NEW: CS3D Is Just One Way In Which Europe Exploits American Economic Vitality — Second in our article series on the EU directive CS3D and how it affects American business, in collaboration with Baron Public Affairs. Read and share!

About That IVF Announcement...

Ok. We get it. IVF is very popular. It's very popular with the public at large. It's also very popular among Republicans, and even (relatively speaking) inside the pro-life movement.

And yet…

Just for the record, here's what the White House announced yesterday.

The centerpiece is a most-favored-nation agreement with EMD Serono that will make three fertility medications, including the commonly used Gonal-F, available through the forthcoming TrumpRx.gov platform at discounts of 42-79% depending on income level, potentially saving patients up to $2,200 per cycle on drugs that typically cost over $5,000. The deal follows similar agreements with Pfizer and AstraZeneca and requires EMD Serono to repatriate increased foreign revenue and invest in US-based manufacturing. This represents concrete follow-through on the February executive order, which critics (like your correspondent) had noted was light on specifics.

The second component is joint guidance from Labor, HHS, and Treasury which creates a new legal pathway for employers to offer standalone fertility benefits similar to dental or vision coverage, without requiring them to overhaul their primary health plans. Currently only about a quarter of large employers cover IVF, and apparently the existing regulatory frameworks made it difficult for smaller businesses to add these benefits incrementally. Mercifully, the administration is positioning this as an opt-in framework rather than a mandate. The approach gives employers flexibility to respond to workforce needs without triggering the compliance burdens that would come with major medical plan modifications.

Ok.

It's good politics, we can't deny it.

We would say a couple things.

First, there is compelling evidence that IVF is not pro-natal, since it just creates additional incentive for people to wait until starting to try to conceive. IVF is not a magic wand, it often fails. And so, on net, we get fewer babies with IVF than without, because without people try to conceive earlier, which is still the best way of conceiving.

Second, IVF just may possibly be a health scandal waiting to happen (not good for a MAHA administration!). As an outstanding report from EPPC, which we have covered previously, detailed, there are a lot of problems with IVF: it's risky, it has downsides for women's health, and it's very expensive. There are better alternatives available, especially "restorative reproductive medicine," a much more holistic (and MAHA) approach to infertility.

Some things to think about.

Policy News You Need To Know

NEW: CS3D Is Just One Way In Which Europe Exploits American Economic Vitality — Second in our article series on the EU directive CS3D and how it affects American business, in collaboration with Baron Public Affairs. Read and share!

#ItsTheEconomyStupid — Today, the administration is trumpeting low gas prices. And it's true: US gas prices dipped to a 2025 low of $3.05 per gallon nationally this week, offering real relief to consumers just in time for holiday travel and spending. While deregulation and boosted domestic production as a result of Trump administration policies played a role, it's worth noting other factors at play, like seasonal drops in demand post-summer and softer global crude oil prices. Anyway, we'll take the W.

#Shutdown #HoldTheLine — Noteworthy statement from Leader Thune on the shutdown today: "I will not negotiate under hostage conditions, nor will I pay a ransom. Period." The experience from the Tea Party era is that the side that causes the shutdown loses. We know from bitter experience that this is the correct call. Republicans should hold the line.

#Youf — The good folks at RAND have produced a new study examining "disconnected youth," which is their term for young people aged 18-24 who are neither working nor engaged in education or training. Roughly one in seven Americans in this age group, or 4.2 million individuals, fall into this category, with concerning implications for workforce development and community stability. While young men show somewhat higher disconnection rates than young women overall, the research finds that factors like race, disability status, and family circumstances matter more than gender, and notably, three-quarters of disconnected youth actually have at least a high school diploma or some college experience, suggesting that simply boosting graduation rates won't solve the problem. The study also identifies a troubling correlation between youth disconnection and community-level factors, particularly in areas where fewer working-age men are employed. The authors end by saying, and we agree, that there's no one-size-fits-all solution. The American underclass is a brutal place, and we should do more to rescue those who are in it.

