MAGA Baby Bucks
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It's Wednesday, April 23rd. I'm Erin Ryan, in for Jane Koston, and this is What A Day, the show that says, way to go, meanies, you're not going to have Elon Musk to kick around anymore. Musk announced Tuesday that he'll be stepping back from Doge after Tesla reported a 71% drop in earnings during the first quarter of 2025. We're mournfully waving our chainsaws around in solidarity.

On today's show, Sun-poisoned Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that America's children will now be protected from the menace of artificial food dyes, thanks to the Trump administration. And in immigration courtrooms, unaccompanied migrant children were not given attorneys, leaving more and more kids to represent themselves in their own deportation hearings, also thanks to the Trump administration.

But first, MAGA is in full-on panic mode about the declining birth rate in the U.S., and so the doors of the West Wing are wide open to figuring out how to get more babies born around here. That's right, Trump administration officials want you to get pregnant and stay pregnant. Nothing creepy about that.

That's according to a New York Times article that ran this week, detailing some of the solutions that have been presented to the Trump administration by concerned pronatalists. That is, people who believe that it is important to increase the birth rate in order to assure that all of America doesn't turn into a giant episode of the Golden Girls in a generation. Some of their concerns are reasonable. Some of them are racist. And many of the solutions they've come up with are straight up weird. But will any of them work?

To get more into the right-wing panic around the coming baby apocalypse, we called up Carter Sherman, a reproductive health and justice reporter for The Guardian and author of the forthcoming book, The Second Coming, Sex and the Next Generation's Fight Over Its Future. Carter, welcome to What A Day.

Thank you for having me. So what was your reaction to those policies the Trump administration is reportedly considering to convince people to have more kids, like baby bonuses and medals of honor for mothers of six children or more?

Honestly, I didn't find it to be a huge surprise. I think the Trump administration has been pretty open about what it would like the American family to look like. I think the thing that really struck me, though, is that some of these policies are very expensive. You know, a baby bonus, $5,000 per mother, expanding the child tax credit. Those are things that would require enormous government spending. And we have not really seen the Trump administration be interested in that. If anything, they're slashing the government budget dramatically.

So I think what would likely happen if any of these policies come to pass are the cheaper policies, like the medals for motherhood. I don't know. Those medals could be pretty fancy. They could put like diamonds in them. They could just plate them in gold. And I think they better if they're going to be giving them to women with six children. I know. I've got two and I don't know if a medal could make a third one worth it. What are some pro-natalist moves that the Trump administration has made so far?

Well, the major headline move that the Trump administration has taken is that the transportation secretary put out a memo saying that the administration should direct its resources in transportation and supporting infrastructure towards areas that have birth rates and marriage rates that are higher than the national average. The interesting thing

thing about this is that actually Republicans do tend to have higher birth rates and higher marriage rates than Democrats. So in practice, this would mean directing more resources towards areas where the Trump administration, frankly, has more voters. That's so interesting. It was a memo, though. Is it actual policy or is it just a directive that Secretary Duffy issued?

I don't think we've actually seen any real action come out of this. And this is also what is interesting about the Trump administration's push towards pronatalism, is they have a lot of rhetoric around pronatalism, but it's not clear that they're actually moving to support American families into having the kinds of families and the size of families that Americans may want. It seems like a really big—it seems like meat for their base oftentimes more so than it actually is a real policy commitment.

And what are some moves that the Trump administration has made so far that you would consider maybe discouraging people from having more children on a practical level?

What we've seen the Trump administration do is dramatically slash the work of researchers that actually work on these issues. So we've seen researchers who work on things like maternal mortality lose their jobs. We've seen researchers who work on things like contraception guidelines lose their jobs. We've seen researchers who work on things like IVF lose their jobs. And at the end of the day, those are things that will likely make it harder for people to have the number of kids they want, have kids when and how they want, which means that ultimately families could suffer.

Other countries have implemented policies to incentivize women to have children. Those policies range anywhere from literally paying families to have kids to providing generous family benefits. Have we seen other governments actually successfully boost their birth rates through policy?

Not really. And that's the thing that's really interesting about this pro-natalist push is that we don't actually really know what works to incentivize people into having more kids. And we have seen more left-leaning countries do this, right? Like Scandinavia has things where they, for example, give baby boxes to new mothers. But it seems like, you know, the more societies advance, the more options they give women, the thing is that women might just not want to have a lot of kids. Right.

Yeah, and on that note, what are the actual reasons that young Americans don't want to have kids? Is the Trump administration even tracking those things before they're trying to come up with solutions? Well, one of the main reasons that people cite when they talk about not wanting to have kids is the climate and concerns about climate change. So I don't really think that the Trump administration is taking that seriously as a concern. Mm-hmm.

