WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced three new actions his administration is taking, one seeking to increase access to in vitro fertilization and two focused on transparency and accountability within the federal government.
The executive order on IVF the president signed on Tuesday at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida specifically looks to make such treatments more widely available to American families, in part through making them more affordable. The order gives the administration 90 days to present a list of policy recommendations designed to protect access to IVF and lower its cost.
“I think the women – and families, husbands – are very appreciative of it,” Trump said while announcing the IVF order.
It comes after Trump, in a move that took many off-guard, pledged on the campaign trail in 2024 that the government or insurance companies would be mandated to cover “all costs associated with IVF treatment.”
The issue burst into the political spotlight last year after a decision from Alabama’s Supreme Court declaring that frozen embryos are considered children led to fertility clinics in the state to close their doors and sparked questions about future access to the treatments nationwide. (Alabama legislators later passed a law signed by the state's Republican governor to reverse the ruling.)
It also added another political layer to Democrats’ efforts to highlight the issue of reproductive rights on the campaign trail following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022, which Trump often touts was made possible by his appointment of three justices to the Supreme Court in his first term in the White House.
Meanwhile, Trump on Tuesday also signed one order seeking to give the office of the president stronger oversight of actions taken by agencies, directing them to submit all “proposed and final significant regulatory actions” to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.” The third action is a memorandum that requires department and agency heads to make public “to the maximum extent permitted by law” the “the complete details of every terminated program, cancelled contract, terminated grant, or any other discontinued obligation of Federal funds.”
The two moves come as the Trump administration’s wide-scale campaign to shrink the size of the federal government, known as the U.S. DOGE Service, has come under fire from critics about a lack of transparency as it sweeps through agencies enacting massive layoffs and seeking access to data.
Joining Trump in the Oval Office to take questions from reporters last week, Billionaire Elon Musk, who is considered the head of the effort, argued his actions are public and compared the focus on him to getting a “daily proctology exam.”
“It’s not like I think I can get away with something, I’ll be scrutinized non-stop,” Musk said last week.
Just this week, there was a swirl of questions surrounding Musk’s official role and title in the administration after a court filing revealed the White House does not consider the X owner and SpaceX CEO the administrator of DOGE but rather a senior adviser to the president.
