United States President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order stopping schools that still have COVID-19 vaccine mandates from receiving federal funds.
The executive order, according to a report from Breitbart confirmed by the White House, prohibits “federal funds from being used to support or subsidise an educational service agency, state education agency, local education agency, elementary school, secondary school, or institution of higher education that requires students to have received a COVID-19 vaccination to attend in-person education programmes.”
It also instructed the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, and the Secretary of Education to establish guidelines for compliance and to “provide a plan to end coercive COVID-19 vaccine mandates.”
“That solves that problem,” Trump said in the Oval Office.
The order helps Trump fulfill his campaign pledge to end the mandates many schools enacted after the COVID-19 vaccines were developed as the coronavirus ravaged the country during his first presidency.
Meanwhile, Trump last month signed an executive order directing the United States to withdraw from the WHO, a body he has repeatedly criticised over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While speaking at the White House a few hours after his inauguration, Trump said the US was paying far more to the UN body compared to China, adding, “World Health ripped us off.”
