National
Jesse Jackson names Rainbow PUSH Coalition successor
White House praised civil rights icon
During the annual meeting of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition civil rights organization he founded and has headed for over 5 decades, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., formally named Rev. Dr. Frederick Haynes III of the Friendship West Baptist Church in Dallas as his successor.
The Rainbow PUSH Convention was held on Sunday at the Apostolic Church of God in the Windy City’s Woodlawn neighborhood. Also in attendance was Vice President Kamala Harris, the event’s special keynote speaker, who had arrived at Chicago’s Midway Airport earlier on Sunday morning.
“I am looking forward to this next chapter where I will continue to focus on economic justice, mentorship and teaching ministers how to fight for social justice. I will still be very involved in the organization and am proud that we have chosen Rev. Dr. Haynes as my successor,” Jackson said in a statement released by the organization.
Haynes has served as the senior pastor of Friendship West Baptist for the past four decades.
“Rev. Jackson has been a mentor and I have been greatly influenced and inspired by this game-changing social justice general, international ambassador for human rights, and prophetic genius. Sadly, justice and human rights are under attack in the nation and around the world. The work of Rainbow PUSH is as necessary as ever and I am committed to standing on the shoulders of Rev. Jackson and continuing the fight for freedom, peace, equity, justice and human rights,” Haynes said.
The White House released a statement from President Joe Biden, who has had a longtime working relationship and friendship with the civil rights leader for over 40 years:
“The promise of America is that we are all created equal in the image of God and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives. While we’ve never fully lived up to that promise, we’ve never fully walked away from it because of extraordinary leaders like Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
“Throughout our decades of friendship and partnership, I’ve seen how Rev. Jackson has helped lead our nation forward through tumult and triumph. Whether on the campaign trail, on the march for equality, or in the room advocating for what is right and just, I’ve seen him as history will remember him: a man of God and of the people; determined, strategic, and unafraid of the work to redeem the soul of our nation.
“Jill and I are grateful to Rev. Jackson for his lifetime of dedicated service and extend our appreciation to the entire Jackson family. We look forward to working with the Rainbow PUSH Coalition as he hands the torch to the next generation of leadership, just as we will continue to cherish the counsel and wisdom that we draw from him.”
Jacquelyne Germain, political reporter from the Chicago Sun-Times and the pool reporter accompanying the vice president, reported notable quotes made during Harris’ speech included:
“So today, we celebrate one of America’s greatest patriots. Someone who deeply believes in the promise of our country.”
“At the core of Rev.’s work is the belief that the diversity of our nation is not a weakness or an afterthought, but instead, our greatest strength.”
“Early on, he even had the audacity to name this coalition the National Rainbow Coalition.
He defined the rainbow. He was one of the first to define the rainbow. A coalition to push the values of democracy and liberty and equality and justice, not from the top down but from the bottom up and the outside in. He has built coalitions that expanded who has a voice and a seat at the table.”
“Across our country, we are witnessing hard fought hard won freedoms under full on attack by extremist, so called leaders. These extremists have an agenda, an agenda to divide us as a nation, an agenda to attack the importance of diversity and equity and inclusion and the unity of the Rainbow Coalition.”
“These extremists banned books in the year of our Lord 2023. They ban books and prevent the teaching of America’s full history. All the while they refuse reasonable gun safety laws to keep our children safe. Understand what’s happening.”
“Fueled by the love of our country, just as Rev. has done his entire career, let us keep hope alive”
Jackson, 81, was an early supporter and a protégé of the iconic civil rights leader, the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., starting his work with King participating in the three Selma to Montgomery marches, held in 1965 along the 54-mile highway from Selma, Ala., to the state capital of Montgomery.
King gave Jackson a role in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), sending Jackson to head the Chicago branch of the SCLC’s economic arm, Operation Breadbasket, which he later was appointed president of in 1967.
At 6:01 p.m. on April 4, 1968, King, SCLC leadership, Jackson and other civil rights activists who had gathered at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., to stand in solidarity with striking African American city sanitation workers, were on the balcony outside King’s room 306 when a shot rang out. King was leaning over the balcony railing in front of his room and was speaking with Jackson who was in the parking lot beneath the balcony.
