Pete Buttigieg – Photo: Pod Save America YouTube Screenshot
“I was always for IVF. Right from the beginning, as soon as we heard about it.… We’re doing this because we just think it’s great. And we need great children, beautiful children in our country, we actually need them,” President Donald Trump said in an August 2024 NBC News interview as he mounted his reelection bid.
He pledged to support free in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments, a promise that came just months after the Alabama Supreme Court controversially ruled that frozen embryos created through IVF should be considered “children” under state law.
In February 2025, Trump signed an executive order directing officials to deliver recommendations within 90 days on protecting IVF access and reducing treatment costs. But the deadline passed with no action, leaving his campaign promise appearing abandoned.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was not pleased and quick to condemn the reversal.
Truly being “pro-family” means ensuring access and cost of care – including IVF – never stands in the way of someone choosing to start or grow their family.
Trump breaking his promise about something as important as this might not be surprising, but it is cruel. pic.twitter.com/N7pJD1tLIn
“Truly being ‘pro-family’ means ensuring access and cost of care – including IVF – never stands in the way of someone choosing to start or grow their family,” wrote Buttigieg in an August 14 post on X. “Trump breaking his promise about something as important as this might not be surprising, but it is cruel.”
The criticism came just days after Buttigieg had praised Trump’s pledge to require insurance companies to cover IVF during a “Pod Save America” interview.
“I mean, if we’re really serious about being pro-family, then we need to make sure that we support that,” Buttigieg told podcast co-host Jon Favreau. “And that means making sure whether it’s a system of direct government support or ensuring [it’s] part of what you can get from private health care.”
CNN reports that more than 8 million babies have been born through IVF, accounting for about 2% of U.S. births. The procedure — removing an egg and fertilizing it in a lab before implantation — has transformed lives worldwide.
Yet IVF remains costly and out of reach for many without insurance coverage. KFF reports that most patients pay out of pocket, often well over $10,000. For LGBTQ couples, the path is even harder, as state laws and insurance rules frequently make fertility coverage an even greater financial burden.
As Trump’s second term continues, critics argue his failure to act on IVF access undercuts his claims of being “great for women and their reproductive rights.”
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has reposted a CNN clip featuring Doug Wilson, leader of the Christian evangelical movement he follows, in which the pastor calls for making gay sex illegal.
“In the late ’70s and early ’80s, sodomy was a felony in all 50 states. That America of that day was not a totalitarian hellhole,” Wilson says in the seven-minute segment, reports the Daily Beast.
Wilson goes on to say he wishes the United States would revive anti-sodomy laws, which criminalized same-sex relations -- and, in some states, even certain non-vaginal sex acts between consenting heterosexual partners.
With Obergefell at risk and 32 states poised to restrict same-sex marriage, LGBTQ advocates push to enshrine protections at the state level.
By Maximilian Sandefer
August 6, 2025
On June 22, 2022, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision with Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. Abortion rights were now no longer guaranteed nationwide as the issue was left up to the states. This shock reversal of over 49 years of precedent left reproductive rights activists scrambling as anti-choice state laws stemming from as far back as 1864 were revived and reinstituted.
As people's ability to access to reproductive care dwindled in conservative-led states, activists also found their footing. The 2024 election saw abortion rights ballot measures win in seven out of ten states. As we navigate a landscape where it will likely be a long time before we see any form of successful federal legislation protecting a woman's right to choose, state-by-state activism seems to be the driving force behind change.
The Desperado LGBTQ+ Film Festival, a 16-year-old annual event hosted at Paradise Valley Community College in Phoenix, has been canceled in "direct response" to President Donald Trump's executive order banning diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at federally funded schools.
The festival, held each January at the college's Center for the Performing Arts, showcased films reflecting LGBTQ experiences and most recently featured seven feature films and seven shorts.
Trump's order requires colleges to end all DEI programs or risk losing federal funding. Organizers said Paradise Valley Community College could not afford to jeopardize its funding.
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