Trump questions DeSantis' push to end all Florida vaccine mandates

Emily Goodin, Miami Herald on Sep 5, 2025

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President Donald Trump distanced himself from Florida’s plans to become the first state to end all vaccine mandates — including for schoolchildren — advising caution on the issue and pointing to the many successful vaccinations available.

“I think we have to be very careful,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday.

“Look, you have some vaccines that are so amazing. The polio vaccine, I happen to think is amazing,” Trump continued. “A lot of people think that COVID is amazing. You know, there are many people that believe strongly in that, but you have some vaccines that are so incredible. And I think you have to be very careful when you say that some people don’t have to be vaccinated.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis and state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced their intentions to remove the state’s vaccine mandates on Thursday and received criticism from public health advocates.

DeSantis rose to national prominence when, as governor, he defied COVID-19 restrictions during the height of the pandemic. Trump’s own health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is an anti-vaxxer.

But Trump, who led Operation Warp Speed to develop the COVID-19 vaccine, said some of them aren’t controversial and should be taken so people don’t get sick.

“You have vaccines that work. They just pure and simple work. They’re not controversial at all. And I think those vaccines should be used, otherwise some people are going to catch it, and they endanger other people. And when you don’t have controversy at all, I think people should take it,” he noted.

Trump, a Florida resident, received a COVID-19 vaccine shortly before he left office at the end of his first term in January 2021.

For decades, Florida — like many other states — has required numerous vaccines for kids attending school, including shots that protect against measles-mumps-rubella, polio, chickenpox and Hepatitis B. But Florida does ban COVID-19 vaccine mandates for students.

Ladapo said the Florida Department of Health, the agency he oversees, would do away with rules on vaccine mandates, which he compared to slavery.

“All of them. Every last one of them,” Ladapo said during the announcement. “Who am I as a man standing here now to tell you what you should put in your body?”

All 50 states and Washington, D.C., have laws requiring certain vaccines for students to attend school.

Florida’s Legislature would have to get involved in repealing the vaccine mandate, but DeSantis administration officials have some power on the issue.

While Florida law says that immunizations “shall be required” for polio, diphtheria, rubeola, rubella, pertussis, mumps and tetanus, the state Health Department can make the rules for other shots.