with his record as president in speeding up production of a coronavirus vaccine. Or perhaps he just wants to ensure one more round of applause at his rallies. Whatever his motivation, Trump made a mistake, and Democrats will be guilty of their own failure to make him pay the price.