Conservatives, religious nutjobs, and tech bros have formed an unlikely alliance under the banner of pronatalism joining forces to fearmonger around the falling birth rate in the U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance has said that it's a, quote, catastrophic problem after famously hating on, quote, childless kids.

cat ladies. Billionaire Elon Musk said that, quote, civilizations will disappear if the birth rate continues to decline globally and that, quote, humanity is dying. He also likes to flex the fact that he has at least 14 kids, seemingly implying that he's helping save humanity, I guess. But what are the actual consequences of declining birth rates that we should be concerned about as reasonable people? Like, why should we also be invested in getting women to have more kids, but in a less weird way?

I don't know that the solution to the problems that people cite is actually convincing women to have more kids. The concern here is that as a population ages, the labor force gets older. We're not going to have a younger labor force that can support that aging population. Something I find interesting about this rise in pronatalism on the right is the divide over in vitro fertilization or IVF. Like religious conservatives are generally opposed to IVF.

In the Times piece, it's pretty clear that the Heritage Foundation, for example, is uncomfortable with the use of the technology as anything but a last resort. But one of Trump's big campaign promises was to pay for IVF treatments for anybody who wants it. He even signed an executive order that called for policy recommendations about how to actually do that. Is the Trump administration or our Republicans at large doing anything else to boost the country's birth rate or even support people who already do want to have kids and plan their families?

I think that it sort of depends on where you are in the country, how much support you're actually getting from the government. As far as IVF goes, I mean, we have seen efforts from Republicans to both push access to IVF and shy away from pushing access to IVF. For example, we've seen in Alabama, there's been efforts to basically shut down the procedure entirely through the Alabama State Supreme Court.

I think this divide over IVF might be the thing that could break the alliance between the tech right and the religious right, because for the religious right, this is a very deeply held belief. They think that embryos and fetuses are people. And so IVF, as it's currently practiced, is just incompatible with that belief. Yeah, I've also heard some noise being made by the tech bro, right, about developing artificial wombs. How do American religious conservatives feel about something like that?

I think we're so far away from artificial wombs that I don't know that they've really taken a stance.

That said, they have pretty firm ideas about what women are for, right? They like women being wives and mothers. And so I don't know that I think artificial wombs really fit into that vision of good life. When I first read about artificial wombs, I remember thinking, these guys really don't know how pregnancy works, do they? They're just sort of like pitching ideas around.

Well, there is, you know, a feminist interest in artificial wombs and giving women more options to avoid having to take on the burden of child rearing and child bearing. But yeah, I don't know that I necessarily trust Elon Musk to make that artificial womb for me. All right. So what is the answer here? Like, how do we convince people to have more kids?

I don't know that there is an answer. The data doesn't show that there's an answer. But if you are concerned about falling birth rates in this country, it does seem like immigration and encouraging immigration and making the United States a welcoming place for immigrants is a way to fix that. And that is not necessarily the direction that we're heading in right now. Carter, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me.

That was Carter Sherman, a reproductive health and justice reporter for The Guardian. We'll link to her work in our show notes. We'll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads.

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Here's what else we're following today. Headlines. Never did. The press runs away with things. No, I have no intention of firing him. That clip has the same energy as the no, I'm just hearing about it now for the first time clip that everybody has seen now. In an abrupt reversal, President Donald Trump Tuesday denied ever having plans to fire his handpicked Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

I would like to see him be a little more active in terms of his idea to lower interest rates. This is a perfect time to lower interest rates.

If he doesn't, is it the end? No, it's not. But it would be good timing. Says the man who last week claimed he could fire Powell if he wanted, that he couldn't wait for his termination and whose own advisors said they were looking into it. But sure, the press ran away with the story. Those crazy reporters printing things you said. Trump's comments about Powell came after another day of bad economic headlines for the White House. In

In a new report, the International Monetary Fund predicted weaker global growth this year than it earlier forecasted, and it specifically pointed to sky-high tariff rates not seen in a century. The IMF also predicted the U.S. will take a bigger economic hit than our peers. But always one to put a rosy spin on Trump's wild gamble with the casino of the world economy, Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt said the White House is making progress on new deals with our trading partners.

During her press briefing Tuesday, she said more than a dozen countries have submitted proposals to avoid the heavy reciprocal tariffs Trump announced at the beginning of this month and then paused. We are moving at Trump speed to ensure these deals are made on behalf of the American worker and the American people. Trump speed, by the way, is the top speed of a golf cart. When it comes to the ongoing trade war with China, Levitt also said, quote, the ball is moving in the right direction on a trade deal. No other details were given.