The bullet struck the civil rights leader in his face rendering him unconsciousness and he was rushed to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where doctors opened his chest and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation. King never regained consciousness and died at 7:05 p.m. whereupon in the aftermath, post-assassination rioting broke out in major cities across the nation.
On April 3, 2018, on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the assassination, Jackson spoke with a reporter from Scripps News about the events of that night:
In the years following the death of King, tensions between Jackson and King’s successor as chairman of the SCLC, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, created a rift that escalated until early December 1971, when Jackson, his entire Breadbasket staff and 30 of the 35 SCLC board members resigned and began planning a new organization which formed the basis for People United to Save Humanity (Operation PUSH) which officially began operations on Dec. 25, 1971, based in Chicago.
In 1984 Jackson organized the Rainbow Coalition and resigned his post as president of Operation PUSH to run for president. He became the second Black American to run a national campaign for president in a major party’s primary.
Twelve years previously in 1972, Shirley Chisholm, a Democratic representative from New York’s 12th Congressional District, centered on Brooklyn’s Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood, was the first Black person, male or female, to run for president within a major party, and Chisholm became the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.
The Democratic primary campaign races for president was a national political watershed moment for the country’s LGBTQ community. It marked the first time that all of the party’s leading candidates had sought the endorsement of LGBTQ organizations.
At the national Democratic convention held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco in 1984, Jackson became the first candidate to deliver a speech to mention gays and lesbians. In what became known as his “Rainbow Coalition” speech, Jackson said:
[…] “Our party is emerging from one of its most hard fought battles for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in our history. But our healthy competition should make us better, not bitter. We must use the insight, wisdom, and experience of the late Hubert Humphrey as a balm for the wounds in our party, this nation and the world. We must forgive each other, redeem each other, regroup and move one. Our flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow — red, yellow, brown, Black and white — and we’re all precious in God’s sight.
America is not like a blanket — one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt: Many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread. The white, the Hispanic, the Black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay and the disabled make up the American quilt.” […]
Jackson decided to make a second run for the presidency in 1987.
On Oct. 11, 1987, at the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, which was thematically honing in on the HIV/AIDS crisis that had enveloped the LGBTQ community, among the speakers at the march rally, held on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, was presidential candidate Jackson along with gay U.S. Reps. Barney Frank and Gerry Studds, both Democrats from Massachusetts; former National Organization for Women President Eleanor Smeal and United Farm Workers Union President Cesar Chavez.
In his remarks, Jackson told the crowd of approximately 300,000:
“We gather today to say that we insist on equal protection under the law for every American, for workers’ rights, women’s rights, for the rights of religious freedom, the rights of individual privacy, for the rights of sexual preference. We come together for the rights of all American people.”
During the 1987 primary campaign, Jackson would often spar with the party’s frontrunner, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis over the governor’s apparent lack of proactive concern over the HIV/AIDS pandemic that had gripped the LGBTQ community with thousands dying from the disease. Additionally, there were many leaders in the LGBTQ community who viewed Dukakis as homophobic.
Former Washington Post writer Howard Kurtz, in his April 15, 1988, column reported that during a March primary debate, Jackson drew cheers from a vocal gay contingent at the debate when he spoke of the AIDS “hysteria.” Recalling the March on Washington, he said: “I saw people in their wheelchairs who are dying of AIDS . . . Not one of the {Reagan administration} officials would come downstairs and shake their hand.”
Kurtz also noted:
“Dukakis is someone who has gone out of his way to hurt us,” said David Taylor, president of Manhattan’s Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats, a 400-member club that has endorsed Jackson.
The contest for gay voters is almost a microcosm of the larger campaign: While Jackson moves gays with his eloquent speeches on gay rights, Dukakis takes a more measured approach and finds himself pinned down on specifics from his tenure as governor, Kurtz reported.
After the 1988 campaign, Jackson, now living in D.C., ran for the office of “shadow senator” when the position was created in 1991, serving until 1997, when he did not run for reelection. This unpaid position was primarily a post to lobby for D.C. statehood.
While he declared that he would not be a candidate again for president, he and frontrunner Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton had a series of public disagreements after Jackson called for the creation of “new democratic majority.”
