Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo stopped by CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday for his first major televised interview since announcing his state would end all vaccination mandates.
Speaking to Jake Tapper on Sunday, Ladapo held the line that parental rights trump transmission rates of childhood diseases. The host grew incredulous when he confronted Ladapo on the fact that Florida did not analyze how ending public school vaccination requirements might lead to increased cases of deadly diseases. Ladapo said the data was not necessary to make his decision, since he believed parental rights were more important than any negative outcome.
“You’re trying to lift the vaccine mandate in Florida, and your department and you did not even do a projection as to how this could impact public health,” Tapper said, in an interview that felt like two separate conversations at once. “You have not prepared hospitals in the Florida counties, most at risk, with the best treatments for any outbreaks of measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, polio. And you have not looked into how many kids might now get these preventable diseases?”
“Do I need to analyze whether it’s appropriate for parents to be able to decide what goes into the children’s bodies?” Ladapo replied. “I don’t need to do an analysis on that.”
LADAPO: This whole ‘Florida hasn’t done any analysis’ — that’s nonsense
TAPPER: You said you hadn’t done any projections!
LADAPO: We don’t need to do any projections pic.twitter.com/1O91HJ6Utx
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 7, 2025
Ladapo said his position was “very simple.”
“There are countries that don’t have vaccine mandates. And the sky isn’t falling over there,” he said. “The right position is that parents should… be the final say on any vaccines that they choose to take or not take.”
Tapper pointed out that no other conservative state, even ones that have gone on similar parental rights crusades in recent years, has ended mandatory vaccinations for public school children. He noted that vaccination for diseases like polio and measles remains overwhelmingly supported by parents in Florida, and that every major medical organization recommends childhood vaccination. Ladapo would not be swayed.
“I share what I believe is the right thing to do, whether it’s popular or not,” Ladapo said. “We’ve been right over and over again, because what we’ve said has been based on data and common sense.”
TAPPER: Hepatitis A, whooping cough, and chickenpox cases are rising in Florida. Before you made this decision to try to lift vaccine mandates for Florida, did your department do any data analysis of how many new cases of these diseases there will be with no vaccine mandates?… pic.twitter.com/4N2imThzAZ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 7, 2025
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