President Donald Trump and the House Republican caucus have grown increasingly divided over the past few months, with House Speaker Mike Johnson stuck helplessly in the middle, ever since a removal petition over documents from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation threatened to spark an insurrection within the Republican Party.
Now, a Democratic senator is trying to drive another rift between Johnson and Trump over one of the president’s key campaign promises to young families.
On Sunday, Sen. Tammy Duckworth said Johnson should be added to the list of Republicans whom Trump often blames for undermining his agenda. The Illinois Democrat has appeared on CNN state of the union address And Johnson is seen trying to block an important part of his 2024 campaign agenda: support for making in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments affordable or free for American families.
She spoke to anchor Dana Bash about a letter she wrote to the president, which was accompanied by a Trump-esque headline: “Warning: Speaker Johnson wants you to be the dead daddy of IVF.”
“This is a … personal thing for me because I’ve seen so many of my comrades at Walter Reed and other military medical centers lose their fertility as a result of their military service,” Duckworth said, noting that infertility rates among veterans are still much higher than among civilians.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth calls on Speaker Mike Johnson to drop his opposition to expanding IVF support for military families, saying both Democrats and Republicans support it (Getty Images)
Her comments came after Military.com released a report detailing congressional discussions of the National Defense Authorization Act, known as the NDAA. The annual bill provides funding for the U.S. Armed Forces. Johnson is leading an effort to remove language from the legislation aimed at expanding IVF coverage for military members, Military.com reported.
Currently, IVF coverage is only available to service members if the infertility is deemed to be caused by “serious or serious illness or injury while on active duty,” the news outlet reported. New provisions in this year’s National Defense Authorization Act would extend that coverage to all service members, regardless of the cause of infertility.
The senator pointed to one reason the program is often inadequate in an interview Sunday: She believes many female service members want financial support to freeze their eggs before entering a combat zone, rather than seeking treatment or treatment afterward.
On Sunday night, as Washington entered the second week of the holiday month, House lawmakers released the text of the 2026 NDAA. In a sign of Johnson’s success, the mammoth legislation, which totals more than 3,000 pages, does not include provisions to expand access to in vitro fertilization for service members.
The policy is one of Trump’s most unique campaign positions since his 2024 campaign. While his three presidential campaigns have relied on support from the Christian conservative right, including those who oppose abortion, the president’s stance on IVF runs counter to the views of many hardline abortion opponents, given how human embryos are created, stored and sometimes destroyed as part of the IVF treatment process.
In October, the president announced at a White House event that his administration had been in talks with some pharmacies and a drug manufacturer to lower the cost of a commonly used IVF drug.
Duckworth said in the interview that it was Johnson and House Republicans’ own ties to the religious right, not Democrats, that were holding back further progress on the president’s plans. Trump acknowledged some of the backlash from conservatives at an October event and quipped that his plan was “pro-life.”
Speaker Mike Johnson is tasked with managing an increasingly unruly House Republican caucus (Getty Images)
“No one objects to this except Speaker Johnson and his religious views,” Duckworth said. “Because if you believe that a fertilized egg is a person, has a personality, then certain processes in IVF are considered murder.”
It’s also a measure Trump has been working to pass legislation to implement. Expanding IVF benefits to all service members would mark his biggest success in that effort; Republicans in Congress have yet to move to implement the broader policy calls for which he campaigned, including passing legislation that would force health insurance plans to cover IVF in a way that would make it a more affordable option for families. $50,000 is generally considered the average cost for a successful pregnancy through IVF, which includes the cost of medications and often multiple cycles of treatment.
Meanwhile, Johnson is dealing with lingering resentment and rebellious attitudes in the House. Prominent women in his caucus, including rogues like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mace and loyalists like Rep. Elise Stefanik, have increasingly publicly criticized his leadership, while others have predicted in anonymous comments to reporters that Johnson’s term as speaker will not last past 2026.
House Republicans hold a slim majority in the House, which will shrink in January with Greene’s resignation and Mace’s resignation. Other members are reportedly considering the same thing.
If current trends continue, Democrats are poised to take control of the House of Representatives next year. Republicans remain mired in the affordability crisis that doomed Joe Biden’s presidency and Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign; Trump continues to dismiss it as a “Democrat hoax.”
Congress will face a deadline on the topic in the coming weeks as federal subsidies for the Affordable Care Act’s public health exchange programs are set to expire at the end of the year, causing annual premiums to skyrocket for millions of people if they are not extended or addressed.
