U.S. Capitol Police on Tuesday arrested 10 HIV/AIDS activists who protested Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

The activists from Housing Works, Health GAP, the Treatment Action Group, and ACT UP held signs and chanted “Rubio’s Cuts Kill People with AIDS, PEPFAR Saves Lives!” before officers removed them from Dirksen Senate Office Building room where the hearing took place.

A media advisory the Washington Blade received before the protest noted “mounting evidence of Rubio’s attempts to sabotage PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, U.S. bilateral AIDS program) and vital global health programs.” The press release specifically highlighted three specific points:

• Eliminating Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) lifesaving PEPFAR programs, which currently support approximately 12 million people on HIV treatment across 51 countries. Instead, Rubio intends to dismantle CDC’s current PEPFAR role and stamp out their global footprint in disease outbreak and surveillance for pandemics beyond HIV. Experts including eight former CDC Directors under Republican and Democratic administrations have spoken out against this effort to dismantle PEPFAR. Recent PEPFAR data showed sharp decreases in the numbers of people newly tested, diagnosed, and treated for HIV, but these data would have been even worse if not for CDC’s PEPFAR programs.

• Withholding $2 billion in Congressionally appropriated FY25 funding, including $330 million to combat HIV, $250 million to fight malaria, $320 million for maternal and child health programs, and nearly $650 million in global health security programs.

• Negotiating secret bilateral deals blackmailing African governments by demanding access to critical mineral wealth as a condition of access to HIV treatment and prevention funding.

The groups have staged several protests against the Trump-Vance administration’s HIV/AIDS policies since it took office.

Rubio on Jan. 28, 2025, issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during a freeze on nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending. HIV/AIDS service providers around the world with whom the Blade has spoken say PEPFAR cuts and the loss of funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which officially closed on July 1, 2025, has severely impacted their work.

The State Department last September announced PEPFAR will distribute lenacapavir in countries with high prevalence rates.

The New York Times last summer reported Vought “apportioned” only $2.9 billion of $6 billion that Congress set aside for PEPFAR for fiscal year 2025. (PEPFAR in the coming fiscal year will use funds allocated in fiscal year 2024.)

Bipartisan opposition in the U.S. Senate prompted the Trump-Vance administration last July withdraw a proposal to cut $400 million from PEPFAR’s budget. Vought a few weeks later said he would use a “pocket rescission” to cancel $4.9 billion for HIV/AIDS prevention and global health programs and other foreign aid assistance initiatives that Congress had already approved.

The White House in January expanded the global gag rule to ban U.S. foreign aid for groups that promote “gender ideology.” President Ronald Reagan in 1985 implemented the original regulation, also known as the “Mexico City” policy, which bans U.S. foreign aid for groups that support abortion and/or offer abortion-related services. Advocacy groups insist the expanded rule will adversely impact HIV prevention efforts around the world.

“Congress must stop Secretary Rubio before he dismantles PEPFAR,” said Treatment Action Group’s Kendall Martinez-Wright. “Rubio continues to defy the will of Congress and the American people who want this program restored and repaired. Under his leadership he is diverting funding and trying to eliminate the essential role of technical experts in global HIV and global health, while program performance is flailing.”

Attorney General Ken Paxton won the Republican Senate primary in Texas on Tuesday, ousting incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn.

Paxton won the primary against the four-term incumbent in large part due to President Donald Trump’s endorsement. Despite Cornyn voting with Trump more than 90 percent of the time, political insiders say being supportive isn’t enough to win Trump’s endorsement anymore — Republican candidates need to embrace the full MAGA image, something Paxton has done.

Paxton has served as Texas attorney general since 2015 and, before that, worked as a Texas state representative. He has approached both roles with what LGBTQ activists call a “consistently Anti-LGBTQ+ Record.” Following the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges — the case that made same-sex marriage the law of the land — Paxton advised Texas county clerks they could refuse marriage licenses to same-sex couples on religious grounds.

His anti-LGBTQ crusade doesn’t stop at fighting against marriage equality.

