DNC to roll out mobile IVF billboard at Trump Long Island rally

Democrats aren’t going to allow former president Donald Trump to visit Democratic New York quietly. The Democratic National Committee is planning to send a mobile billboard to Trump’s Long Island rally Wednesday, hitting him on recent action by Republicans to block a bill to protect IVF access.

The DNC will have a mobile billboard circling the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, where Trump will hold his rare New York rally. It will play a roughly minute-and-a-half video focused on right-wing attacks on in vitro fertilization, better known as IVF. The issue has become a major reproductive rights fight for Democrats after Alabama’s abortion ban was interpreted to restrict access to the fertilization treatment as well after the state’s top court ruled that frozen embryos count as protected children.

Republicans – including Trump – quickly came out to distance themselves from the ruling in order to espouse their support of IVF. But GOP members of the Senate on Tuesday for a second time blocked a bill that would offer federal protections for IVF and require insurance companies to cover it. The bill needed 60 votes to advance, but only two Republicans voted in favor of the legislation in the almost evenly divided Senate, with every other Republican voting against it. 

The failed vote makes up the crux of the mobile billboard, criticizing Trump for failing to encourage Republican senators to support the legislation despite his continued public support for IVF. He has recently said that he would make either the government or insurance pay for IVF were he to become president again. The video playing on the billboard also referenced Project 2025 – a wide-reaching plan from the rightwing Heritage Foundation that Trump has tried to distance himself from – and the fact the conservative plan of action includes banning IVF.

Both sides have accused each other of political grandstanding. Republicans attempted to introduce their own versions of the bill while espousing support for IVF and Democrats immediately seized on the vote as a campaign talking point, with today’s billboard as a prime example. “Yesterday, MAGA Republican senators laid the groundwork for Donald Trump to continue his attacks on IVF nationwide if elected,” said DNC spokesperson Addy Toevs. 

Posting from her official government account, Gov. Kathy Hochul also took aim at Republicans on Tuesday over the vote. “Senate Republicans just denied millions of Americans the right to IVF,” she wrote on X. “They claim to be for family values. Today’s vote proves where they really stand.” Hochul is working to help elect Democrats to Congress in New York after losses in the state contributed to the party losing the House in 2022. Two of the major battleground races are happening on Long Island, with Trump’s rally taking place in the district of Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, a seat the left wants to flip.

Trump, meanwhile, offered a preview of what he plans to focus on at his rally Wednesday in a post to his social media platform Truth Social. Notably, he said he would bring back the state and local tax deduction that he was pivotal in capping as part of his 2017 tax law. Although Republicans across the country had resisted reinstating the full SALT deduction, the issue is a major one in New York’s suburbs like Long Island as both Democrats and Republicans work to get the deduction restored for their constituents. “I will turn it around, get SALT back, lower your Taxes, and so much more,” Trump wrote in his post. “I’ll work with the Democrat Governor and Mayor, and make sure the funding is there to bring New York State back to levels it hasn’t seen in 50 years.”