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"By blocking access to IVF and trying to control how families grow, MAGA Republicans in the Senate are proving just how far they're willing to go to impose Trump's out-of-touch, authoritarian vision."
In another effort to call out Republicans in Congress for pushing deadly policies that restrict reproductive freedom, Senate Democrats on Tuesday held a vote to open debate on legislation that is intended "to protect and expand nationwide access to fertility treatment, including in vitro fertilization."
The tally was 51-44, short of the 60 votes needed to start debate on the Right to IVF Act (S. 4555). Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) voted with every Democrat and Independent present to advance the bill, while Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.), Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), and JD Vance (R-Ohio) did not participate.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) previously held a vote on the legislation in July—part of a broader strategy in the lead-up to the November election that has also featured votes on the Right to Contraception Act and the Reproductive Freedom for Women Act. In all cases, Republican senators have blocked the bills from advancing to final votes.
In addition to deciding the makeup of Congress, U.S. voters are set to choose whether former Republican President Donald Trump or Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris returns to the White House. Throughout the contest, Harris has campaigned on expanding reproductive freedom at the federal level and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, has shared how his family was made possible through fertility treatments.
Harris said on social media after Tuesday's vote that Senate Republicans "made clear—again—that they will not protect access to the fertility treatments many couples need to fulfill their dream of having a child."
Meanwhile, Trump has both bragged about his role in reversing Roe v. Wade, which enabled a fresh wave of state-level abortion bans, but also attempted to distance himself from the most extreme laws and proposals. He also chose Vance as his running mate, heightening fears of what their election would mean for reproductive rights nationwide.
"By all accounts, a vote to protect something as basic and popular as IVF shouldn't be necessary. But sadly it is very necessary, thanks to attacks against reproductive care by Donald Trump and his Project 2025," Schumer said Tuesday, referring to the Heritage Foundation-led initiative designed for the next Republican president that Trump has tried to disavow.
"From the moment Donald Trump's MAGA Supreme Court reversed Roe, the hard-right made clear they would keep going. As we saw earlier this year in Alabama, IVF has become one of the hard-right's next targets," Schumer continued, recalling the state Supreme Court's February decision recognizing frozen embryos as children.
After the vote, the Democratic leader declared that "Senate Republicans just blocked the bill to protect IVF—AGAIN. They keep trying to tell everyone who will listen that they support IVF. But their actions speak louder."
Like Schumer and other critics, Christina Harvey, executive director of Stand Up America, pointed to Project 2025 on Thursday.
"Donald Trump can try to walk away from Project 2025, but his fingerprints are all over it. At least 140 former Trump administration and campaign officials helped craft this far-right agenda," she said in a statement. "Trump's public disavowal is nothing more than an attempt to deceive voters while his allies in Congress push the very policies he's pretending to distance himself from."
"Project 2025 isn't a distant, abstract threat—it's a real, extremist agenda that MAGA Republicans are eager to implement. By blocking access to IVF and trying to control how families grow, MAGA Republicans in the Senate are proving just how far they're willing to go to impose Trump's out-of-touch, authoritarian vision," Harvey added. "As more Americans learn about the policies in Project 2025, the stakes at the ballot box this November will become even clearer."
Democratic National Committee spokesperson Aida Ross targeted the Republican vice presidential candidate, saying that "JD Vance celebrated when Donald Trump 'proudly' overturned Roe v. Wade and paved the way for threats to IVF access for Americans who want to start or grow their family. Today, Vance couldn't be bothered to show up to vote on protecting IVF access, after voting against the same protections in June."
"Vance is showing us who he is and we should believe him," Ross added. "The American people will remember that Vance didn't show up for them, and they'll make that clear when they reject the Trump-Vance ticket's anti-choice Project 2025 agenda in November."
American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic super political action committee, said the vote shows Republicans "are full of sh*t on protecting IVF," specifically calling out Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), and Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who are seeking reelection this November and have previously claimed to support access to fertility treatments.
"Sens. Rick Scott, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Deb Fischer's hypocrisy on IVF underscores the Republican Party's refusal to support and protect reproductive rights," said American Bridge Senate communications director Nico Delgado. "Voters already know the GOP's damaging stance on abortion—and each vote against protecting IVF only deepens their credibility crisis."
Indivisible's co-founder and co-executive Director Leah Greenberg similarly said in a statement that "Trump and the GOP have been scrambling to hide their unpopular, outdated views on reproductive rights, but they're not fooling anybody."
Greenberg continued:
When Republicans send mixed messages on TV and online, look at their voting records. They've consistently voted against protecting personal freedoms—from access to abortion and contraceptives to IVF. For decades, they've chipped away at reproductive rights, and it's only gotten worse since Trump entered politics.
"As attacks on reproductive rights intensify, including MAGA efforts against contraception, we can't let our guard down. Indivisible proudly supports Sen. Schumer and Democrats for not only standing up for these fundamental rights, but continuously calling out their Republican colleagues' blatant lies.
Millions rely on contraception and IVF to build their families and lives, including Gov. Walz who has shared his family's struggles with fertility. These rights are fundamental and widely supported, and Republicans are straight-up trying to take them away. It is not only weird—it's dangerous.
"We commend Senate Democrats for taking decisive and strategic action by bringing this bill for a vote," she added. "Between now and November, we'll make sure every single voter sees through Republican bullshit and knows they voted against IVF protections today."
More than 40 former members of Congress said the ETHICS Act is sorely needed because it "addresses pressing issues, especially low levels of trust in Congress and the appearance of insider trading."
