A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Trump’s IVF Flip-Flop a Sign of His Continued Reliance on Christian Right
President Donald Trump is no longer planning to require the government or insurance carriers to cover the cost of in vitro fertilization, the Washington Post reports, despite having promised during the 2024 campaign he would do so.
The promise was part of his campaign’s effort — much like Trump’s supposed “distancing” from Project 2025 — to paint Christian nationalists’ revered candidate as far more moderate than his extreme anti-abortion base. The move came in the aftermath of a February 2024 Alabama Supreme Court decision holding that frozen embryos created by IVF are considered “children” under a 19th century state law and a 2018 state constitutional amendment banning abortion. That stunning decision meant anyone involved in destroying a frozen embryo in the state could potentially be liable for wrongful death.
This judicial embrace of the concept of “personhood” (and therefore rights) for fertilized eggs, or “extrauterine children,” as the court referred to them, jolted even the deep red Alabama legislature. Lawmakers then passed a law granting IVF patients and providers immunity, although they left the question of personhood unaddressed.
Throughout 2024, Trump’s campaign presented him to the press and wider public as a supporter of IVF, even as he unabashedly aligned himself with anti-abortion radicals and IVF opponents. Now, as Trump is facing declining approval numbers, he seems to be turning to his most reliable supporters for a little boost.
With MAGA influencers in turmoil over the Epstein files and even Trump’s position on the war in Gaza, he needs to keep his most dependable bloc of support — the Christian right — close at hand. If there’s anything he could do right now that would roil Christian nationalists, it would be using government power to make IVF, which they consider to be immoral meddling with divine plans for humanity, more widely available.
To anyone who might have believed a government subsidy for their fertility treatments was in the offing, anonymous administration officials tell the Post this laughable doozy of an excuse:
A senior administration official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal talks, said that while expanding IVF access remains a “huge priority” for Trump, the president can’t legally make IVF an essential health benefit without Congress first approving legislation to do so. It is unclear whether the administration plans to ask lawmakers to take up a bill, but the two people said that forcing insurance companies to cover IVF is not currently on the table.
Cracks in Trump’s Inner Circle
Rolling Stone’s Asawin Suebsaeng reports that Trump’s ham-fisted efforts to change the subject from Epstein by threatening to prosecute former President Barack Obama for treason are “doing next to nothing right now to dig the president out of this Epstein-shaped hole that he and his loyalists dug for themselves.” Instead, they are worried that it is massively backfiring.
Trump’s bungling of the Epstein situation by refusing to release the files that he knows include mentions of his name has MAGA influencers up in arms, and has drawn wider public disfavor. It is not going away, no matter how flamboyantly Trump tries to deflect it. Now, according to Suebsaeng’s reporting, people close to Trump are admitting that his impulsive, rake-stepping reactions are a disaster for him.
MAGA’s entire disappointment with the Epstein files is that they expected their hero Trump to expose the supposed deep state by releasing all the documentation of its nefarious inner workings. His attempts at misdirection have prompted a dismissive reaction. One administration official told Suebsaeng “people aren’t buying it,” after receiving “messages from high-profile Trump allies and MAGA-aligned influencers insisting that this ‘Obamagate’ reboot will not get them to move on from Epstein.”
Ooops
To further distract from the Epstein debacle, Trump and administration officials have attempted to resurrect bogus claims that the Russia investigation was a “hoax” and a “witch hunt” of Trump, engineered by Hillary Clinton. Last week, FBI Director Kash Patel tried to claim an “annex” to the investigation of former Special Counsel John Durham contained evidence “that the Clinton campaign plotted to frame President Trump and fabricate the Russia collusion hoax.” But the New York Times reports the annex “shows the opposite,” because the supposed evidence of a Clinton campaign plot was “almost certainly a product of Russian disinformation,” a conclusion Durham sought to bury in the “annex.”
You read that right. The annex had been in the deep freeze until the Trump administration dug it out, only to have it disprove the very claim it had released the annex to prove.
Will We Ever See How Trump Appears in the Epstein Files?
Freedom of Information Act expert Jason Leopold has stunning details about how Trump’s name ended up getting redacted from the massive trove of Epstein documents reviewed by a team of a thousand employees at the FBI. According to Leopold’s sources, the rationale for the redaction was that during the time period covered by the files, Trump was a private citizen and therefore subject to FOIA’s privacy exemptions. That’s a standard FOIA procedure supported by the law, Leopold explains, although it is directly at odds with the administration’s promises of maximum transparency.
After the review was finished, the Department of Justice and FBI reversed course and announced they would not be releasing the Epstein files after all.
Leopold concludes that overcoming a privacy-based FOIA redaction is “a really high bar.” Of course if Trump were maximally transparent as he claims, he could order the files’ release without his name redacted. Otherwise the public will likely have to wait until after he is dead to see how he is mentioned.
DOJ Flailing to Deny 3,000-A-Day Deportation Quota Stephen Miller Bragged About
Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has gone on television to boast of an administration goal of deporting 3,000 undocumented immigrants a day. Now that some trial courts have ruled that its detention methods are illegal, DOJ is trying to claim the quota doesn’t exist. In a court filing to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last week, “DOJ attorney Yaakov Roth attributed the quota claim to ‘anonymous reports in the newspapers,’” Politico reports.
House Republicans Now Panicking Trump’s Deportations Will Hurt Them in 2026
Latino members of the House GOP are desperately signalling to Trump and Miller that their mass deportations will hurt them with voters that they won over in 2024. “President Trump, sir, the same God who saved you from death in Pennsylvania one year ago and who put you back in the Oval Office against all odds, is the same God Almighty who millions and millions are begging to for some type of dignity, not amnesty,” said Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-FL), as she introduced a bill to provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers (immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children), and protected status for some other undocumented immigrants.
Democratic Lawmakers Flee Texas
With shrinking options, Democrats are attempting to deprive Republicans of a quorum to vote today on their proposed gerrymandered Congressional maps by leaving the state. Governor Greg Abbott has now threatened to remove them from office.
Not Just Eggs
A new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds “the vast majority of U.S. adults are at least somewhat stressed about the cost of groceries.”
Tell Me Again About Trump’s Brilliant Outreach to Influential Podcasters
After Charlamagne Tha God criticized Trump on his daughter-in-law Lara Trump’s Fox News program, Trump called him a “dope” and a “racist sleazebag.”
Trump Also Ruined Summer Vacation
Tourism and vacations are down this year, thanks to consumers opting for budget travel due to economic concerns amid tariff uncertainty, and foreign travelers repelled by Trump’s xenophobic policies.
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