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HIV groups praise Obama for 2013 budget request

Domestic programs see increase, but research and int’l efforts cut

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President Obama’s budget request for the upcoming fiscal year has won praise for including an increase in funds for domestic HIV treatment programs, although concerns persist about flat-funding for research programs and reductions in the chief program aimed at fighting the global AIDS epidemic.

The White House unveiled on Monday the president’s $3.8 trillion proposal to fund the U.S. government for fiscal year 2013, which includes funds for federally funded HIV/AIDS programs. The proposal was sent to Congress for lawmakers to act on and amend before passing into law.

Advocates for HIV/AIDS programs were largely happy with the recommendations made by the president on funding levels, which the White House says increases HIV/AIDS funding by $800 million, particularly with the Ryan White AIDS Drugs Assistance Programs, which provides grants to states for HIV/AIDS support services.

Carl Schmid, deputy executive director of the AIDS Institute, said the budget demonstrates Obama’s “strong commitment” to fight HIV by increasing funds “for prevention and lifesaving care and treatment for those who cannot afford it in the United States.”

“President Obama recognizes the importance of the federal government’s role in addressing infectious diseases, such as HIV, and the need to provide care and treatment to people with HIV/AIDS to keep them healthy and reduce new infections,” Schmid said. “We now urge Congress to show the same level of support as it considers federal spending priorities for the upcoming year.”

Under the budget, funding for the Ryan White AIDS Drug Assistance Program would increase by $102 million over the FY-12 levels that Congress appropriated for a total of $1 billion. Additionally, the president also proposes an increase of $20 million for Part C of the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program to fund primary care for more than 550,000 people who have HIV/AIDS.

The increase will likely be welcome to news to individuals on wait lists for these programs. According to the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors, 4,118 people are on ADAP waiting lists in 12 states and more than 445 people in six states have been disenrolled from the program due to budget constraints and growing enrollment.

Brian Hujdich, executive director of HealthHIV, also commended the president for increasing domestic HIV/AIDS funding, which he said is necessary until the government fully implements the health care reform law signed in 2009.

“The president has clearly identified HIV as a priority in 2013 by increasing funding for HIV care and treatment to those in the U.S. who cannot afford it, expanding access to life-saving HIV medication for the uninsured and underinsured, and increasing HIV prevention funding,” Hujdich said.

On World AIDS Day in December, President Obama announced an additional $35 million for the ADAP program and $15 million more for Part C of the Ryan White program. The proposed budget continues funds for those programs into FY-13 and increases it.

But funding for Ryan White hasn’t increased across the board. Obama proposes a decrease of $8 million to Part D of the Ryan White Program, which funds programs aimed at youth, women and families.

Other domestic HIV/AIDS programs are also seeing continued funds. The proposal requests $330 million for the Department of Housing & Urban Development’s Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) program, which addresses housing needs for people with HIV/AIDS. The funding level this programs has been reduced by $2 million.

The president proposes an increase of HIV funding at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) by $40 million. These funds are expected to help CDC focus on communities most impacted by HIV, including blacks and gay men, by increasing testing programs and linking people to care.

Obama also restores a $10 million cut to HIV Adolescent and School Health as young people continue to account for new HIV infections. Congress cut that program in FY-12 by 25 percent of its budget.

Despite these funds, advocates are also concerned about flat-level funding for research programs that develop new ways to combat HIV/AIDS. The National Institutes for Health, the nation’s medical research agency, was allocated $31 billion in the president’s budget proposal —the same overall level as FY-12.

With regard to specific HIV/AIDS initiatives at NIH, the budget proposes $3.1 billion for intramural and extramural HIV/AIDS-related research. Funding for HIV/AIDS research was about $3.2 billion in FY-12.

Michael Cole-Schwartz, spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, expressed concern about funding for these research programs while generally supporting the level of HIV/AIDS funding in the budget.