A bipartisan group of more than 40 former federal lawmakers on Monday urged the U.S. Senate to vote on proposed legislation that would ban sitting members of Congress from buying or selling stocks and other financial holdings.
"We, the undersigned bipartisan former public officials, many of whom served in Congress, write to urge Senate leadership to bring the amended Ending Trading and Holdings In Congressional Stocks (ETHICS) Act to a floor vote before it is set to sunset at the end of the 118th Congress," the letter's signers wrote in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
Signatories include former Sens. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) along with Reps. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.), Donna Edwards (D-Md.), Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.), and Leon Panetta (D-Calif.).
"Notably," the ex-lawmakers said, "we propose attaching this crucial legislation to any 'must-pass' package. This legislation merits inclusion in such a package because it addresses pressing issues, especially low levels of trust in Congress and the appearance of insider trading."
The letter continues:
As you are both aware, the discussion of how elected officials trade stocks has been intensifying both inside and outside the Congress for years. In 2022, members of Congress made more than 12,700 individual trades, with dozens of members making above-average gains. A 2022 New York Timesinvestigation reported that a fifth of all lawmakers were trading in companies directly related to their work on a congressional committee.
Critics have long decried existing legislation—including the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 and the Stop Trading Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2012, which require annual financial disclosures by members of Congress—as largely toothless window dressing. Advocates of measures like the ETHICS Act have pushed for more stringent safeguards against self-dealing by members of Congress.
The ETHICS Act—which was introduced in July by Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)—would ban members of Congress, the president, and vice president from buying and selling securities, commodities, futures, options, trusts, and other holdings. It would also prohibit their spouses and dependent children from divesting covered assets starting in 2027. The bill contains robust enforcement mechanisms and noncompliance penalties.
Calls for a vote on the ETHICS Act mounted after last week's revelation that more than 50 U.S. lawmakers held stocks in companies related to the military-industrial complex—even as those same firms received hundreds of billions of dollars in annual business via congressional legislation.
"Without new protections," they warned, "today's supercharged, AI-powered algorithms risk reinforcing and magnifying the discrimination that marginalized communities already experience."
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Ed Markey on Monday sent a letter urging the Biden administration to pursue additional action to protect civil rights and liberties related to federal agencies' use of artificial intelligence.
While recognizing the "strong steps" that the administration has already taken—such as President Joe Biden's October 2023 executive order—Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Markey (D-Mass.) stressed to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Shalanda Young that "more must be done" to mitigate, prevent, and eliminate algorithmic bias and discrimination.
Specifically, the pair is pushing OMB to "require all federal agencies that use AI for consequential decisions to establish a civil rights office, if they do not already have one; ensure all civil rights offices are staffed with experts in algorithmic discrimination; and encourage federal agencies to establish additional safeguards to prevent algorithmic discrimination."
As the Biden White House explained in its 2022 Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, "Algorithmic discrimination occurs when automated systems contribute to unjustified different treatment or impacts disfavoring people based on their race, color, ethnicity, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions, gender identity, intersex status, and sexual orientation), religion, age, national origin, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other classification protected by law."
"Biased algorithms have increasingly been used to make or influence decisions, imposing real harm on Black, Brown, immigrant, and other marginalized communities."
The ACLU earlier this year sued Biden's National Security Agency in hopes of uncovering how it is using AI, and emphasized concerns that the NSA's use of such tools could harm civil rights and liberties.
The senators wrote Monday that "by ensuring that agencies have the resources, personnel, and policies to detect and mitigate bias, we can ensure that the AI age does not come at the expense of already marginalized and vulnerable communities."
"Without new protections," they warned, "today's supercharged, AI-powered algorithms risk reinforcing and magnifying the discrimination that marginalized communities already experience due to poorly trained and tested algorithms."
The senators highlighted how "biased algorithms have increasingly been used to make or influence decisions, imposing real harm on Black, Brown, immigrant, and other marginalized communities," citing examples from mortgage applications, hiring and employment, government benefits, and healthcare.
Earlier this year, OMB issued guidance regarding government use of AI tools, which Damon T. Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, called "a significant step to implement meaningful safeguards."
Noting that the guidance directs agencies to "cease use of any AI that the agency finds cannot adequately mitigate unlawful discrimination," the senators argued that "OMB should also work with agencies to set strict guidelines to prevent algorithmic discrimination within relevant agency jurisdiction."
The OMB, they said, should push agencies to require recipients of federal funds and contracts "to complete pre-development, pre-deployment, and ongoing impact assessments to identify, mitigate, prevent, and eliminate biased AI," as well as "to allow individuals to opt out of AI-powered algorithms used in consequential decisions and instead request human decision-makers."
The senators also urged the office to pressure U.S. agencies to "fund the development of common, accessible resources for auditing algorithms—including open-source tools—for bias, discrimination, and other harms," and to "develop guidance on best practices for mitigating the development and deployment of biased AI-powered algorithms."
"Finally, because a regulation is only as strong as its enforcement, OMB should support federal agencies that take robust enforcement against any company found to violate these rules," the senators wrote, calling on Young to convene inspectors general to coordinate on best practices.
Reporting on the letter, Axiosnoted Monday that "Schumer's bipartisan AI roadmap fell short for civil rights organizations that wanted stronger language on algorithmic bias and discrimination."
Meanwhile, Markey has been a key force behind both the Algorithmic Justice and Online Platform Transparency Act and the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act.