Paxton has repeatedly demanded medical records for transgender youth in multiple states — including Texas, Georgia, and Washington — in hopes of making the practice illegal. His anti-trans actions go far past medical records. Paxton issued an opinion barring trans Texans from changing the sex on their driver’s licenses and birth certificates, claiming any changes made were “unlawfully altered,” and helped the DOJ reach an agreement with a Texas’s children’s hospital for providing minors gender-affirming care, eventually leading to a 10 million dollar settlement. He also authored a non-legally binding opinion equating gender-affirming healthcare for youth to child abuse.

In addition to his long history of anti-LGBTQ policy in the Lone Star State, Paxton is no stranger to controversy.

Multiple impeachment efforts brought against him in the state House of Representatives for “abuse of office” — with the state Senate later acquitting him — allegations that he used his office to assist large campaign donors, namely Nate Paul, and a widely publicized separation from his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, all impacted his run for the U.S. Senate seat — but not enough to keep him from the office.

Lynne Bowman, vice president of campaigns at the Human Rights Campaign, issued a statement following the announcement of Paxton’s primary win.

“Texans have a clear choice this fall, and an opportunity to reject failed policies that hurt all families,” Bowman sent to the Blade via email. “Ken Paxton is so out of step that he has fought to undercut marriage equality and spent time demanding personal medical records for young people who do not even live in Texas, all while becoming the most corrupt politician in America. The more than 2 million Equality Voters in Texas will send him packing.”

Paxton will face off against Democratic hopeful and vocal Trump critic James Talarico in the fall.

Talarico, who won the Democratic primary in April against Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, has been a vocal supporter of LGBTQ rights, citing his ministry work as the source of his support for the community.

The race for Texas’s Senate seat will be decided on Nov. 3.

After being forced to retire, Bree Fram couldn’t stop. Restless even after giving everything she had to make the United States Air Force — and later the Space Force — better in every way she could, Fram quickly turned toward a new mission: public office.

The same tenacity that fueled her rise from Air Force researcher to the highest-ranking openly transgender officer in the United States Armed Forces would eventually carry her onto the campaign trail in Virginia.

Now, after months of campaigning, countless conversations with voters, and abrupt shifts in Virginia’s political landscape, Fram has stepped back from her congressional run.

Fram sat down with the Blade to discuss her decision to step away, what she learned on the campaign trail, and what comes next.

Earlier this month, the Virginia Supreme Court struck down a voter-approved Democratic congressional redistricting plan that likely would have created multiple additional Democratic-leaning seats in the U.S. House. The ruling dramatically altered the district Fram had built her campaign around and left little time for candidates to adjust before voting began.

“That decision really was the end of my campaign, that there was not the chance after that ruling, particularly so late in the game, for me to meaningfully pivot back to a different district and have a conversation with voters with just five weeks to go until early voting started,” Fram said. “I do feel that the will of the people has been ignored over a technicality regarding the date of Election Day.”

For Fram, the ruling was not only politically devastating, but personally frustrating after months spent building relationships with voters and shaping a campaign around the district’s needs.

“What was incredibly disappointing about it was that none of the facts about the case had changed from the beginning of the year until when they made the ruling,” she said.

Still, Fram entered the race with a platform centered on affordability, government accountability, and protecting fundamental rights, pledging “to protect our rights, make opportunity affordable, and build a government that works for the people.”

That message focused heavily on affordability — one of the defining political issues of 2026 — and lowering costs for Virginians across ideological, geographic, and generational divides. Fram said voters responded warmly to that vision, even if it ultimately did not lead to an office in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill.

“The experience on the trail was fantastic. As a first-time candidate, you never know what you’re really getting yourself into, but any chance I had to get out there and talk with people was amazing,” Fram said. “I had the opportunity to change folks’ minds about trans people, about people from Northern Virginia.”

One conversation with a rural Virginia voter especially stayed with her.

“I called someone who runs a rural art shop… and he started talking about Democrats messaging on trans issues being such a problem,” Fram recalled. “And I’m like, do you know that you’re talking to one?”

