Father of Fertility
Plus: A new kind of seasteading, examining genocide claims, and more...
Our fertility president: Self-declared "father of fertility" (ewwww) President Donald Trump announced new rules on Monday that would make it easier for employers to provide standalone health insurance coverage for fertility benefits.
The Reason Roundup Newsletter by Liz Wolfe Liz and Reason help you make sense of the day's news every morning.
"The rule would create a supplemental insurance option employers could offer, similar to vision or dental insurance, for in vitro fertilization services and other fertility treatments," reports PBS. "Currently, most health insurance plans don't cover IVF or related benefits." It's not exactly a pro-IVF move, though, at least according to Trump: "This will hopefully reduce the number of couples who ultimately need to resort to IVF, because challenges can be identified and addressed very early in the process." ("The fertility journey is a very interesting one," he mused from the Oval Office. "Oz and Bobby, I can tell you, we speak about it a lot," he added, referring to Health and Human Services officials Mehmet Oz and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I am fascinated by what those conversations sound like and would give anything to be a fly on the wall of the Oval.)
But like so many Trump administration moves, it's not really clear what exactly this does; about one-quarter of large companies already offer fertility-related benefits as part of their health insurance plans. ("Among firms with 200 or more employees that offer health benefits, 37% provide coverage for fertility medications in their plan with the largest enrollment, 26% provide coverage for intrauterine (artificial) insemination, 27% provide coverage for in-vitro fertilization (IVF), 12% provide coverage for cryopreservation, sometimes called egg or sperm freezing," reports KFF.) If employees can now more easily opt into add-on fertility benefits, wouldn't that create major issues with paying for it, since the ones who will opt into it are the ones who…intend to use it? Not much cost-sharing. Are add-on policies like these generally subsidized by the employer? Does this actually drive the cost down in any meaningful way for those who want fertility help? And, if the idea is to help the birth rate bounce back—710,000 fewer children were born in 2025 compared with 2007, the most recent birth rate peak—is this really the demographic to target? (A lot of pronatalists offer that it makes more sense to try to incentivize three-kid families to add one more, or families that want a lot of kids to try to get started a few years earlier to make it easier to have one or two more, versus trying to help couples go from zero to one.)
That said, the way it is structured is less coercive and damaging to businesses than it could be. "The new proposal, which must go through a 60-day comment period before being finalized, does not require the federal government to pay for the IVF treatments," notes Washington Examiner, "nor does it include a mandate requiring insurance companies to pay for the treatments. Instead, it would be a new category of benefits that can be voluntarily provided by employers and opted into by employees." This is perhaps a sign that Trump is trying to honor the IVF objections of some of his coalition.
There's also the rather cynical take: Of course, businesses would want to offer benefits (like egg freezing as well as IVF) that allow people to indefinitely push off parenthood. Maternity leave is very costly for businesses! It's just not clear how much this Trump proposal actually changes, but it is a sign of where the administration's priorities are—and how hard it is to truly satisfy their clunky coalition.
Scenes from Austin, Texas: I swear you can't make this up….Yesterday, I went canoeing on Town Lake with my parents and my son. We saw a homeless guy lakesteading. Think seasteading, but…weirder. Kind of wild. Austin has long had issues with homelessness—and a sort of political schizophrenia as to whether it wants to extend lots of license to vagrants and allow public camping wherever or to crack down on use of public land in this way that impedes other people's abilities to safely use it. This was the first time I'd seen a homeless guy take to the water. Kind of inventive, I suppose.
QUICK HITS
- "The accusation that Israel is committing 'genocide' in Gaza has become commonplace in protests, university activism, social media campaigns, and international legal rhetoric. But one striking feature of the debate is how little attention is paid to a basic question: what would genocidal behavior actually look like, and does Israel's conduct resemble it?" writes David Bernstein for The Volokh Conspiracy. "Genocide is not simply a war that causes extensive civilian casualties. It is the deliberate attempt to destroy a people as such. Historically recognized genocides share recognizable characteristics: civilians are targeted precisely because of their identity, and the perpetrators seek maximum civilian death rather than military victory. Israel's conduct in Gaza looks very different….The danger of stretching the term genocide beyond recognition is substantial. If every brutal urban war involving high civilian casualties becomes genocide, then the concept loses the distinctive moral and legal meaning that made it powerful in the first place."
- Positive change in Utah?
My bill clarifies the definition of neglect to support, not punish, parents who encourage independent play. Learn more here: https://t.co/WsvZhGhQAA
— Congressman Blake Moore (@RepBlakeMoore) May 12, 2026
- Is the administration laying the groundwork for military action against Cuba?
Secretary Pete Hegseth just testified before Congress that Cuba poses a national security threat to the United States. pic.twitter.com/dLPQsmVB4M
— Kassy Akiva (@KassyAkiva) May 12, 2026
- "We're more than a quarter way through the new century and we can now ask: what is the aesthetic of the twenty-first century?" wrote Tyler Cowen and Patrick Collison last year. "Which are the important secessionist movements of today? Which will be the most important great works? Today, futuristic aesthetics often mean retrofuturistic aesthetics. So, what should the future actually look like? There will not be singular answers to these, but we are very interested in attempts to answer the questions. In particular, we would like to fund some artists who are thinking about them." One such artist:
I was recently awarded a New Aesthetics grant from @patrickc and @tylercowen to try to invent a new ornamental style of architecture.
I'm going to do this through drawing, because just as writing is thinking, drawing is imagining. You might invent something new when you sit down… pic.twitter.com/OSFQd0V9vU— Megan Gafford (@megan_gafford) May 12, 2026
(I really like "America was supposed to be Art Deco.")
- New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani scrapped his plans to raise property taxes.
- Children be like, "It's time to build":
Children are born staring reverently at bulldozers, and yet we're supposed to believe mankind was meant to preserve neighborhood character?
— Caleb Watney (@calebwatney) May 12, 2026