“Given the constraints imposed by last year’s budget agreement, we are very happy to see some significant increases in key areas, including for the AIDS Drug Assistance Programs and early intervention in vulnerable populations,” Cole-Schwartz said. “However, we are concerned by flat funding and cuts in other areas, particularly at the National Institutes of Health, where ongoing research on HIV/AIDS is critical to the goal of ending the epidemic.”

Spencer Lieb, the AIDS Institute’s HIV/AIDS research coordinator, said the flat-level funding for NIH is peculiar given the president’s past support for this program.

“This is surprising given the recognition President Obama has given to the recent monumental advances in biomedical prevention research conducted by the NIH and the need for continued prevention research, including on vaccines and new drug therapies,” Lieb said.

Additionally, the budget makes cuts to efforts to combat HIV/AIDS programs overseas. Obama’s proposal cuts more than a half billion dollars, or almost 13 percent, from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which was established by President George W. Bush to provide anti-retroviral treatment to people with AIDS overseas.

Judith Aberg, chair of the HIV Medicine Association, said in a statement funding for PEPFAR in Obama’s request “falls short” of support needed “to put us on course to end AIDS globally.”

“The president is not providing the resources necessary to fulfill his commitment to putting 6 million on HIV treatment under the program or to scale up male circumcision or prevention of vertical transmission programs,” Aberg said. “Now is not the time to retreat on our investment in either of these lifesaving programs.”

Shin Inouye, a White House spokesperson, justified the reductions in PEPFAR by saying the program is “a real life success story of doing more with less” because it continues efficiency while lowering costs.

“The most important metric for PEPFAR is lives saved, not dollars spent, and through smart investments we are delivering results,” Inouye said.

According to the White House, the necessary funds for PEPFAR are lower because of generic drugs, the ability to ship commodities more cheaply in addition to task-shfiting to nurses and community health workers. Inouye said the cost to the United States per-patient of providing treatment for AIDS patients has fallen by over 50 percent since 2008.

 

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New York

Men convicted of murdering two men in NYC gay bar drugging scheme sentenced

One of the victims, John Umberger, was D.C. political consultant

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(Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

A New York judge on Wednesday sentenced three men convicted of killing a D.C. political consultant and another man who they targeted at gay bars in Manhattan.

NBC New York notes a jury in February convicted Jayqwan Hamilton, Jacob Barroso, and Robert DeMaio of murder, robbery, and conspiracy in relation to druggings and robberies that targeted gay bars in Manhattan from March 2021 to June 2022.

John Umberger, a 33-year-old political consultant from D.C., and Julio Ramirez, a 25-year-old social worker, died. Prosecutors said Hamilton, Barroso, and DeMaio targeted three other men at gay bars.

The jury convicted Hamilton and DeMaio of murdering Umberger. State Supreme Court Judge Felicia Mennin sentenced Hamilton and DeMaio to 40 years to life in prison.

Barroso, who was convicted of killing Ramirez, received a 20 years to life sentence.

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National

Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information

Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources

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HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is named as a defendant in the lawsuit. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Nine private medical and public health advocacy organizations, including two from D.C., filed a lawsuit on May 20 in federal court in Seattle challenging what it calls the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s illegal deletion of dozens or more of its webpages containing health related information, including HIV information.

The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, names as defendants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS itself, and several agencies operating under HHS and its directors, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration.

“This action challenges the widespread deletion of public health resources from federal agencies,” the lawsuit states. “Dozens (if not more) of taxpayer-funded webpages, databases, and other crucial resources have vanished since January 20, 2025, leaving doctors, nurses, researchers, and the public scrambling for information,” it says.

 “These actions have undermined the longstanding, congressionally mandated regime; irreparably harmed Plaintiffs and others who rely on these federal resources; and put the nation’s public health infrastructure in unnecessary jeopardy,” the lawsuit continues.

It adds, “The removal of public health resources was apparently prompted by two recent executive orders – one focused on ‘gender ideology’ and the other targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) programs. Defendants implemented these executive orders in a haphazard manner that resulted in the deletion (inadvertent or otherwise) of health-related websites and databases, including information related to pregnancy risks, public health datasets, information about opioid-use disorder, and many other valuable resources.”

