Could Trump and RFK Jr. Ban the Covid Vaccine?

As access to Covid-19 vaccines has become increasingly restricted over the past few months, there has been mounting concern over whether it would be possible for the Trump administration to go one step further and ban the shots altogether. 

These fears were stoked following an Aug. 25 article in The Daily Beast, in which British cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra — chief medical advisor at the Make America Healthy Again Action organization, and ally of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert J. Kennedy Jr. — said that the Trump administration will pull the Covid vaccines off the U.S. market “within months.” Although the article was largely dismissed as a baseless rumor, it reinforced the idea that the jabs could soon no longer be available to those who wanted them. And the recent chaos at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — from Kennedy’s attempt to fire the agency’s director, to a wave of resignations, to anti-RFK Jr.-themed vandalism — doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in its ability to regulate vaccines.

But could Covid-19 actually be taken off the market or banned? Rolling Stone spoke with several vaccine and legal experts to find out if that’s a possibility, what it would mean for public health, and whether you should get your shot sooner rather than later.

Could the Trump administration ban Covid-19 vaccines?
When we talk about the Covid vaccines being banned, we likely envision Kennedy or Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary making them inaccessible for everyone in one fell swoop. But this restriction could also happen gradually. And that process has already started. 

In May, FDA officials recommended that Covid-19 vaccines and annual boosters will be limited to people ages 65 and older, and those with certain medical conditions — including asthma, diabetes, obesity, and physical inactivity — that put them at high risk for severe infection. Later that month, Kennedy announced that the Covid vaccine has been removed from the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule for healthy children and healthy pregnant people — continuing the erosion of its accessibility. 

On top of that, Kennedy’s cancellation of $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccine development earlier this month is a clear signal that the administration has essentially abandoned the technology used to create the Covid-19 vaccine — which Donald Trump once called “a monumental national achievement” and a “gold standard vaccine.”

When the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meets in October, its newly appointed members — several of whom are vaccine critics — could decide to place additional restrictions on Covid-19 vaccines.

“What they’ve been doing is making it more difficult [to access Covid vaccines],” says Paul Offit, MD, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a former member of the ACIP. He predicts that restricting access to various vaccines will continue — starting with eliminating the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine, and not recommending the measles, mumps, rubella and varicella vaccine for children under four. “Like the velociraptor in Jurassic Park, I think they’re testing the fence to see where the weaknesses are,” he says.

The FDA could also take additional steps towards making Covid-19 vaccine inaccessible. According to Ana Santos Rutschman, a law professor at Villanova University with expertise in vaccine law and policy, this could include imposing restrictive requirements on the commercialization and administration of vaccines. In addition to limiting the vaccine to certain populations, the FDA could also require that “vaccines only be administered by certain health professionals — and require additional training for professionals who want to administer the vaccine — or that the vaccine can only be administered in certain places that patients would have to travel to,” she explains.

Additionally, the FDA could further restrict the vaccines because of their perceived safety concerns, says Wilbur Chen, MD, chief of the adult clinical studies section within the Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and a former member of the ACIP. 

In a more extreme scenario, these safety concerns could be used to attempt to ban Covid vaccines. “‘Banning’ in this context means withdrawing market approval, which is basically taking away the license to sell formerly approved products,” Rutschman says. “This is a tool that the law — specifically, the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and related laws and regulations — gives the FDA.”

Even if a vaccine is approved, the FDA still has the ability to withdraw it from the market if there’s data showing that it’s unsafe, says Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, PhD, a law professor at the UC Hastings College of the Law and an expert in legal and policy issues related to vaccines. Lacking data from reputable studies, she says that it’s likely that the FDA would use the same anti-vaccine junk science featured in a June HHS report.

While the ACIP can advise the FDA to withdraw approval of a specific vaccine or vaccines, it’s ultimately the FDA’s decision, and its responsibility to initiate this process, Rutschman explains. “The agency will notify the company that has the license to manufacture and sell the vaccine that they will be revoking the permission to commercialize the vaccine,” she tells Rolling Stone. “At that point the vaccine would be pulled out from the market.” Though doing so is rare, it’s not unheard of. In fact, on Aug. 22, the FDA suspended the license for a chikungunya vaccine “based on serious safety concerns.”

