The campaign’s instinct to backtrack is sound. If voters were to take Trump at his repeated word, this reckless policy could become a serious political vulnerability.
Every state in the country, along with D.C., requires childhood vaccinations as a condition of schooling. Most colleges have vaccination requirements, too, and Trump has sometimes included them in his promise to withhold federal dollars. The possible outcomes of Trump’s stated policy, then, would range from a radical reduction in federal support for K-12 and higher education to major changes in the policies of governments and educational institutions throughout the country.
And those changes would be senseless. We can debate how many and which vaccinations should be required, or the proper extent of religious exemptions. But the basic case for vaccine mandates is obvious: It’s about stopping contagions.
The Supreme Court explained this rationale with respect to smallpox in 1905: “Upon the principle of self-defense, of paramount necessity, a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members.” That’s why, when Trump was president, he ditched his earlier crackpottery about the supposed link between vaccination and autism and, instead, urged Americans to get inoculated against measles.
The saving grace of Trump’s proposal is that it probably would not happen. Executive branch attorneys, in administrations of both parties, are creative in finding new powers hidden in old statutes for their bosses. But even top-notch lawyers are not going to find a way for presidents to make unilateral decisions about the vaccination policies of states and private institutions. While his campaign has talked about strengthening the president’s power to ignore Congress on spending questions, the courts seem unlikely to go along.
Trump is not shy about making unkeepable promises at his rallies, such as his pledge to grant police “immunity from prosecution” for allegations of misconduct. His vaccine policy might be another of these.
But Democrats are under no obligation to minimize the threat of Trump’s stated policy. They would be within their rights to say that it’s what he wants to do and blast him for it. If they decide to do so, they would have several lines of attack at hand.
One would be to highlight the impact on public health. Many suburban parents who are unhappy with President Biden because of inflation also make sure their kids are up to date on their shots and would rather not have an outbreak of meningitis on their schools’ campuses.
The prospect of funding cuts for education might also repel some swing voters. Even before he made his vaccine comments, Trump was promising to abolish the Education Department, as he did in the 2016 campaign. That would not be as consequential as it sounds, since ending the department — as Republican legislators have often proposed over the years — would not terminate the programs it oversees. But the idea is politically risky enough that many Republicans have backed away from it. The GOP platform has not explicitly called for it since 1996.
Abolishing the agency didn’t really become an issue when Trump advocated it in 2016 because Hillary Clinton was denouncing him on so many other grounds. But removing federal funding from schools would be a more disruptive change than getting rid of the department. Most parents remain satisfied with their local school — suburban parents have often invested serious money to live near good schools, since that is the form of school choice most widely practiced in the United States — and are wary of threats to it.
One can only speculate why Trump is taking this politically risky position. Maybe he thinks he needs to make up ground among vaccine opponents who are disappointed by his record as president, when he sped the production of coronavirus vaccines. Maybe he just likes having another surefire applause line at his rallies. Whatever his motive, though, he has made a mistake. Democrats will make their own if they don’t make him pay for it.
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