 The lawsuit does not mention that it was President Donald Trump who issued the two executive orders in question. 

A White House spokesperson couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit. 

While not mentioning Trump by name, the lawsuit names as defendants in addition to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., Matthew Buzzelli, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health; Martin Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; Thomas Engels, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration; and Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management. 

The 44-page lawsuit complaint includes an addendum with a chart showing the titles or descriptions of 49 “affected resource” website pages that it says were deleted because of the executive orders. The chart shows that just four of the sites were restored after initially being deleted.

 Of the 49 sites, 15 addressed LGBTQ-related health issues and six others addressed HIV issues, according to the chart.   

“The unannounced and unprecedented deletion of these federal webpages and datasets came as a shock to the medical and scientific communities, which had come to rely on them to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, assist physicians and other clinicians in daily care, and inform the public about a wide range of healthcare issues,” the lawsuit states.

 “Health professionals, nonprofit organizations, and state and local authorities used the websites and datasets daily in care for their patients, to provide resources to their communities, and promote public health,” it says. 

Jose Zuniga, president and CEO of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC), one of the organizations that signed on as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement that the deleted information from the HHS websites “includes essential information about LGBTQ+ health, gender and reproductive rights, clinical trial data, Mpox and other vaccine guidance and HIV prevention resources.”

 Zuniga added, “IAPAC champions evidence-based, data-informed HIV responses and we reject ideologically driven efforts that undermine public health and erase marginalized communities.”

Lisa Amore, a spokesperson for Whitman-Walker Health, D.C.’s largest LGBTQ supportive health services provider, also expressed concern about the potential impact of the HHS website deletions.

 “As the region’s leader in HIV care and prevention, Whitman-Walker Health relies on scientific data to help us drive our resources and measure our successes,” Amore said in response to a request for comment from  the Washington Blade. 

“The District of Columbia has made great strides in the fight against HIV,” Amore said. “But the removal of public facing information from the HHS website makes our collective work much harder and will set HIV care and prevention backward,” she said. 

The lawsuit calls on the court to issue a declaratory judgement that the “deletion of public health webpages and resources is unlawful and invalid” and to issue a preliminary or permanent injunction ordering government officials named as defendants in the lawsuit “to restore the public health webpages and resources that have been deleted and to maintain their web domains in accordance with their statutory duties.”

It also calls on the court to require defendant government officials to “file a status report with the Court within twenty-four hours of entry of a preliminary injunction, and at regular intervals, thereafter, confirming compliance with these orders.”

The health organizations that joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs include the Washington State Medical Association, Washington State Nurses Association, Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Academy Health, Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Fast-Track Cities Institute, International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, National LGBT Cancer Network, and Vermont Medical Society. 

The Fast-Track Cities Institute and International Association of Providers of AIDS Care are based in D.C.

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U.S. Federal Courts

Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections

Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent

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Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas (Screen capture: YouTube)

Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has struck down guidelines by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission designed to protect against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation.

The EEOC in April 2024 updated its guidelines to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which determined that discrimination against transgender people constituted sex-based discrimination as proscribed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

To ensure compliance with the law, the agency recommended that employers honor their employees’ preferred pronouns while granting them access to bathrooms and allowing them to wear dress code-compliant clothing that aligns with their gender identities.

While the the guidelines are not legally binding, Kacsmaryk ruled that their issuance created “mandatory standards” exceeding the EEOC’s statutory authority that were “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.”

“Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women,” he wrote in the opinion.

The case, which was brought by the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, presents the greatest setback for LGBTQ inclusive workplace protections since President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order on the first day of his second term directing U.S. federal agencies to recognize only two genders as determined by birth sex.

Last month, top Democrats from both chambers of Congress reintroduced the Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ-inclusive protections against discrimination into federal law, covering employment as well as areas like housing and jury service.

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