"I want more babies in the United States of America," Vice President J.D. Vance told the crowd at the March for Life rally in January.
American babymaking, or the lack of it, is an old hobbyhorse for Vance: Before becoming vice president, he advocated such ideas as taxing childlessness and giving children voting rights that could be exercised by their parents. With Vance's elevation to the top ranks of American politics, the cause—often referred to as pronatalism—has become a priority for the MAGA faithful and its most visible figures.
Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk, who spent the early months of 2025 as a prominent fixture in the White House, has called a collapsing birth rate "the biggest danger civilization faces" and said "it should be considered a national emergency to have kids." Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, a father of nine, told his agency to prioritize transportation projects in "communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average." And President Donald Trump himself predicted in March that he would become "known as the fertilization president."
