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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Richard Luscombe in Miami

Florida vaccine mandate rollback falters after Trump criticism

a person giving a vaccine shot
Pharmacy manager Aylen Amestoy administers a patient with a seasonal flu vaccine at a CVS Pharmacy in Miami on 9 September 2025. Photograph: Rebecca Blackwell/AP

It took barely two days, and some huffs of disapproval from the White House, before Joseph Ladapo’s bold plan to eliminate all vaccine mandates in Florida began to deflate.

The action, the fervently religious state surgeon general had asserted at a fire and brimstone press conference in Tampa, came straight from the heavens: “Who am I, as a man standing here now, to tell you what you should put in your body?” he opined, framing the freedom to reject vaccines as a “reflection of God’s light against the darkness of tyranny and oppression”.

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