House Republican Introduces Stupidest Bill on IVF You’ll Ever Read

Republicans have gotten really good at talking about how much they want to protect access to in vitro fertilization, without actually doing anything to protect the procedure.

Representative Nancy Mace introduced a nonbinding resolution on Friday expressing support for IVF and calling on elected officials to protect access to the treatment. The measure does not actually do anything concrete to protect IVF.

The resolution “expresses strong support” for continued access to fertility treatments and “commends” the work of fertility care specialists. The measure condemns “any judicial ruling” restricting access to fertility care, and urges elected officials at all levels to “proactively pass” legislation that would protect access to assisted reproductive technology.

Again, the resolution is nonbinding. This means that Mace and her six co-sponsors, all elected officials, are doing exactly nothing to actually protect IVF.

What’s more, five of the resolution’s co-sponsors—Don Bacon, Anthony D’Esposito, Jen Kiggans, Nick LaLota, and David Schweikert—are vulnerable to being voted out. Those lawmakers represent districts that voted for President Joe Biden in 2020, so they are likely using this resolution as a way to pretend that they are listening to their more left-leaning constituents.

In the nearly two weeks since the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos created through IVF can be considered children, torpedoing the state’s fertility industry, Republicans have scrambled to express support for the procedure. Even some of the most conservative members of Congress, such as House Speaker Mike Johnson, are falsely insisting they have always supported IVF.

A Mace spokesperson pointed out earlier this week that the congresswoman co-sponsored another resolution last year expressing support for fertility treatments. That resolution was also nonbinding, meaning Mace has done precisely squat to actually support IVF—much like the rest of her party.

In fact, Mace has actively worked against preserving IVF access. She was a co-sponsor of the Life at Conception Act, a measure that was introduced first in 2021 with 166 co-sponsors and then again in 2023 with 124. The bill, which has not advanced since, would have established that life begins at fertilization.

Like the Alabama ruling, the Life at Conception Act would have severely restricted—if not effectively banned—IVF treatments as well, because it grants “equal protection” to “preborn” humans, including embryos. Since it’s common for fertilized eggs not to survive the IVF process, the act would put doctors at risk of being charged for wrongful death of embryos. That risk would be enough to scupper the IVF industry, as it has already begun to do in Alabama.

While Republicans have talked a good game in recent days, their actions tell a very different story. When Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth introduced a bill on Wednesday to protect IVF, Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith killed the measure. And that same day in the House, Representative Anna Paulina Luna—the only Republican in either chamber co-sponsoring legislation to codify IVF protections—withdrew her support from the companion bill to Duckworth’s.

Donald Trump still can’t get over how he “aced” a cognitive test that required him to correctly recite the words “person, woman, man, camera, TV.”

On Thursday, Trump leveraged an interview on Fox News’s Hannity to deride President Joe Biden’s mental health while celebrating his own, claiming the test used to measure dementia and cognitive decline was “very tough.”

“He could not do this interview. He couldn’t do an interview where you ask even a few questions,” Trump began. “And I said this morning, I say it loud and clear, you should take a cognitive test.”

“I took two of them, and I aced both of them. I’m very proud to say. Meaning, I got it all right.”

“They’re not that easy, you know,” Trump continued. “They—they show you the first ones are pretty easy. And then you get up, you get into the middle category, then you get to the end questions. There are very few people could answer those questions. They’re actually very tough.”

Trump has taken to arguing that cognitive exams should be mandatory for higher office since special counsel Robert Hur issued a damning, 388-page analysis of Biden’s mental acuity in which he described the 81-year-old president as having “significant limitations.”

“It’s easy the answer, but I don’t like doing it. He’s got some difficulty,” Trump told Hannity. “But it’s not the age because I know a lot of people that are much older than him that are 100 percent sharp and I think most people agree with that.”

He had no problem throwing mud earlier that morning, however.

“Crooked Joe Biden must take a Cognitive Test. Maybe that way we would be able to find out why he makes such terrible decisions,” the 77-year-old posted on Truth Social. “I took two of them, and ACED them both (no mistakes!). All Presidents, or people wanting to become President, should mandatorily take this test!”

In 2018, Representative Ronny Jackson—then the president’s physician—said he provided a cognitive exam to Trump because he “asked me to do it.”

In the years since, Trump has invariably tweaked the questions he allegedly received on the test, at times boasting that he had correctly recited five words and performed basic multiplication while at other times insisting that he had passed thanks to correctly identifying a whale. That is, in spite of the fact that the test’s authors claim that none of the three versions in circulation actually have a whale on them.

Hunter Biden’s attorneys negotiated for months to get his closed-door hearing before the House Oversight Committee on the public record, and thank God they did.

By all means, the hearing did not look like a success for Republicans, who spent the better part of the day being roundly accused of ignoring evidence supporting the president’s innocence and failing to find any sort of smoking gun.