Throughout the campaign, Fram said she often found herself breaking down preconceived notions about both transgender people and military service. The impact of that visibility became especially clear during another interaction on the trail that still stays with her.

“I had a young person, maybe 20 years old, come up to me. I could tell there was something on their mind,” Fram said. “I preempted them by saying ‘If you were about to ask if I’m trans, the answer is yes.’”

The young person, she said, appeared visibly relieved.

“As we made small talk I could tell there was something else he wanted to ask,” Fram continued. “Eventually they got it out– that they think they might be too.”

The moment quickly turned emotional.

“And then I asked, do you need a hug, they leaned in at first and then just hung on for dear life,” she said. “So what it means to our community to have that kind of representation out there, and to hopefully inspire others, was incredibly important.”

For Fram, those moments became some of the most meaningful parts of the campaign.

“My experience, I think, helped just shape what was our strategy,” she said.

The campaign also came at a uniquely difficult moment in Fram’s life. The Human Rights Campaign honored Fram alongside four other transgender military officials during a Jan. 8 event in Washington commemorating the forced retirement of transgender service members following President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14183, “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” which directed the Pentagon to prohibit transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people from serving openly in the military.

Even while navigating the fallout from the discriminatory policy that forced her retirement, Fram launched a campaign rooted heavily in direct voter engagement and personal storytelling.

Her decades in the military, she said, fundamentally shaped how she approached campaigning and leadership.

“As an officer, particularly the more senior you become, you get more and more training on ‘what does it mean to match your ends’ ways and means,’” Fram said. “My end goal was get into office … and constantly reassess what it looks like.”

Fram also said her military background informed her progressive politics more than many voters expected.

“My military background was interesting, because I was running as the progressive candidate,” she said. “People think you were in the military, how can you possibly be the progressive person?”

Her answer, she said, often surprised people.

“Well, where did you think I learned this stuff?” Fram said. “No matter who we were at the same rank, no matter what our job was, we all got paid the same. We all had government-provided health care where we never needed to worry about a medical bill.”

For Fram, and those who talked with her on the trail, military service reinforced the idea that good governance allows people to thrive.

“You actually learn a lot about progressive policies and good governance that lets people be their best self in the military,” she said. “We understand that military officers’ oaths don’t expire when their time in uniform does, and I think that resonated with a lot of people, that veterans can be part of the solution in getting us out of the situation that we are in today.”

Before launching her campaign, Fram built one of the most extensive careers of any openly transgender military officer in U.S. history, serving in senior leadership roles across the Air Force, Space Force, and intelligence community.

Most recently, she served as chief of the Requirements Integration Division at Headquarters, Space Force, after previously leading acquisition policy for the Air Force’s space programs. Earlier in her career, she oversaw advanced weapons and cyberspace programs at the Air Force Research Laboratory, managed billions in foreign military sales and intelligence-related operations, worked on Capitol Hill as a legislative fellow, and directed major engineering and national security programs at the National Reconnaissance Office.

Fram also co-led the Department of the Air Force’s LGBTQ+ Initiatives Team and deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. She holds a master’s degree from the Air Force Institute of Technology and is a distinguished graduate of the Naval War College.

Despite stepping away from the race, Fram said she remains optimistic about the future.

“When I look at the big picture of what we did and how we ran a campaign, that is what I’m most proud of,” she said. “It really is the strategy that my team and I were able to craft, the messaging that we were able to share, that was all about connecting our personal story, the story of America to something that says we need a vision of what can be.”

Fram rejected the idea that ending her congressional campaign means ending her public life altogether.

“I can absolutely guarantee that I will not get off the stage. It is just a question of what stage or stages do I jump to,” she said.

She also encouraged LGBTQ people — especially transgender Americans — to stay politically engaged despite increasingly hostile rhetoric and legislation nationwide.

“Just do it,” Fram said. “It is incredibly important to show at every level that people can engage with the political process and make a meaningful difference.”