A few months ago, I did something pretty standard for journalists: I asked for a press pass. I had learned about NatalCon, a conference about declining global birth rates that was to be held in March in Austin, and I figured it might be interesting to attend. A few hours after I sent the press pass request, I began to get notifications on X.
The organizer of the conference, Kevin Dolan, had tweeted out my request to his 91,000 followers. “The balls on these people lmao,” he wrote. “You want me to buy you dinner & pay for your booze because you can’t afford to come harsh the vibes & slander my friends on your own dime.”
When I tried to pay to register, my application was rejected.
Long story short, I decided to go anyway—and while Dolan had security escort me out, I still managed to have quite a strange weekend with the pronatalists—many of whom, it turned out, were actually only worried about declining birth rates among a select few.
“Western civilization isn’t just worth preserving—it’s worth fighting for,” far-right influencer and Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec told the crowd. “This is a war, and natalism is our sword and shield, and we will not abandon the front line.”
As I wrote in my report, in the pronatalists’ war for the West, the political winds seem to be at their backs. Right-wing political commentator Steve Turley offered the attendees more specifics. “If Vice President JD Vance has his way,” he said, “our whole electoral process may be recalibrating around this new pronatal biopolitics.” There are signs that this is not just wishful thinking. DOGE head Elon Musk, Vice President Vance, and President Trump himself have repeated pronatalist talking points, including remarks about immigrants’ “bad genes.”
Read more about my weird adventure with the politically ascendent pronatalists.
—Kiera Butler
