How a 2016 Trump Tower meeting planted the seed of federal vaccine review
Why it matters
The 2025 federal autism actions did not appear from nowhere. Their political origin traces directly to a January 2017 meeting and the network of advocates, Kennedy, Wakefield, and Florida donor Gary Kompothecras, who pressed the case a decade ago.
In January 2017, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that President-elect Donald Trump had asked him to chair a commission on vaccine safety and scientific integrity, following a meeting at Trump Tower. Trump’s transition team then said it was exploring a commission on autism but had made no final decision.
During the 2016 campaign and transition, Trump had met with prominent vaccine-safety advocates, including Andrew Wakefield and Florida donor Gary Kompothecras, to discuss vaccine policy and the contested vaccine–autism question.
The commission never formally launched at the time. But the relationships and arguments established in that period are the direct antecedents of the 2025 HHS actions under Secretary Kennedy, a nearly decade-long arc from private advocacy to federal policy.
Source
ReutersRelated coverage
New McCullough Foundation study: COVID-vaccinated children show higher odds of autism and ADHD in federal survey data
This is the McCullough Foundation’s newest paper, posted today, and it uses the federal government’s own National Health Interview Survey rather than a private dataset. That makes it easy for anyone, including HHS, to check. It is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed yet.
NIH finalizes its $51 million autism research initiative: 13 projects, none on vaccines
The administration promised a hard look at what causes autism. The money is now committed, and it is worth being precise about where it went: the largest federal award pool of the year funds thirteen projects, and not one of them studies vaccines. The vaccine question sits with a separate, much smaller contract that has yet to report anything.
Post“Kennedy is the saving grace”: Trump moves to remake the childhood schedule, and what is actually in force
In the span of six weeks the President signed an order cutting routine childhood vaccines from 18 diseases to 11, then stood beside Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and proposed splitting shots into five smaller doses. A viral clip called it a schedule of 72 shots reduced to 11 “by the stroke of a pen.” That is the biggest shift in federal vaccine posture in a generation, and it is also not yet law. Here is the record, and the reaction, side by side.