National
Obama vs. Bush: Who’s done more on HIV/AIDS?
Lifting of HIV travel ban initiated by previous administration
Who’s done more on HIV/AIDS: George W. Bush or President Obama? (Bush photo public domain; Obama photo Blade photo by Michael Key)
HIV/AIDS advocates from around the world are descending on D.C. for the 19th International AIDS Conference with a shared goal: to eliminate a disease that has taken the lives of more than 25 million people worldwide.
Despite unity on this goal, politics inevitably plays a role in the response to the epidemic and advocates have widely differing views on who has done more in recent years to combat HIV/AIDS both at home and abroad: former President George W. Bush or President Obama.
Some praise the Obama administration for laying out a comprehensive plan and bumping up domestic funding to confront the epidemic, while others yearn for the Bush days because of the global initiatives the Republican president started despite his reputation for anti-gay policies.
Jim Driscoll, a gay Nevada-based HIV/AIDS activist who served on the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS during the Bush administration, is among those who believes Bush did more to stop the epidemic.
“I never sat down and had a one-on-one conversation with him, but people who did talked about how open he was to doing things on AIDS and how interested he was in that subject,” Driscoll said. “There wasn’t anything the community asked him to do that I was involved in that he didn’t do.”
Those who say Bush has done more for HIV/AIDS identified three major initiatives under the Bush administration: the start of a program called the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, to confront the global AIDS epidemic; streamlining fund allocation under the Ryan White Care Act to consider people who have HIV infection without full-blown AIDS; and allowing the first-ever rapid HIV tests to be used outside medical offices.
Driscoll, a Republican who’s backing GOP presumptive nominee Mitt Romney in the upcoming presidential election, recalled the process by which Bush approved rapid testing and said it was praised by many — with the exception of some Food & Drug Administration officials whom he overruled.
“It was a big step forward, and George Bush actually personally had a lot to do with that,” Driscoll said. “The president actually overruled FDA, and I was in the room when this was announced. There were about 100 people in the room, I think. I remember still that when he announced his approval of rapid testing … everybody in the room gave him a standing ovation except for the three people from FDA, who sat glumly. They didn’t applaud or anything.”
The AIDS Drug Assistance Programs under Bush didn’t see the waiting list levels that have been seen under the Obama administration. Under Obama, the waiting list last year reached an all-time high of 9,928 low-income people awaiting HIV drugs. That number has since dropped to about 2,000 today, according to the administration.
That’s not the only complaint that’s been lodged against Obama, who’s been criticized for reducing the global AIDS program that was set up by Bush. In his most recent budget request to Congress, the White House cut the program by half a billion dollars.
Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, said HIV/AIDS was a “higher priority” for Bush than it is for Obama, citing the ADAP waiting list and the distinction in PEPFAR as a key difference between the presidents.
“We had practically no global AIDS program prior to President Bush taking office, and before he left office, they approved a $48 billion plan for PEPFAR, which Sen. Obama voted to authorize and enact,” Weinstein said. “This year, President Obama for the first time in the history of the program asked for less money for global AIDS than we had last year, and there’s $1.4 billion in unspent money in PEPFAR.”
However, the president’s most recent budget request includes an increase for domestic programs against HIV/AIDS: a $75 million increase for Ryan White and an increase of $67 million for ADAP from last year to eliminate waiting lists by 2013.
As for PEPFAR, the White House has maintained that the program is doing more with less by using generic drugs and shipping commodities more cheaply. On World AIDS Day, Obama announced he would fully fund the balance of the administration’s three-year, $4 billion pledge to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.
Shin Inouye, a White House spokesperson, defended the administration’s work on HIV/AIDS by citing achievements as well as plans set into motion to confront the epidemic.
“President Obama and his administration are unwavering in their commitment to addressing the issue of HIV/AIDS — on both the domestic and global fronts,” Inouye said. “These include steps such as establishing and implementing the first comprehensive National HIV/AIDS Strategy, lifting the HIV entry ban, and strengthening the impact and sustainability of PEPFAR and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.”
Obama’s signature legislative achievement, the Affordable Care Act, is also slated to have significant impact on people living with HIV. The Medicaid expansion under the health care reform law is expected to significantly expand coverage because half the people living with HIV already receive care through the program.
Carl Schmid, deputy executive director of the AIDS Institute, said Obama has “definitely” done more on HIV/AIDS — at least on the domestic front — in part because of his willingness to talk about how the disease impacts gay men.
“They are over 60 percent of the epidemic,” Schmid said. “Focusing on this community that has been ravaged by HIV, allowing a discussion and making gay people more acceptable — this could really turn the tide on HIV prevention for gay men. We have a president who is focusing on the community [and directing] resources that are more in line with how the epidemic is.”
In comparison, Bush took flak from HIV/AIDS advocates for not taking action on the epidemic in ways that might upset his conservative base. Among his actions: promoting abstinence-only sex education, opposing federal funds for needle exchange programs and remaining silent on gay men and condoms for much of his administration.
Michael Rajner, a gay Fort Lauderdale-based HIV/AIDS advocate who’s living with AIDS and has been selected as a delegate for the Democratic National Convention, said he thinks Obama has “absolutely” done more to fight HIV/AIDS based on a more science-based approach he’s taken against the disease.
“The difference between Republican and Democrat — in this case, George W. Bush and President Obama — is really the difference in thought, whether they’re going to be addressing HIV/AIDS through ideology or through science, and President Obama has certainly embraced the issues of science,” Rajner said.
One achievement often attributed to Obama is the lifting of the regulatory travel ban that prevented HIV-positive foreign nationals from entering the country — a move that enabled the International AIDS Conference to take place in the United States. But this process actually started under the Bush administration. Under Bush’s leadership, Congress repealed a law that barred HIV-positive foreign nationals from entering as part of the legislative package authorizing PEPFAR.
Schmid said he was “intimately involved” in the process under which Bush starting lifting the HIV travel ban.
“Credit goes to George Bush’s administration and the Congress for lifting the travel ban in reauthorization of PEPFAR,” Schmid said. “There still was a process at HHS, and Obama finished that process. It wasn’t completed in time, unfortunately, under President Bush, but they definitely lifted it congressionally.”
Driscoll said Bush should be commended because he accomplished work on HIV/AIDS despite being beholden to social conservatives who elected him to office.
“Every president, every politician is limited by his constituents, by the people who put him in office, who voted for him and the people he would depend upon to do the same thing should he run again,” Driscoll said. “You have to consider what a president does in terms of the limitations that are imposed. I think, given, the limitations that George Bush’s constituencies imposed, he showed real leadership.”
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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