Dude, he’s running.

Greg Abbott’s actual presidential ambitions remain ambiguous, of course, and the 2024 cycle has only just (prematurely) begun. Let’s just say that the newly re-elected governor of Texas has kept his options open with today’s executive order on COVID-19 vaccines and mandates. Abbott rebuked the CDC’s recommendations for childhood COVID vaccinations and ordered schools to ignore them:

On Thursday, Gov. Greg Abbott told Texas’ education commissioner Mike Morath and school superintendents that the vaccine — recently added to the CDC’s list of recommended childhood immunizations — cannot be mandated for students to attend school.

“Despite attempts at federal overreach into the health care decisions of Americans, in Texas we continue to honor and defend the freedom of parents to choose what is best for the health and well-being of their families,” Abbott wrote in a letter to school officials. “Regardless of what the CDC may suggest, in Texas, the COVID-19 vaccine remains voluntary. Texas schools shall not require students to receive the COVID-19 vaccine for any reason.” …

Last month, after a CDC panel first moved to recommend the vaccine for children, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton joined 13 other state attorneys general and urged the committee to not add the vaccine to its list of recommended childhood immunizations.

The panel’s decision, which has since been adopted by the CDC director, formally adds the shot to a list often used by schools and health officials in making vaccination requirements.

The decision to add these vaccinations to the recommended list created a firestorm of controversy for a number of reasons. In the first place, children are at very low risk of seriously acute COVID-19 cases, and in the second place, they are also at low risk of generating community transmission of the virus. Let’s also add in that the vaccines do not prevent either uptake or transmission of COVID-19 in any of its mutations; they only offer protection against more seriously acute cases that children rarely get anyway. That means that there is no rational community interest in mandating a vaccination status, especially in low-risk populations.

That doesn’t mean that parents who choose to have their children vaccinated are making an irrational choice. However, it does mean that those vaccinations should not be added to lists that include much more necessary vaccinations against rapidly transmitted childhood diseases such as rubella, mumps, polio, and others that actually do endanger populations when herd immunity is not present. For these diseases, there is clearly a compelling state interest in setting access conditions on vaccinations, whereas there is no such compelling interest for a vaccine that neither prevents transmission or uptake.

And as the Dallas Morning News report indicates, Abbott and Texas objected all along to conflating the two classes of vaccines, for good reason. Abbott’s order doesn’t constrain parental choice to have their children vaccinated, but it does protect parents from being forced to vaccinate children even though (a) vaccination offers few benefits to most children and (b) vaccines have some downside side effects and risks. Parents are the proper authority to weigh those benefits and risks absent compelling state interests, and Abbott wants to preserve both parental prerogative and the use of the compelling-interest argument on vaccinations that actually matter.

Besides those clear Texas interests, Abbott certainly does himself no harm in the upcoming presidential primary, should he choose to run. He will score points for pushing back against the CDC, the capricious rule of discredited elites, and for defending parental prerogatives, all of which plays well in the current Republican zeitgeist. It helps Abbott keep pace with Ron DeSantis’ populist credibility, and might even allow Abbott to differentiate from Donald Trump when it comes to pandemic issues in the same way DeSantis will. But even if Abbott never tosses his hat into the 2024 ring, he’s begun making his case for 2026 and another term as governor.