But a transcript of the meeting, released late Thursday, shows a snippy exchange between the president’s son and Representative Matt Gaetz when the Florida Republican attempted to push Biden on the topic of addiction.

“Were you on drugs when you were on the Burisma board?” prompted Gaetz, referencing the committee’s former lead impeachment theory that Joe Biden had profited millions from his son’s connections to the Ukrainian company—even though the only witness leading that theory has since admitted to making the whole thing up with the help of top Russian intelligence officials.

“Mr. Gaetz, look me in the eye. You really think that’s appropriate to ask me?” Biden replied.

“Absolutely,” Gaetz said.

“Of all the people sitting around this table, do you think that’s appropriate to ask me?” Biden spit back.

He has a point. Gaetz’s own drug habits have been the subject of regular scrutiny for the MAGA lawmaker. In 2021, he was reported to have attended drug-fueled parties, snorting cocaine with strippers and paying them for sex. He also allegedly boasted to other politicians about chasing erectile dysfunction meds with sports drinks so he could “go all night.”

Gaetz is also under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use. Gaetz has categorically denied the accusations.

“I will answer it this way: I have been absolutely transparent about my drug use,” Biden continued. “Again, I spoke to you all earlier this morning about that. I’m sorry; I’m an addict. I was an addict. I have been in recovery for over four and a half years now, Mr. Gaetz. I work really, really hard at it.”

“What does that have to do with whether or not you’re going to go forward with an impeachment of my father other than to simply try to embarrass me?”

In what should be a shock to no one, the man who bragged about overturning Roe v. Wade is now talking about banning abortion after 15 weeks.

Donald Trump floated the new number during his bizarre trip Thursday to the U.S.-Mexico border. While there, he sat down for an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity, who asked about abortion.

Republicans are “coming in with a certain number of weeks, and the number 15 is mentioned,” Trump said. “I haven’t agreed to any number. I’m gonna see. We wanna take an issue that was very polarizing and get it settled and solved so everybody can be happy.”

Many Republican lawmakers have suggested banning abortion after 15 weeks as some sort of compromise. The argument is generally that fetuses can feel pain after that point. But just two years ago, Republicans were arguing that a 22-week cutoff was reasonable because that was when fetuses started to feel pain.

In reality, most medical experts agree that fetuses don’t develop the necessary physical sensors to experience pain until at least 24 weeks, possibly not even until 28 weeks. So it’s more likely that, now that the protection of Roe is gone, Republicans are just trying to shift the goal posts and ban abortion sooner.

The surprising thing about Trump’s interview is not that he expressed openness toward limiting abortion. Just two weeks ago, Trump suggested a 16-week federal abortion ban.So it’s possible—likely, even—Trump will keep reducing what he considers a reasonable number of weeks to allow abortions until he’s reached zero.

Trump has bragged about his role in overturning Roe and even demanded credit for individual state abortion bans. He is reportedly planning to gut reproductive rights if he is reelected, likely by relying heavily on the Comstock Act, a century-old law that conservatives are using to ban access to abortion and abortion medication.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of Americans—61 percent, according to the Pew Research Center—think abortion should be legal in all or most cases. This is why, even in otherwise deep red states, people keep voting to increase abortion access.

Donald Trump seems to have a weird idea of who’s entering through our borders, claiming on Thursday that a good chunk of them are people “who don’t speak languages.”

“Everybody I speak to says how horrible it is,” Trump said, adding that there were “millions of people” arriving from “places unknown,” from “countries unknown” with no language.

That is, at best, a woefully missed opportunity for a one-of-a-kind anthropological study, or at worst, an unfortunate admission from the reputed monolinguist. Trump apparently was having a tough time recalling any of the 350 different languages spoken by U.S. communities—maybe chief among them Spanish, which ranks as the second-most-popular language in the nation, and which the vast majority of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border speak.

“We have languages coming into our country, nobody that speaks those languages,” Trump droned. “They’re truly foreign languages. Nobody speaks them.”

In the last few months, Trump has made a number of increasingly worrying verbal gaffes, including claiming that he would stop banks from “debanking” Americans, mixing up former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and his only remaining rival in the GOP race, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, and describing his plan for America’s missile defense system by going, “Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.… Boom. OK. Missile launch. Woosh. Boom.”

He has also appeared with mysterious, unexplained red sores on his hands that political commentators couldn’t help but notice looked an awful lot like syphilis.

But have no fear: The 77-year-old wants you to know he is totally, undoubtedly, mentally all there. He recently “aced” a cognitive test that required him to correctly identify a giraffe, a tiger, and a whale. According to Trump, that meant his “mind is stronger now than it was 25 years ago.” In reality, that test is meant to measure dementia or cognitive decline, and it has never included the combination of animals Trump mentioned.