Trump campaigned on not giving ‘one penny to any college that has a [COVID] vaccine mandate or a masks mandate.’
President Donald Trump is anticipated to signal an govt order on Feb. 14 barring funding to universities and faculties with COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
The order, detailed in a truth sheet offered by the White Home, will prohibit all federal funding to any faculties that implement COVID-19 vaccine mandates and directs the secretaries of Training and Well being and Human Providers to difficulty compliance tips and plans to finish present mandates. The secretaries can even create a report of non-compliant establishments and a course of for blocking funds from supporting any that impose mandates.
The establishments affected embrace instructional service businesses, state schooling businesses, native schooling businesses, elementary faculties, secondary faculties, or any establishments of upper schooling that require college students to obtain COVID-19 vaccines to attend in-person instructional packages.
“President Trump is dedicated to defending private freedoms and making certain that People’ schooling isn’t conditioned on pointless authorities mandates,” the White Home truth sheet states. “[He] is devoted to making sure that American college students should not compelled to decide on between their schooling and their medical freedom … fulfilling his marketing campaign promise: ‘I can’t permit faculties to impose COVID vaccine mandates.’”
In his first week again in workplace, Trump reinstated service members dismissed for refusing the COVID vaccine, giving them full again pay and advantages. He additionally revoked former President Joe Biden’s govt order creating vaccine mandates for sure federal employees, federal contractors, and people touring internationally, though Biden had beforehand rescinded them himself in Might 2023.
Trump campaigned in opposition to COVID-19 vaccine mandates in the course of the 2024 election, saying at a rally in Richmond, Virginia, that he would “not give one penny to any college that has a vaccine mandate or a masks mandate.” When requested if that assertion meant to incorporate all vaccine mandates, equivalent to polio or measles photographs, a marketing campaign spokesperson on the time stated Trump meant COVID vaccine mandates.
Whereas some, together with Florida Surgeon Normal Joseph Ladapo, have advocated in opposition to receiving the COVID vaccine altogether, Trump has continued to acknowledge the work his first administration did in fast-tracking the analysis, improvement, and implementation of the vaccine via his “Operation Warp Velocity.”
In December 2020, Trump spoke on the “Operation Warp Velocity Vaccine Summit” on the Eisenhower Govt Workplace Constructing in Washington, calling the venture a “monumental nationwide achievement.”
“From the moment the coronavirus invaded our shores, we raced into motion to develop a secure and efficient vaccine at breakneck velocity,” Trump stated. “It will usually take 5 years, six years, seven years, or much more. … We’re simply days away from authorization from the FDA, and we’re pushing them laborious, at which level we are going to instantly start mass distribution.”
Trump famous then that the time-frame for growing and approving an experimental vaccine just like the mRNA shot “might be infinity,” however his administration was in a position to “get issues achieved at a degree no one has ever seen earlier than. The gold commonplace vaccine has been achieved in lower than 9 months.”
Some critics of the mRNA shot, together with these with reported negative effects, have urged that not sufficient time was spent on analysis and testing earlier than the vaccine was mass-distributed. The Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention has maintained that the shot is secure and efficient.