TRUMP’S IVF MOVE — President Donald Trump’s executive order to expand access to in vitro fertilization doesn’t immediately change any policy, but the move still angered some anti-abortion activists, POLITICO’s Alice Miranda Ollstein and Megan Messerly report.
The order, which Trump signed Tuesday, urges the Domestic Policy Council to develop measures to “protect IVF access and aggressively reduce out-of-pocket and health plan costs for such treatments.” It also asks the council to examine which laws “exacerbate the cost of IVF treatments” and report back to the president in the next 90 days, according to details shared by White House officials.
“Fertilization, I’ve been saying that we’re going to do what we have to do, and I think that the women — and families, husbands — are very appreciative of it,” Trump said Tuesday afternoon shortly after signing the order.
Even though the order makes no changes to law or policy, some anti-abortion activists voiced frustration that the administration showed so much support for the treatments, which they view as akin to abortion because excess embryos created during the process are often discarded.
“IVF is NOT pro-life,” said Lila Rose, founder of the group LiveAction, posted on X. “93 percent of these lives are frozen indefinitely, miscarried, or aborted.”
Others pleaded with Trump directly to reverse course.
“Please stop and study the IVF industry, which is disturbing as it preys on desperate families, kills humans in the embryonic stage, and promotes eugenics,” Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins posted on X.
Background: During his presidential campaign, Trump pitched himself as a “leader” on in vitro fertilization, going so far as to pledge free IVF treatments to all Americans, paid for by either insurance companies or the federal government. The plans angered large swaths of the Republican Party, but Trump aides defended the policy pitch as a needed long-term investment given the country’s record-low birth rate.
Debate over IVF roiled the GOP last year following an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos should be considered people, which led some fertility clinics in Alabama to halt services and sparked a nationwide conversation that divided the anti-abortion movement and the Republican Party.
Some conservatives supported Trump’s push on IVF as “pro-family”; others opposed his pitch for free IVF for all as fiscally unworkable and ethically dubious. Some in the anti-abortion movement see assisted fertility as their next frontier after the decadeslong fight to topple Roe v. Wade.
Democrats had attempted to use the Alabama decision to paint Republicans as extreme on issues of reproductive health care, but their efforts fell short at the ballot box last November.
WELCOME TO WEDNESDAY PULSE. Not to sound like a broken record, but we once again ask for your tips and scoops if you’ve been impacted by the firings at HHS or can speak to the changes at the agency. Reach out to [email protected] and [email protected], and follow along @Kelhoops and @ChelseaCirruzzo. We’re also available on Signal.
TRUMP NIH PICK DISASSOCIATES — President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health has withdrawn from two groups that formed to criticize the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, POLITICO’s Erin Schumaker reports.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the nominee, said he had left the Collateral Global charity and Biosafety Now in a financial disclosure form submitted to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, an independent agency that facilitates the disclosures for nominees to government posts.
Why it matters: The disclosures highlight Bhattacharya’s overlapping connections to a tight-knit group of Covid contrarians who rose to prominence during the pandemic by opposing lockdowns. The Stanford economist and professor of medicine has argued that the government tried to censor him for questioning the NIH’s leaders at the time, Drs. Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci.
Background: Collateral Global describes itself as a U.K. charity “dedicated to researching, understanding, and communicating the effectiveness and collateral impacts” of lockdowns.
Bhattacharya, along with one of the charity’s founders and former Harvard biostatistician Martin Kulldorff, wrote the Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter published in October 2020 and signed by thousands of public health experts worldwide. The letter argued against lockdown measures in favor of letting low-risk individuals build up herd immunity, while older, sick people self-isolated — which federal scientists and others criticized as dangerous and unethical.
Biosafety Now advocates for restricting gain-of-function research, which can make pathogens more dangerous so scientists can study them. The group is a proponent of the lab-leak theory that Covid-19 resulted from risky research conducted in China, not spillover from animals to humans.
SHAH TO LEAVE CDC — CDC Principal Deputy Director Nirav Shah is stepping down, according to two people familiar with his plans, POLITICO’s Sophie Gardner and David Lim report.
Shah, who spent the last year heading the agency’s response to the growing avian flu outbreak in dairy cattle, will leave at the end of February, according to one of the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions. Maine Public first reported the news.
Shah, who became the agency’s principal deputy director in 2023, has served as the primary spokesperson for the CDC’s work to contain the avian flu in the states.
His departure appears to be a recent decision and comes as the Trump administration and DOGE have terminated hundreds of the agency’s staff.
“I do not have any current plans to leave government,” Shah told POLITICO in an interview last month before President Donald Trump took office. “I’m a career official; I’m not a political appointee.”
Shah did not respond to a request for comment.
FIRING FRENZY — Dozens of employees at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services who survey and assess the quality of hospitals and nursing homes were let go as part of the mass firings across the nation’s health agencies, Kelly reports.
Probationary and temporary employees at the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality were fired over the weekend, according to a former HHS employee with knowledge of the cuts and granted anonymity to speak freely. The center conducts quality measurements and certifications for Medicare and Medicaid providers and establishes coverage determinations for items and services that improve Medicare enrollees’ health outcomes.
“How are we going to ensure we’re ‘Making America Healthy Again’ if we’re not making sure facilities are holding up their end of the bargain with health and safety?” said the former employee, referring to the MAHA movement that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has championed.
Other cuts at CMS have included officials working on Medicare and Medicaid initiatives aimed at improving care for beneficiaries at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation and at the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, the office that oversees Obamacare.
While the Trump administration has maintained that the firings exempt employees working in core areas, such as Medicare and Medicaid, health staffers have warned the cuts would, nevertheless, affect those key areas and run counter to some of Kennedy’s top priorities.
TRUMP CONSOLIDATES POWER — President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a sweeping executive order bringing independent agencies under White House control, Megan and POLITICO’s Bob King report.
The move marks Trump’s latest attempt at consolidating power beyond boundaries other presidents have observed — though it’s likely to attract significant legal challenges. It also reflects the influence of Russ Vought, Trump’s budget chief, one of several conservatives in his orbit who have called for axing independent arms of the executive branch.
Many mainstream legal scholars believe the theory is illegal, given that Congress set up the agencies — such as the Federal Trade Commission — to act independently, or semi-independently, from the president.
Ed DeVaney has been named president of CVS Health’s pharmacy benefit manager, CVS Caremark. He was named interim president in December 2024 and was previously the president of employer and health plans for CVS Caremark’s sales and account management.
Kichelle Webster is now manager of federal government relations at Philip Morris International. She previously was director of financial services and health policy at Stewart Strategies & Solutions.
Jess Wysocky will be director of health policy at the National Association of Manufacturers. She previously was legislative director for Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.).
POLITICO’s Chelsea Cirruzzo and Adam Cancryn report on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s first address to HHS on Tuesday.
KFF Health News’ Brett Kelman reports on how pain clinics made millions from “unnecessary” injections.
STAT’s Eric Boodman writes about the lasting human impact of Trump’s funding freeze.