The Trump administration has insisted it could strike around 90 trade deals over the 90-day pause on some of the president's bigger tariff plans. It's been about two weeks since Trump took us back to pre-Liberation Day existence by reversing the tariffs he'd laid out on Liberation Day. And so far, the number of deals struck sits at, well, it sits at zero. Zilch, nada, big old goose egg.

Less than a week after Google lost a major antitrust case over its advertising monopoly, the tech company was back in court Monday. This time it was to discuss ways to remedy another monopoly it was found to hold over online search. Toward the end of Trump's first term in office, the Department of Justice and a group of states sued Google. They accused it of acting illegally to maintain its dominance in search, in part by striking deals with other companies like Apple to make Google the default browser on their products.

The federal judge agreed with the DOJ in August. Now comes the tough part, unwinding the monopoly.

During opening statements Monday, DOJ lawyers argued Google should be forced to sell off its web browser Chrome and barred from making those exclusive deals with other big tech companies. The DOJ also wants to prevent Google from making similar exclusive deals in the future with its AI products. Lawyers for Google say that's way too much to ask. In a blog post before the hearing Sunday, the company's vice president of regulatory affairs said the recommendations would, quote, hurt

America's consumers, economy, and technological leadership. The court hearings will play out over the next three weeks, and depending on how things go, they could radically reshape Google's parent company, Alphabet, and it could change how billions of people use the internet. The judge overseeing the case said he's likely to make his ruling in August or September. Google has vowed to appeal. Today, the FDA is taking action to remove petroleum-based food dyes from the U.S. food supply and from medications.

For the last 50 years, American children have increasingly been living in a toxic soup of synthetic chemicals. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty McCary announced Tuesday the steps the department is taking to phase out those selected synthetic food dyes across the color spectrum. And of course, joining McCary at that news conference in D.C. was Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He applauded the progress. When I went in a few months or about a month ago,

To meet with a few food companies, I was talking with my staff about these petroleum-based dyes. And I said, if they want to add petroleum, they want to eat petroleum, they ought to add it themselves at home. They shouldn't be feeding it to the rest of us.

Okay, Mr. Cod Liver Oil. And like many announcements from this administration, this was an idea or a wish list, not an actual plan. Removing artificial dyes from our food isn't new either. Some states like California and West Virginia have already passed laws restricting certain dyes in food. The FDA says the totality of scientific evidence indicates that most children have no adverse effects when eating foods that contain color additives. Even though it concludes some evidence suggests certain children may be sensitive to the dyes.

Lawyers and advocates for immigrants are reporting that an increasing number of children have been appearing in immigration court without legal representation. That's according to a Gothamist article out Tuesday. Advocates are concerned that children left to fend for themselves in court are more likely to be deported. But why are more migrant children showing up to immigration court with no attorneys?

If your first thought was that it might have something to do with the Trump administration, then you'd be right. The administration last month ended part of a contract that funds legal fees for children who enter the U.S. on their own. In a memo reviewed by the New York Times, the government had ordered more than 100 nonprofits to stop their work in representing minors. Subcontractors say 26,000 kids are at risk of losing their attorneys because of the contract cancellation.

A federal judge earlier this month ordered legal aid to be temporarily restored to migrant kids without parents in the U.S., but advocates are still ringing the alarm bells. According to Gothamist, most minors who enter the U.S. without an adult speak Spanish and are from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, or Mexico. In New York, children in shelters appeared virtually for a recent immigration hearing. A child as young as four years old sat through the proceeding for only help from workers at the shelter.

Per data from nonprofit research group the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, more than 90% of people who appear in New York state immigration courts without legal counsel are eventually ordered deported. In the words of the co-managing director of a New York City-based nonprofit, the cruelty is really apparent to all of us out here in the field. And that's the news. ♪

Before we go, a new episode of Polar Coaster just dropped. Dan is joined by top Democratic pollster Molly Murphy, president of Impact Research. They're diving into the data behind the headlines. Is Trump actually feeling the heat from economic turmoil? Should Democrats be talking about immigration? Don't miss out on this exclusive series available only to Friends of the Pod. Head to crooked.com slash friends to join today and for the month of April, enjoy a 30-day free trial to the Friends of the Pod community. But hurry, this offer ends soon.

That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, congratulate your fellow Americans on successfully mass bullying Elon Musk, and tell your friends to listen. If you're into reading and not just the Tesla Q1 earnings report like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Erin Ryan, and please stop trying to convince me to have more babies. I'm tired.

Water Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Emily Fore. Our producer is Michelle Alloy. We had production help today from Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters, and Julia Clare. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adrienne Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gillyard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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