If the FDA takes a Covid vaccine off the market, the manufacturer is entitled to a hearing, where they can make a case for their product’s safety. If the FDA still decides to ban the vaccine, the manufacturer would be able to take the agency to court, Reiss says  There’s another way that Covid vaccines could be taken off the market. Legally, Kennedy has the ability to suspend approval for a vaccine “on a finding that there is an imminent hazard to public health,” although Reiss says that this power is typically delegated to the FDA commissioner. “The Secretary could do that, but it runs a very high risk of being taken to court and losing in court, since showing an imminent risk to public health from pulling the vaccines is going to be very tricky,” she explains.

So far, the Trump administration has not said that a ban on Covid-19 vaccines was in the works. When asked for comment, the White House declined, and a spokesperson for HHS told Rolling Stone that the department “does not comment on potential policy decisions.”

Impact of a Covid vaccine ban on public health
Banning or seriously restricting access to Covid vaccines would be a major blow to public health, says James Alwine, PhD, virologist and a member of the coordinating committee for Defend Public Health, an all-volunteer network of public health experts and allies fighting to protect the health of all from the current administration’s policies.

“You would have a situation where few people in this country would be vaccinated, their immunity to the virus would wane, and you would be getting this virus replicating in hundreds of millions of people around the country — and that’s going to produce more and more variants,” Alwine tells Rolling Stone. “When you’re replicating the virus billions of times, we’re going to get variants that are going to be worse and escape our immune system. They’ll be able to maybe make us sicker, cause more Long Covid — things like that.” 

Banning Covid vaccines would also limit scientists’ ability to stay on top of new variants of the virus. “In the U.S., we’re not even going to be able to study those variants very well, because virology studies on pandemic pathogens have been really hogtied by regulations and executive orders,” Alwine says. “We’re really in a bad place in this country as far as being able to defend ourselves against the virus. We’re going to see lots of people getting sick.”

Alwine is especially concerned about groups like “the elderly, the infirm, migrants, and the poor” who are going to be most affected by a surge in Covid. “I see the suppression of vaccines that’s happening with Robert [F.] Kennedy [Jr.] as being targeted against the most vulnerable in our society,” he says. “Kennedy is taking us to a place where it’s going to be the resurrection of infectious diseases. Having him be the Secretary of Health and Human Services, people think that means what he says is correct and knowledgeable and scientifically sound, and it’s not.”

When to get a Covid vaccine
So, if there’s a possibility that Covid vaccines could be banned, or their accessibility severely restricted, should you run out and get your annual booster ASAP? Not necessarily, says Offit. “I don’t think you need to rush to do that — get [the Covid vaccine] the way you would normally get it,” he says.

As of Aug. 27, the 2025-2026 updated Covid vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, and Novavax are FDA-approved. According to statements from Pfizer and Moderna, the vaccine manufacturers would begin shipping the updated Covid-19 vaccines to pharmacies, hospitals, and clinics across the country immediately, and available within a few days. The Novavax booster will be available “this fall.”

But that doesn’t mean the vaccines will be accessible to everyone. “Could Covid vaccines become very difficult to obtain if you’re uninsured or in a resource-poor area where health care is not very intact?,” Chen asks. “Absolutely that could be the case.” 

‘Confusion is the point’
If the rules surrounding Covid vaccine accessibility and insurance coverage seem unclear, it’s not your imagination. In fact, Offit says it’s by design, and part of Kennedy’s strategy since being appointed HHS secretary. 

“I think confusion is the point,” he says. “I think that’s the goal for the man who brought you ‘I’m not going to take away vaccines for people who want them,’ [then] proceeds to take away vaccines for people who want them.” 

For example, take Kennedy’s May announcement that the Covid vaccine would no longer be recommended for healthy pregnant people. “So what now?,” Offit questions. “Is there insurance coverage? Is there liability protection? Because there may be neither, [and] that has the functional equivalent of taking it off the market.”

Ultimately, Offit sees some form of a ban on Covid vaccines as a possibility. “I think [the Trump administration] could do it,” he says. “I think they could say that Covid vaccines are no longer recommended because the current Secretary of Health and Human Services has said that the Covid vaccine is ‘the deadliest vaccine ever made.’ And I think he means it. He’s a zealot — so buckle up.”