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** Daily Newsletter: October 17, 2025
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** In today’s newsletter:
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RYAN T. ANDERSON: Trump’s IVF Policy Could Be Worse, But It’s Still Bad ([link removed])
ASHLEY FRAWLEY: Digital IDs and the Dream of Universal Compliance ([link removed])
LIEL LEIBOVITZ: Home, Not Real Estate ([link removed])
Welcome to the First Things daily newsletter, your guide to the ideas and events shaping our shared moral, cultural, and religious life. Each article we publish continues the conversations First Things has led for thirty-five years.
Stay with us as we explore Trump’s new IVF policy
, the U.K.’s digital ID reckoning, and the spiritual side of real estate.
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** Trump’s IVF Policy Could Be Worse, But It’s Still Bad ([link removed])
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** Ryan T. Anderson
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Yesterday, President Trump unveiled his administration’s official policy on IVF. The policy aims to make IVF cheaper and more accessible but does not offer direct government subsidies nor mandate that insurance cover the procedure as some feared. Ryan T. Anderson argues that though the motivation to assist families in having children is laudable, support for IVF is misguided, given that more children are killed in the process than are ever born. “Alas, the White House event displayed no sensitivity to—or even awareness of—these concerns,” writes Anderson.
For further reading: Ericka Andersen dove into the thorny legal battles that result from IVF in “Who Owns the Embryos ([link removed]) ?” (April 2025). The world of embryo adoption deals with tricky questions over who is responsible for the tiniest human beings, what happens to the ones who are consigned to a lifetime on ice, and the ethics around bringing them into the world.
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** Digital IDs and the Dream of Universal Compliance ([link removed])
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** Ashley Frawley
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The U.K. is considering implementing a universal digital ID, which would be based on unclear biometric data. Ashley Frawley writes today that BritCard, initially proposed as a hinderance to illegal immigration and since hailed as the solution to everything from finding utility bills to hate speech, “is a solution in search of a problem.” The problem, ultimately, “is the people themselves” and the inherently messy nature of society.
For further reading: Digital IDs were a worrying part of the “Great Reset”—a proposal for top-down control over people, especially their movement, in the interest of protecting the planet. Klaus Schwab, chairman of the World Economic Forum, claimed that the COVID-19 pandemic proved that such restructuring was possible. C. C. Pecknold wrote about how the aim of the Great Reset, much like Britain’s digital IDs, is to solve the human condition—a fruitless task for humans but possible through Christ (“The Only Great Reset ([link removed]) ,” 2020).
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** Home, Not Real Estate ([link removed])
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** Liel Leibovitz
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From the November issue: As the hope of buying property feels more and more out of reach to many Americans, real estate increasingly occupies the realm of fantasy. And though fantasies reveal something about our desires, people can be bad at understanding what they really want, Liel Leibovitz writes in his monthly column. He draws on New York broker Scott Harris’s book The Pursuit of Home, which observes that the internet “has done to home ownership what pornography has done to human sexuality: take a magical, intricate, and layered pursuit built on trust and presence and long-term relationships and turn it into a frantic and futile search for fast, facile gratification that severely damages our ability to live rewarding lives in the real world.”
For further reading: The desperation for the perfect piece of real estate ironically betrays the disappearance of “home” as a sacred realm separate from public life. Ronald W. Dworkin wrote in “The Last Sanctuary ([link removed]) ” (June/July 2024) that as the boundaries between work and home erode, the body becomes the last place where freedom can be expressed.
Upcoming Events
* November 2, 2025: A Night of Poetry with Ben Myers | New York, NY. Register here ([link removed]) . ([link removed])
* November 3, 2025: The 38th Annual Erasmus Lecture: In Praise of Translation with Bishop Erik Varden | New York, NY. Register here. ([link removed])
* November 11, 2025: The Future of Higher Education, a discussion with Mark Bauerlein and Mark Regnerus | Irving, TX. Register here. ([link removed])
* January 9, 2026: Second Annual Neuhaus Lecture at the New College of Florida | Sarasota, FL. Details coming soon.
Until next time.
Virginia Aabram's signature
** VIRGINIA AABRAM
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Newsletter Editor
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