#LittleGreenMen — Are we ever going to find out what's up? Secretary of State Marco Rubio disclosed in the trailer for the upcoming documentary "The Age of Disclosure" that unidentified flying objects (UFOs) have been repeatedly observed operating in restricted airspace over sensitive American nuclear facilities, emphasizing that these crafts are "not ours" and pose potential national security concerns. This documentary, which also got a plug today from Anduril CEO Palmer Luckey on Joe Rogan's podcast, features firsthand accounts from 34 high-ranking government, military, and intelligence officials.

#JuryNullification #RuleOfLaw — A DC jury unanimously acquitted Sydney Reid, a protester charged with misdemeanor assault on ICE officers during a July 2025 detainee transfer she was filming. As Will Chamberlain of Article III Project noted, this smells like classic jury nullification, where DC jurors, notorious for their antipathy toward federal law enforcement in cases tied to immigration or protests, effectively disregarded the law. Obstructing Federal law enforcement is a felony. The law must be enforced.

#Immigration — The FBI just arrested Mahmoud Amin Ya'qub Al-Muhtadi in Louisiana. Al-Muhtadi is a Palestinian man who participated in the October 7th Hamas attacks on Israel. What was he doing in Louisiana, you may ask? He entered the US by lying on a visa application, in 2024, and then overstayed his visa. We have been talking for years about how lax border policies enable terrorists to enter the US. This man's presence on US soil was a result of Biden border policies. It's important to remember that these are policy choices.

Friday Essays

NEW: CS3D Is Just One Way In Which Europe Exploits American Economic Vitality — Second in our article series on the EU directive CS3D and how it affects American business, in collaboration with Baron Public Affairs. Read and share!

Well, for once, there's no contest as to what is the best and most important essay published this week. Helen Andrews gave a speech on the Feminization of American life at NatCon 5, which went viral (link), with nearly 150K views as of this writing, when most such speeches struggle to reach 5,000 views. She therefore understandably decided to expound on the same themes in an essay for Compact magazine, and it is outstanding. Even if you've watched the speech, even if you think you're already familiar with the arguments and even already agree with the substance, you should read the essay, because it comes with Andrews' diamond prose and new bits of data and anecdata you didn't know. Just read it.

Charles Murray is, without a doubt, one of the greatest social scientists of the past 50 years, at least. And not only that, but his interests are wide-ranging: he is most famous for his writings on welfare, race, and IQ, but he has also written books about the Apollo Program and the quantification of genius. Murray's new book is on an unexpected topic; it is titled Taking Religion Seriously. The book is an autobiographical and philosophical reflection on his decades-long intellectual journey from secular skepticism toward a serious engagement with religion, and especially Christianity. The book is written as an intellectual memoir rather than a social science treatise, but it is still written by one of the great minds of our age. Here's an excerpt published in The Free Press.

This is not a recent essay but it was recently brought to our attention. Have you noticed that contemporary Hollywood movies are full of absurdly beautiful actors and show off their absurdly perfect bodies—and yet, at the same time, these movies are weirdly sexless? In these movies, "Everyone Is Beautiful And No One Is Horny," writes RS Benedict for the Substack Blood Knife. "We’re told that Tony Stark and Pepper Potts are an item, but no actual romantic or sexual chemistry between them is shown in the films." That is strange. But why?

Passage Press has published an anthology of essays by the great, but sometimes forgotten, intellectual Paul Gottfried. "Gottfried, an intellectual historian and self-described paleoconservative, has long been an outsider, an American scholar of the European right operating at a remove from the American conservative movement he disdains," writes Stephen Pimentel in his review for Modern Age. "The interest of this collection lies not in its record of battles won but in the precision of its diagnosis of a political order that has lost its mind."

NEW: CS3D Is Just One Way In Which Europe Exploits American Economic Vitality — Second in our article series on the EU directive CS3D and how it affects American business, in collaboration with Baron Public Affairs. Read and share!