State Department
PEPFAR, other ‘life-saving humanitarian’ programs can operate under State Department waiver
Executive order froze nearly all US foreign aid spending for 90 days

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday issued a waiver that allows the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the freeze on nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending.
Rubio on Jan. 24 directed State Department personnel to stop nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending for 90 days in response to an executive order that President Donald Trump signed after his inauguration. The Washington Blade obtained a copy of the waiver that Rubio on Tuesday issued to “all implementing U.S. government agencies, partners, and NGOs.”
“For the purposes of carrying out the president’s executive order on Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid, I am approving an additional waiver of the pause under the executive order on Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid and my subsequent direction of Jan. 24, 2025, for life-saving humanitarian assistance during the period of the review,” wrote Rubio. “Implementers of existing life-saving humanitarian assistance programs should continue or resume work if they have stopped, subject to the following directions. This resumption is temporary in nature, and except by separate waiver or as required to carry out this waiver, no new contracts shall be entered into.”
Rubio adds the “life-saving humanitarian assistance” waiver “applies to core life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter, and subsistence assistance, as well as supplies and reasonable administrative costs as necessary to deliver such assistance.” He notes the waiver does not apply to “activities that involve abortions, family planning conferences” and “gender or DEl ideology programs, transgender surgeries, or other non-life saving assistance.”
The waiver does not specifically cite PEPFAR, but UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima in a statement welcomed it.
āUNAIDS welcomes this waiver from the U.S. government which ensures that millions of people living with HIV can continue to receive life-saving HIV medication during the assessment of US foreign development assistance,ā she said. āThis urgent decision recognizes PEPFARās critical role in the AIDS response and restores hope to people living with HIV.ā
A memo the State Department released on Wednesday defended the decision to freeze most U.S. foreign aid spending. It also notes the waiver that Rubio issued.
“It is impossible to evaluate programs on autopilot because the participants ā both inside and outside of government ā have little to no incentive to share programmatic-level details so long as the dollars continue to flow,” reads the memo. “A temporary pause, with commonsense waivers for truly life-threatening situations, is the only way to scrutinize and prevent waste.”
The Blade has reached out to the State Department for comment on the waiver and its impact on PEPFAR.
State Department
Transgender, nonbinary people file lawsuit against passport executive order
State Department banned from issuing passports with ‘X’ gender markers

Seven transgender and nonbinary people on Feb. 7 filed a federal lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s executive order that bans the State Department from issuing passports with “X” gender markers.
Ashton Orr, Zaya Perysian, Sawyer Soe, Chastain Anderson, Drew Hall, Bella Boe, and Reid Solomon-Lane are the plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Massachusetts, and the private law firm Covington & Burling LPP filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The lawsuit names Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as defendants.
Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June 2021 announced the State Department would begin to issue gender-neutral passports and documents for American citizens who were born overseas.
Dana Zzyym, an intersex U.S. Navy veteran who identifies as nonbinary, in 2015 filed a federal lawsuit against the State Department after it denied their application for a passport with an āXā gender marker. Zzyym in October 2021 received the first gender-neutral American passport.
The State Department policy took effect on April 11, 2022.
Trump signed the executive order that overturned it shortly after he took office on Jan. 20. Rubio later directed State Department personnel to āsuspend any application requesting an āXā sex marker and do not take any further action pending additional guidance from the department.ā
āThis guidance applies to all applications currently in progress and any future applications,” reads Rubio’s memo. “Guidance on existing passports containing an āXā sex marker will come via other channels.ā
The lawsuit says Trump’s executive order is an “abrupt, discriminatory, and dangerous reversal of settled United States passport policy.” It also concludes the new policy is “unlawful and unconstitutional.”
“It discriminates against individuals based on their sex and, as to some, their transgender status,” reads the lawsuit. “It is motivated by impermissible animus. It cannot be justified under any level of judicial scrutiny, and it wrongly seeks to erase the reality that transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people exist today as they always have.”
Solomon-Lane, who lives in North Adams, Mass., with his spouse and their three children, in an ACLU press release says he has “lived virtually my entire adult life as a man” and “everyone in my personal and professional life knows me as a man, and any stranger on the street who encountered me would view me as a man.”
āI thought that 18 years after transitioning, I would be able to live my life in safety and ease,” he said. “Now, as a married father of three, Trumpās executive order and the ensuing passport policy have threatened that life of safety and ease.”
“If my passport were to reflect a sex designation that is inconsistent with who I am, I would be forcibly outed every time I used my passport for travel or identification, causing potential risk to my safety and my familyās safety,ā added Solomon-Lane.
State Department
Protesters demand US fully restore PEPFAR funding
Activists blocked intersection outside State Department on Thursday

Dozens of HIV/AIDS activists on Thursday protested outside the State Department and demanded U.S. officials fully restore President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief funding.
The activists ā members of Housing Works, Health GAP, and the Treatment Action Group ā blocked an intersection for an hour. Health GAP Executive Director Asia Russell told the Washington Blade that police did not make any arrests.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Jan. 24 directed State Department personnel to stop nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending for 90 days in response to an executive order that President Donald Trump signed after his inauguration. Rubio later issued a waiver that allows PEPFAR and other ālife-saving humanitarian assistanceā programs to continue to operate during the freeze.
The Blade on Wednesday reported PEPFAR-funded programs in Kenya and other African countries have been forced to suspend services and even shut down because of a lack of U.S. funding.
āPEPFAR is a program that has saved 26 million lives and changed the trajectory of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic,” said Housing Works CEO Charles King in a press release. “The recent freeze on its funding is not just a bureaucratic decision; it is a death sentence for millions who rely on these life-saving treatments. We cannot allow decades of progress to be undone. The U.S. must immediately reaffirm its commitment to global health and human dignity by restoring PEPFAR funding.”
āWe demand Secretary Rubio immediately reverse his deadly, illegal stop-work order, which has already disrupted life-saving HIV services worldwide,” added Russell. “Any waiver process is too little, too late.”
State Department
Transgender people removed from State Department travel page
Previous administration used LGBTQI+ acronym

The State Department has eliminated references to transgender travelers from its travel advisories.
The International Travel tab that the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs maintains has a section for “LGB Travelers.”
“LGB travelers can face special challenges abroad,” reads the introduction. “Laws and attitudes in some countries may affect safety and ease of travel. Many countries do not recognize same-sex marriage. Many countries also only recognize the male and female sex markers in passports and do not have IT systems at ports of entry that can accept other sex markers. About 70 countries still consider consensual same-sex relations a crime. In some of these countries, individuals who engage in same-sex sexual relations may face severe punishment.”
Steven Romo of NBC News and other reporters have noted the same page before President Donald Trump took office used the LGBTQI+ acronym to describe the community. State Department officials with whom the Washington Blade spoke during the Biden-Harris administration routinely used the LGBTQI+ acronym.
The State Department website is replacing LGBTQI+ with simply LGB
Last month vs today pic.twitter.com/U4U0DHMasR
— Steven Romo (@stevenromo) January 31, 2025
Trump since he took office on Jan. 20 has issued a number of executive orders that specifically target trans people.
One directive bans the State Department from issuing passports with “X” gender markers, reversing a policy that took effect in 2022.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this week issued a waiver that allows the Presidentās Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and other ālife-saving humanitarian assistanceā programs to continue to operate during the freeze on nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending. The waiver does not apply to āactivities that involve abortions, family planning conferencesā and āgender or DEl ideology programs, transgender surgeries, or other non-life saving assistance.ā
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