On April 26, 1992, Jackson and Clinton had a 40-minute meeting and emerged to announce that they were both committed to defeating Bush in the general election. Asked if he was ready to endorse Clinton, Jackson said,
“Well, if he wins the nomination of our party, he would be well on his way. We need a new president and we need a new direction. We cannot afford any more of what George Bush represents,” the New York Times reported.
The National Rainbow Coalition held a leadership conference June 13, 1992, entitled “Rebuild America: 1992 and Beyond,” Jackson and Clinton appearing together spoke about their plans for the future of the U.S.
Over the course of the 1990s Jackson devoted his time and efforts to stemming the rising gun violence, along with efforts to further advance civil rights for the disenfranchised minority communities. He also worked on the campaign for his son Jesse Jackson, Jr., who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as congressman from Illinois’s 2nd congressional district who served from 1995 until his resignation in 2012.
On March 1, 2000, Jackson announced his support of and endorsed Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore, for the latter’s presidential run. After George W. Bush won, Jackson was a vocal opponent of the Bush administration’s policies.
During the course of the rest of the decade Jackson was active in social and cultural issues often being present at numerous protests. One notable incident occurred in November 2006, after a white comedian, former Seinfeld actor Michael Richards launched into onstage racist tirade at the Laugh Factory in Hollywood directed at a Black audience member.
CNN later reported that Richards had called Jackson a few days after the incident to apologize; Jackson accepted Richards’ apology and met with him publicly as a means of resolving the situation. Jackson also joined Black leaders in a call for the elimination of the “N-word” throughout the entertainment industry.
Jackson was an early supporter of then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) who announced his candidacy in 2007 for president. In 2012, he praised then-President Obama for his decision to support same-sex marriage and compared the fight for marriage equality to the fight against slavery and the anti-miscegenation laws that once prevented interracial marriage, a position that brought immediate criticism from conservatives — especially evangelical and Pentecostal Black pastors.
After the infamous shooting death on Feb. 26, 2012, in Sanford, Fla., of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin that brought about a national protests and in which his killer, George Zimmerman was later acquitted under Florida’s so-called ‘stand-your-ground’ law, Jackson refused to accept it, comparing the decision to the acquittals in the cases of Emmett Till and Medgar Evers decades earlier.
In the next few years he would also be vocal about the injustices and deaths of young Black males at the hands of primarily white law enforcement officials.
Jackson continued to actively work on behalf of civil rights causes as exemplified during the administration of President Donald Trump calling out some of the more blatant examples of white supremacy seemingly endorsed by Trump.
As the 2020 election neared, Jackson said that Trump had left “African Americans in the deepest hole with the shortest rope” and predicted “African Americans — and particularly African-American women — will vote overwhelmingly for Joe Biden.”
A few weeks ago, Jackson announced his plans to step down as the leader of Rainbow PUSH, following 64 years of civil rights activity within this movement. Aides said that his decision was brought about in consideration of his advanced age as well as health complications — Jackson was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017, and was hospitalized twice in 2021, after testing positive for COVID-19 and then following a head injury.
Related:
Rainbow Push Coalition: Celebration of Rev. Jackson’s life’s work:
Florida
AIDS Healthcare Foundation sues Fla. over ‘illegal’ HIV drug program cuts
Tens of thousands could lose access to medications
Following the slashing of hundreds of thousands of dollars from Florida’s AIDS Drug Assistance Program, AIDS Healthcare Foundation filed a lawsuit against the Florida Department of Health over what it says was an illegal change to income eligibility thresholds for the lifesaving program.
The Florida Department of Health announced two weeks ago that it would make sweeping cuts to ADAP, dramatically changing how many Floridians qualify for the state-funded medical coverage — without using the formal process required to change eligibility rules. As a result, AHF filed a petition Tuesday in Tallahassee with the state’s Division of Administrative Hearings, seeking to prevent more than 16,000 Floridians from losing coverage.
The medications covered by ADAP work by suppressing HIV-positive people’s viral load — making the virus undetectable in blood tests and unable to be transmitted to others.
Prior to the eligibility change, the Florida Department of Health covered Floridians earning up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level — or $62,600 annually for an individual. Under the new policy, eligibility would be limited to those making no more than 130 percent of the federal poverty level, or $20,345 per year.
The National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors estimates that more than 16,000 patients in Florida will lose coverage under the state’s ADAP because of this illegal change in department policy. Florida’s eligibility changes would also eliminate access to biktarvy, a widely used once-daily medication for people living with HIV/AIDS.
Under Florida law, when a state agency seeks to make a major policy change, it must either follow a formal rule-making process under the Florida Administrative Procedure Act or obtain direct legislative authorization.
AHF alleges the Florida Department of Health did neither.
Typically, altering eligibility for a statewide program requires either legislative action or adherence to a multistep rule-making process, including: publishing a Notice of Proposed Rule; providing a statement of estimated regulatory costs; allowing public comment; holding hearings if requested; responding to challenges; and formally adopting the rule. According to AHF, none of these steps occurred.
“Rule-making is not a matter of agency discretion. Each statement that an agency like the Department of Health issues that meets the statutory definition of a rule must be adopted through legally mandated rule-making procedures. Florida has simply not done so here,” said Tom Myers, AHF’s chief of public affairs and general counsel. “The whole point of having to follow procedures and rules is to make sure any decisions made are deliberate, thought through, and minimize harm. Floridians living with HIV and the general public’s health are at stake here and jeopardized by these arbitrary and unlawful DOH rule changes.”
AHF has multiple Ryan White CARE Act contracts in Florida, including four under Part B, which covers ADAP. More than 50 percent of people diagnosed with HIV receive assistance from Ryan White programs annually.
According to an AHF advocacy leader who spoke with the Washington Blade, the move appears to have originated at the state level rather than being driven by the federal government — a claim that has circulated among some Democratic officials.
“As far as we can tell, Congress flat-funded the Ryan White and ADAP programs, and the proposed federal cuts were ignored,” the advocacy leader told the Blade on the condition of anonymity. “None of this appears to be coming from Washington — this was initiated in Florida. What we’re trying to understand is why the state is claiming a $120 million shortfall when the program already receives significant federal funding. That lack of transparency is deeply concerning.”
Florida had the third-highest rate of new HIV infections in the nation in 2022, accounting for 11 percent of new diagnoses nationwide, according to KFF, a nonprofit health policy research organization.
During a press conference on Wednesday, multiple AHF officials commented on the situation, and emphasized the need to use proper methods to change something as important as HIV/AIDS coverage availability in the sunshine state.
“We are receiving dozens, hundreds of calls from patients who are terrified, who are confused, who are full of anxiety and fear,” said Esteban Wood, director of advocacy, legislative affairs, and community engagement at AHF. “These are working Floridians — 16,000 people — receiving letters saying they have weeks left of medication that keeps them alive and costs upwards of $45,000 a year. Patients are asking us, ‘What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to survive?’ And right now, we don’t have a good answer.”
“This decision was not done in the correct manner. County health programs, community-based organizations, providers across the state — none of them were consulted,” Wood added. “Today is Jan. 28, and we have just 32 days until these proposed changes take effect. Nearly half of the 36,000 people currently on ADAP could be disenrolled in just over a month.”
“Without this medication, people with HIV get sicker,” Myers said during the conference. “They end up in emergency rooms, they lose time at work, and they’re unable to take care of their families. Treatment adherence is also the best way to prevent new HIV infections — people who are consistently on these medications are non-infectious. If these cuts go through, you will have sicker people, more HIV infections, and ultimately much higher costs for the state.”
“Patients receiving care through Ryan White and ADAP have a 91 percent viral suppression rate, compared to about 60 percent nationally,” the advocacy leader added. “That’s as close to a functional cure as we can get, and it allows people to live healthy lives, work, and contribute to their communities. Blowing a hole in a program this successful puts lives at risk and sets a dangerous precedent. If Florida gets away with this, other states facing budget pressure could follow.”
The lawsuit comes days after the Save HIV Funding campaign pressed Congress to build bipartisan support for critical funding for people living with or vulnerable to HIV. In May of last year, President Donald Trump appeared to walk back his 2019 pledge to end HIV as an epidemic, instead proposing the elimination of HIV prevention programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and housing services in his budget request to Congress.
House appropriators, led by the Republican majority, went further, calling for an additional $2 billion in cuts — including $525 million for medical care and support services for people living with HIV.
While Senate appropriators ultimately chose to maintain level funding in their version of the spending bills, advocates feared final negotiations could result in steep cuts that would reduce services, increase new HIV infections, and lead to more AIDS-related deaths. The final spending package reflected a best-case outcome, with funding levels largely mirroring the Senate’s proposed FY26 allocations.
“What the state has done in unilaterally announcing these changes is not following its own rules,” Myers added. “There is a required process — rule-making, notice and comment, taking evidence — and none of that happened here. Before you cut 16,000 people off from lifesaving medication, you have to study the harms, ask whether you even have the authority to do it, and explore other solutions. That’s what this lawsuit is about.”
National
Federal authorities arrest Don Lemon
Former CNN anchor taken into custody two weeks after Minn. church protest
Federal authorities on Thursday arrested former CNN anchor Don Lemon in Los Angeles.
CNN reported authorities arrested Lemon after 11 p.m. PT while in the lobby of a hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., while he “was leaving for an event.” Lemon’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, in a statement said his client was in Los Angeles to cover the Grammy Awards.
Authorities arrested Lemon less than two weeks after he entered Cities Church in St. Paul, Minn., with a group of protesters who confronted a pastor who works for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (An ICE agent on Jan. 7 shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman who left behind her wife and three children. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents on Jan. 24 shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse who worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs, in Minneapolis.)
Lemon insists he was simply covering the Cities Church protest that interrupted the service. A federal magistrate last week declined to charge the openly gay journalist in connection with the demonstration.
“Don Lemon was taken into custody by federal agents last night in Los Angeles, where he was covering the Grammy awards,” said Lowell in his statement. “Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done. The First Amendment exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable.”
“Instead of investigating the federal agents who killed two peaceful Minnesota protesters, the Trump Justice Department is devoting its time, attention and resources to this arrest, and that is the real indictment of wrongdoing in this case,” Lowell added. “This unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand. Don will fight these charges vigorously and thoroughly in court.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi on X confirmed federal agents “at my direction” arrested Lemon and three others — Trahern Jeen Crews, Georgia Fort, and Jamael Lydell Lundy — “in connection with the coordinated attack on Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.”
Fort is also a journalist.
At my direction, early this morning federal agents arrested Don Lemon, Trahern Jeen Crews, Georgia Fort, and Jamael Lydell Lundy, in connection with the coordinated attack on Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.
More details soon.
— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) January 30, 2026
Lemon, who CNN fired in 2023, is expected to appear in court in Los Angeles on Friday.
“Freedom of the press is a cornerstone of a free society; it is the tool by which Americans access the truth and hold power to account. But Donald Trump and Pam Bondi are at war with that freedom — and are threatening the fundamentals of our democracy,” said Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson on Friday in a statement. “Don Lemon and Georgia Fort were doing their jobs as reporters. Arresting them is not law enforcement it is an attack on the Constitution at a moment when truthful reporting on government power has never been more important. These are the actions of a despot, the tactics of a dictator in an authoritarian regime.”
The White House
Expanded global gag rule to ban US foreign aid to groups that promote ‘gender ideology’
Activists, officials say new regulation will limit access to gender-affirming care
The Trump-Vance administration has announced it will expand the global gag rule to ban U.S. foreign aid for groups that promote “gender ideology.”
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau in a memo, titled Combating Gender Ideology in Foreign Assistance, the Federal Register published on Jan. 27 notes “previous administrations … used” U.S. foreign assistance “to fund the denial of the biological reality of sex, promoting a radical ideology that permits men to self-identify as women, indoctrinate children with radical gender ideology, and allow men to gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women.”
“Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. It also threatens the wellbeing of children by encouraging them to undergo life-altering surgical and chemical interventions that carry serious risks of lifelong harms like infertility,” reads the memo. “The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women and children but, as an attack on truth and human nature, it harms every nation. It is the purpose of this rule to prohibit the use of foreign assistance to support radical gender ideology, including by ending support for international organizations and multilateral organizations that pressure nations to embrace radical gender ideology, or otherwise promote gender ideology.”
President Donald Trump on Jan. 28, 2025, issued an executive order — Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation — that banned federal funding for gender-affirming care for minors.
President Ronald Reagan in 1985 implemented the global gag rule, also known as the “Mexico City” policy, which bans U.S. foreign aid for groups that support abortion and/or offer abortion-related services.
Trump reinstated the rule during his first administration. The White House this week expanded the ban to include groups that support gender-affirming care and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
The expanded global gag rule will take effect on Feb. 26.
“None of the funds made available by this act or any other Act may be made available in contravention of Executive Order 14187, relating to Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, or shall be used or transferred to another federal agency, board, or commission to fund any domestic or international non-governmental organization or any other program, organization, or association coordinated or operated by such non-governmental organization that either offers counseling regarding sex change surgeries, promotes sex change surgeries for any reason as an option, conducts or subsidizes sex change surgeries, promotes the use of medications or other substances to halt the onset of puberty or sexual development of minors, or otherwise promotes transgenderism,” wrote Landau in his memo.
Landau wrote the State Department “does not believe taxpayer dollars should support sex-rejecting procedures, directly or indirectly for individuals of any age.”
“A person’s body (including its organs, organ systems, and processes natural to human development like puberty) are either healthy or unhealthy based on whether they are operating according to their biological functions,” reads his memo. “Organs or organ systems do not become unhealthy simply because the individual may experience psychological distress relating to his or her sexed body. For this reason, removing a patient’s breasts as a treatment for breast cancer is fundamentally different from performing the same procedure solely to alleviate mental distress arising from gender dysphoria. The former procedure aims to restore bodily health and to remove cancerous tissue. In contrast, removing healthy breasts or interrupting normally occurring puberty to ‘affirm’ one’s ‘gender identity’ involves the intentional destruction of healthy biological functions.”
Landau added there “is also lack of clarity about what sex-rejecting procedures’ fundamental aims are, unlike the broad consensus about the purpose of medical treatments for conditions like appendicitis, diabetes, or severe depression.”
“These procedures lack strong evidentiary foundations, and our understanding of long-term health impacts is limited and needs to be better understood,” he wrote. “Imposing restrictions, as this rule proposes, on sex-rejecting procedures for individuals of any age is necessary for the (State) Department to protect taxpayer dollars from abuse in support of radical ideological aims.”
Landau added the State Department “has determined that applying this rule to non-military foreign assistance broadly is necessary to ensure that its foreign assistance programs do not support foreign NGOs and IOs (international organizations) that promote gender ideology, and U.S. NGOs that provide sex-rejecting procedures, and to ensure the integrity of programs such as humanitarian assistance, gender-related programs, and more, do not promote gender ideology.”
“This rule will also allow for more foreign assistance funds to support organizations that promote biological truth in their foreign assistance programs and help the (State) Department to establish new partnerships,” he wrote.
The full memo can be found here.
Council for Global Equality Senior Policy Fellow Beirne Roose-Snyder on Wednesday said the expansion of the so-called global gag rule will “absolutely impact HIV services where we know we need to target services, to that there are non-stigmatizing, safe spaces for people to talk through all of their medical needs, and being trans is really important to be able to disclose to your health care provider so that you can get ARVs, so you can get PrEP in the right ways.” Roose-Snyder added the expanded ban will also impact access to gender-affirming health care, food assistance programs and humanitarian aid around the world.
“This rule is not about gender-affirming care at all,” she said during a virtual press conference the Universal Access Project organized.
“It is about really saying that if you want to take U.S. funds — and it’s certainly not about gender-affirming care for children — it is if you want to take U.S. funds, you cannot have programs or materials or offer counseling or referrals to people who may be struggling with their gender identity,” added Roose-Snyder. “You cannot advocate to maintain your country’s own nondiscrimination laws around gender identity. It is the first place that we’ve ever seen the U.S. government define gender-affirming care, except they call it something a lot different than that.”
The Congressional Equality Caucus, the Democratic Women’s Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Asian and Pacific American Caucus, and the Congressional Black Caucus also condemned the global gag rule’s expansion.
“We strongly condemn this weaponization of U.S. foreign assistance to undermine human rights and global health,” said the caucuses in a statement. “We will not rest until we ensure that our foreign aid dollars can never be used as a weapon against women, people of color, or LGBTQI+ people ever again.”
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