Nearly 500 Activists showed up to lobby Congress on Wednesday, April 3 to protest the cuts to the CDC and the government's HIV Prevention and Treatment programs.
On Tuesday, April 1, thousands of government workers responsible for food safety and disease prevention were laid off by the Trump administration. Among the nearly 2,400 terminations within the Centers for Disease Control were multiple employees working at the U.S. Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy.
“We are losing our nation’s ability to prevent HIV,” said HIV + Hepatitis Policy Institute Executive Director Carl Schmid in a statement posted to the group’s social media. “We will feel the impacts of these decisions for years to come, and it will certainly, sadly, translate into an increase in new HIV infections and higher medical costs.”
As it happens, the advocacy group AIDS United had long planned a large rally and lobbying event at the Capitol on Wednesday. In light of the Trump administration’s moves, a new level of urgency motivated the group of nearly 500 activists from around the country who attended.
Activists CJ Tobe and Kevin Chadwin Davis were on hand for the AIDS United event on Capitol Hill to lobby Congress.
Among those at the Capitol on Wednesday was HIV activist and healthcare professional C.J. Tobe. “We walked the halls of Congress to advocate for funds for HIV prevention, Ryan White, Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS (HOPWA), Medicaid, and for Trans rights,” Tobe told Outvoices.
Although the Trump administration claims its efforts are aimed at saving money, Tobe says that outcome is unlikely. “Cost cutting at the CDC will cost the nation more money in the long term, and it will cost lives.”
Budget Cuts or Medical Care
Karla Quezada-Torres, a long-time public health HIV community activist, said the cuts by the Trump administration were dangerous, and sent a signal. “These moves have made it clear that this administration cares more about cutting the budget than they do ending HIV,” she told Outvoices. “That’s not just a dangerous intersection; it’s a broken promise.”
During President Trump’s first term, he promised what amounted to a full-court press in the fight against HIV.
“In recent years, we have made remarkable progress in the fight against HIV and AIDS,” Trump said in his 2019 State of the Union address. “Scientific breakthroughs have brought a once-distant dream within reach. My budget will ask Democrats and Republicans to make the needed commitment to eliminate the HIV epidemic in the United States within 10 years. Together, we will defeat AIDS in America.”
That clarion call was met with excitement and praise from the HIV community. Now, less than 100 days into his second term, that commitment would seem at odds with newer administration priorities.
These layoffs come on the heels of earlier cuts that unilaterally shuttered hundreds of research grants aimed at preventing the spread of HIV. According to an analysis by the science journal Nature, the US National Institutes of Health cancelled over 230 research grants funding HIV and AIDS. This has led to nationwide confusion not only for field researchers but also for those patients involved in the studies, many of whom were only able to access medications for both prevention and treatment because they participated in those studies.
Could Cuts to Prevention Efforts Lead to More HIV Cases?
When posting about the impact the cuts will have, Julia Marcus, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Boston’s Harvard Medical School, issued a dire warning: “The likely outcome is going to be a resurgence of HIV.”
All of this comes as the Trump administration seeks to shrink the size of the federal government. Newly confirmed HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr announced last week that his agency would cut 20,000 employees, which equates to nearly a quarter of the agency’s workforce.
However, HHS is pushing back against assertions that the federal government is walking away from HIV prevention and treatment. On Tuesday, it issued a statement saying that the infectious-disease office is not closing. Instead, it claims work on HIV and AIDS “is being consolidated and streamlined” in an effort to prevent “multiple departments from working on the same things.”
HHS has not clarified to which departments those efforts have been moved nor which staff members would be tasked with that work, now that thousands have been locked out of their respective buildings. The agency has also failed to provide a timeline for when this work would resume.
While the information from HHS is murky, for activists like Tobe, it’s time to take a page out of the playbook from the late legendary activist Larry Kramer. “Now is not the time to sit back or to hide,” Tobe said. “Don’t think they won’t come after you. They will, and for your loved ones. Now is the time to act up and fight back so we can save lives.”
