National
AIDS group criticizes Obama as int’l conference approaches
Others praise administration, call attacks ‘misplaced’
Tom Myers, chief of public affairs and general counsel for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (Blade photo by Michael Key)
President Obama is facing criticism from an HIV/AIDS group for not yet committing to speak at the upcoming International AIDS Conference and not doing more to confront the global and domestic epidemic. Other groups, meanwhile, are calling the criticism of Obama misguided.
On Monday, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation held a news conference in D.C. at the offices of Parry, Romani, DeConcini & Symms Associates to call on Obama to speak at the conference and take more action to confront HIV/AIDS. The organization provides advocacy and medical care to more than 166,000 people with HIV/AIDS in 26 countries.
Tom Myers, chief of public affairs and general counsel for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, was particularly critical of Obama for not yet confirming that he’ll make an appearance at the upcoming 19th International AIDS Conference, which will will take place at D.C.’s Walter E. Washington Convention Center during the week of July 22.
“We are here to express our concern and dismay that, less than two weeks from the start of the conference, President Obama has yet to commit to attending it,” Myers said. “In the 20-odd year history of this conference, it is virtually obligatory for the head of state of the host nation to address the conference at its opening.”
It’s the first time since 1990 that the conference will take place in the United States. Organizers agreed to hold the conference in D.C. after the lifting of the HIV travel ban in 2009, which had prevented HIV-positive foreign nationals from entering the United States. The process for removing the ban started under the Bush administration through legislative action and ended under the Obama administration.
As of Monday, the conference hadn’t yet announced whether it had received confirmation that Obama would speak. Shin Inouye, a White House spokesperson, said he had no updates on whether Obama will attend the conference.
Former President Bill Clinton has agreed to speak at the conference this year as well as former first lady Laura Bush. High-ranking administration officials who are set to speak include Secretary of Health & Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and Eric Goosby, U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator.
It’s not unprecedented for the head of state to be absent from the conference, according to organizers. The Canadian prime minister didn’t speak when the conferences were held in that country in 1996 in Vancouver or 2006 in Toronto, nor did Spain’s prime minister attend the 2002 conference in Barcelona. In 1990, then-President George H.W. Bush didn’t address the conference in San Francisco, but then-Secretary of Health & Human Services Louis Sullivan delivered remarks at the closing ceremony.
While criticizing Obama for not confirming his attendance, Myers at the same time said the administration wasn’t doing enough to confront HIV/AIDS and said “it may be better if the president not attend the conference if he is coming without any concrete proposals to fix these problems.”
For starters, Myers criticized the president for cutting funds in the fight against the global AIDS epidemic, calling on Obama to restore the money that was cut from PEPFAR, as part of the fiscal year 2013 budget request.
“Internationally, the Obama administration is the first administration to actually propose cutting funding to America’s efforts, including cutting almost half a billion dollars from PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief,” Myers said. “A retreat in the efforts to fight the global epidemic is unprecedented.”
The sentiment that Obama has taken a step back in global fight against HIV/AIDS was echoed by Omonigho Ufomata, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s director of global policy and advocacy.
“We demand he restore funding to PEPFAR and expand treatment prior to addressing the International AIDS Conference,” Ufomata said. “We have a blueprint for stopping AIDS, i.e get more people on treatment, but that can only be achieved if President Obama gets real about the money.”
Further, Myers faulted Obama for not providing enough support to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, the primary program for providing lifesaving HIV/AIDS drugs to low-income people, saying the wait list for the programs stands at 2,000 people.
“Domestically, President Obama has presided over the longest and deepest waiting lists for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, or ADAP in history,” Myers said. “ADAP is the primary program for providing lifesaving HIV/AIDS drugs to uninsured people of limited means in this country and for years, thousands of people, at one point almost 10,000 people, have had to wait to receive these drugs.”
Myers called on Obama to redirect funds within the Department of Health & Human Services “to immediately end the ADAP waitlists once and for all.”
Despite these criticisms, Obama has generally received praise for his work on HIV/AIDS. 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 Care Program as well as a three-year, $4 billion pledge to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Additionally, under the FY-13 budget request, funding for the Ryan White AIDS Drug Assistance Program would increase by $75 million. The budget also bumps up $1 billion for AIDS drug assistance programs, an increase of $67 million above the previous fiscal year’s levels. The administration is predicting this funding will end ADAP waiting lists next year.
A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said PEPFAR is able to accomplish more with less money in previous years as the number of people the United States directly supports with lifesaving antiretroviral treatment has more than doubled from around 1.7 million to more than 3.9 million.
“PEPFAR continues to improve efficiency and lower costs,” the official said. “By using generic drugs, shipping commodities more cheaply, task-shifting to nurses and community health workers as appropriate, and linking AIDS services to other programs (such as maternal and child health), the per-patient cost to the U.S. of providing anti-retroviral treatment for AIDS patients has fallen by over 50 percent since 2008.”
Based on this commitment, the leaders of other HIV/AIDS groups said they didn’t share the criticisms levied against Obama by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
Carl Schmid, deputy executive director of the AIDS Institute, said he’s still hoping Obama will make an appearance at the AIDS conference, but believes the criticism is “misplaced” and should be directed elsewhere.
“We feel the president has been leading on domestic AIDS and has put forth an ambitious National HIV/AIDS Strategy, passed health care reform, and proposed budget increases for ADAP and HIV prevention,” Schmid said. “While he could always do more, we feel the criticism is misplaced and instead the focus should be on some members of the Congress, many of whom want to repeal health reform and cut funding to AIDS programs.”
Chris Collins, vice president and director of public policy for the Foundation for AIDS Research, or amfAR, said Obama has “greatly advanced” the domestic response to HIV.
“His national strategy, the Affordable Care Act — these are game changers in the domestic epidemic, so we should be proud of what the president has done on domestic AIDS,” Collins said.
Collins added he wants “to see increases” in PEPFAR funding, but said Obama has made historic commitments to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria and “new and more substantial commitments in terms of scaling up services.”
Asked by the Washington Blade during the news conference if Obama deserves credit for increasing funds for the Ryan White Care Program, Myers said Obama deserves some praise, but more is needed.
“The problem is, again, even with that, the ADAP waiting list – and ADAP is a part of the Ryan White Program — it’s chronic, it’s ongoing. … So, again, increases that have occurred, credit is where credit is due, but the point is, it is not enough,” Myers said.
Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, who joined the conference via telephone, dismissed Obama’s increase in funds for the Ryan White Care Program on the basis that a minority percentage of people with HIV/AIDS are in regular care under the program.
“We are sending out a really mixed message when we have more waiting lists for these drug programs and we’re telling people that they should be tested,” Weinstein said. “I mean, why would they want to get tested when they don’t know if they can have access to treatment? But the bottom line is that to have only 41 percent of people in routine care and having more than 600,000 people who either don’t know that they’re positive or are not in routine care is not a success.”
Weinstein added his organization has tried “without a lot of success” to enlist help from the administration in bringing down the cost of medications, saying the federal government could offer more support “in negotiations with the drug companies to make these drugs more accessible.”
Blade photo editor Michael Key contributed to this report.
CORRECTION: An initial version of this article misquoted the AIDS Institute’s Carl Schmid as saying the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s criticisms of Obama were “misguided.” The word he used was “misplaced.” The Blade regrets the error.
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
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.
National
Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information
Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources
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.
U.S. Federal Courts
Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections
Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent
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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Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections
