Politics
EXCLUSIVE: Annise Parker, Lori Lightfoot outline path to victory for Harris
Former Houston and Chicago mayors emphasize importance of big cities
Former Houston Mayor Annise Parker and former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot spoke exclusively with the Washington Blade last week in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention.
Among other topics, they discussed their impressions of the convention, Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s path to victory in November, the Democratic campaign’s efforts to mobilize voters in key battleground states, the candidates’ proven track records of fighting for LGBTQ rights, and the ways in which their administration would build on this work of expanding freedoms and protections for the community.
This year’s DNC was the last Parker will attend as president and CEO of the LGBTQ Victory Fund, which works to elect LGBTQ candidates to public office, and the LGBTQ Victory Institute, which coordinates placement of LGBTQ federal employees and administers training and networking events.
“It’s not my first convention, but I have to say it is the most exciting and energetic convention,” she said. “There’s an energy around Kamala — the surprise, the sense of change and possibility that I’m not used to, and it feels really great.”
Prior to President Joe Biden’s announcement on July 21 that he would step aside to clear the path for Harris’s nomination, Parker said that “respectfully, some of us were slogging through” because “we knew he was the better candidate than Donald Trump, and we were going to support him because of that reason.”
“Now we’re excited because we have somebody new and different,” she said, “a shift in personality and also a shift in energy, and that works its way through the campaign.”
Lightfoot agreed that “there is a tremendous amount of energy and excitement,” but hedged that “if that doesn’t translate to butts at the polls, it doesn’t matter.”
“So, everywhere I’m going and talking to folks, it’s like, this is great; step one, get the base reunified, because it was very fractured, I think, even a month ago,” she said. “The level of excitement, consolidating the votes for the nomination, positive press, the amount of money that’s being raised — that’s all good stuff, but it’s got to have a significant ground game, because people need to show up.”
Lightfoot noted that folks from Chicago and elsewhere in Illinois, a deep blue city in a largely blue state, are traveling to Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota because “no one wins in November unless they win the Midwest, so we’re reaching out to our friends, our neighbors, and saying, ‘you got to plug in; you got to pay attention, educate yourself and get to the polls.'”
Parker echoed those remarks. “Our job is to bring in those who are not the regular Democratic rank and file,” she said, “the independents, and even disaffected Republicans, and there are a lot of those out there.”
The former mayors agreed that Trump’s narrow electoral college win in 2016 was made possible in part by the decision of many voters to stay home because they believed Hillary Clinton’s victory was not just likely — but certain.
The 2024 presidential election will be very close. Harris’s emergence as the nominee has put some states in play for the Democrats that were out of reach when Biden was leading the ticket, but even as she pulls ahead, recent polls in key battlegrounds show the candidates are in a near-dead heat.
In this race, Parker is counting on the “push-up” effect. Down-ballot candidates can expect a boost from Harris, she said, but likewise “we’re going to turn people out to vote for their school board candidates,” or in city council and statehouse races “and they’re going to vote at the top of the ticket as well.”
Lightfoot said that part of the task before the Harris-Walz campaign will be to engage a “broad cross section of Americans who, frankly, are still disengaged, disenchanted, angry, frustrated, scared” and otherwise struggling as they recover from the “traumatic shocks” of COVID.
The pandemic worsened preexisting skepticism toward the government, she said, so the candidates must “talk about why they are the solution to a lot of the concerns that the average voter has” particularly by “speaking to those incredibly important swing voters in the seven or eight states that are in play.”
First they must win
As Democrats, Lightfoot said, “we have a great propensity, sometimes,” of “trying to make the perfect be the enemy of the good” but “we need to win first, right?”
“This is one of those Bill Clinton-Al Gore moments back in the ’90s,” she said. “It’s like, I get it, I get it, but let me get there first, let me win, and then we can accomplish great things together.”
Parker and Lightfoot, both out lesbians, agreed that LGBTQ issues are not necessarily what Harris and Walz need to be talking about on the campaign trail with little more than two months until the election.
Rather, the focus must be on “the issues [that are] top of mind for the American voter,” Parker said, because the candidates “need to be talking to that great middle America out there that needs to show up to vote.”
Of course, she and Lightfoot said, it is important for LGBTQ folks, especially those who have a seat at the table, to make sure the community’s policy agenda is understood by the candidates, and likewise for the campaign to remind voters of Harris and Walz’s pro-LGBTQ backgrounds — even if, as Parker said, “that’s not how she’s going to win this election, talking about that.”
With respect to their commitments to advancing LGBTQ rights, the former mayors repeatedly stressed that the vice president and the governor have nothing to prove. “They don’t have to promise anything,” Parker said. “They’ve already done it.”
“We are working with folks who have a proven track record of understanding the importance of our community,” Lightfoot said. “They’ve hired, they’ve appointed, they get it.”
Expanding freedoms and protections for LGBTQ people has been a through line of Harris’s career in public service. For example, well before it would have been politically advantageous, she fought for same-sex marriage when serving as district attorney of San Francisco and attorney general of California, defying legal restrictions to perform some of the country’s first gay and lesbian weddings.
Additionally, the past four years have cemented the Biden-Harris administration’s legacy as the most pro-LGBTQ presidency in American history, in no small part thanks to the work of the vice president.
And for his part, practically from the moment he was chosen as Harris’s running mate, Walz has been attacked by Trump and his conservative allies over his pro-trans record as governor. Before he entered public life, Walz was a high school teacher and football coach who served as faculty adviser to the student-led gay-straight alliance club in the 1990s, an anecdote that was shared by Harris when she appeared with him for the first time on stage at a rally on Aug. 6.
The campaign has also made outreach to and engagement with LGBTQ constituents a major priority. During an Aug. 21 meeting of the LGBTQ Caucus at the DNC, Harris for President National LGBTQ+ Engagement Director Sam Alleman outlined plans for additional activity and investment in Out for Harris, the LGBTQ national organizing push.
Putting aside the looming election, when asked whether there are specific LGBTQ policies she would like to see in a Harris-Walz administration, Parker said those conversations will be possible in earnest only if Democrats are able to win not just the White House but also flip control of the House and hold onto their majority in the Senate.
Then, she said, “we’re going to want to make sure” that LGBTQ appointees are picked to serve in key positions throughout the federal government, noting that historic numbers — 15 percent — were nominated and confirmed under the Biden-Harris administration.
“I expect that to continue,” Parker said.
Congress will play a critically important role in effectuating the Harris-Walz agenda, including on LGBTQ issues, she said, but policy is implemented “in the departments and in the bowels of government” which is why representation in these spaces matters, too.
The Democratic candidates’ support for LGBTQ rights is of a piece with the positive and inclusive spirit of their bid for the White House, which stands in stark contrast with the approach seen from their opponents.
“There is a joy, truly, about Kamala Harris’s campaign,” Parker said, and while it is unclear whether and to what extent the good vibes will be sustained until Election Day, “you get the sense that she’s really, emotionally, she’s all in it.”
Lightfoot agreed. “What happened within the next 24 hours,” after Biden endorsed his vice president to run in his stead, “no one could have predicted it. No one could have scripted it. It was this organic movement and coalescing around her with really genuine enthusiasm.”
The former Chicago mayor also praised Harris’s digital team. “Their social media game is off the charts,” she said. “They are hitting home runs every single day,” maintaining the vice president’s positive message while trolling Trump and his running mate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio.
Meanwhile, as he has done in previous campaigns, Trump “hurls insults and slurs,” deploying a strategy of “constant attack — disrespecting, vilifying people on the other side,” Parker said. “It’s negative, negative, negative.”
Harris “doesn’t have to do that,” she said. Moreover, “people don’t want her to do that.”
Lightfoot agreed. “It would be easy” for the vice president “to roll in the mud with with Trump, and my money’s on her, but she hasn’t done that — what she’s done is addressed the criticism to some extent, but then immediately pivoted to a more positive, forward thinking message.”
The approach is “clearly throwing off the Trump world,” Lightfoot said. “I love it. I think it’s exactly what people want to hear. They don’t want to see, you know, WWE in their presidential candidates.”
Voters “want somebody who is strong, who is ready and up for the task,” but — at least just as importantly — they want a leader sho is “always making sure that they are tuning in with those people who work hard every day,” she said.
Parker said Harris made “a great choice” picking Walz as her running mate, adding,” I’ve met him before, and he’s the real deal.”
Nodding in agreement, Lightfoot said, “I grew up in one of those small towns where football was everything” and “it’s unimaginable, unimaginable, that the football coach” would have publicly embraced the high school’s LGBTQ students as Walz did, including by chairing the GSA club.
Tapping into the power of cities and mayors
Conservatives are fond of characterizing Democrats from progressive coastal cities, especially those from San Francisco, as out of touch elitists whose values do not align with those held by the overwhelming majority of American voters.
Nancy Pelosi, the longtime Democratic leader whose congressional district includes most of the city, balked when Vance sought to smear not only Harris but also Walz, her former House colleague, as a “San Francisco-style liberal,” a label that the former speaker has co-opted for herself and worn as a badge of honor.
Not only was the governor beloved by colleagues when he represented Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District, but he was also widely seen as a moderate, she said. “I can say this with some authority: He’s not on the left,” Pelosi told NBC News. “He was right down the middle, right down the middle in his values and leverage in the debate in the Congress.” (As it happens, Walz had never set foot in San Francisco before last month.)
Parker and Lightfoot agreed the matter strikes at an issue that is deeper than misleading political rhetoric targeting the 2024 Democratic candidates.
“Americans live in the big cities across the country,” the former Houston mayor said. “We are a powerful voting bloc, but we’re also where people’s lives happen. Trump has built this mythology — there’s tires burning in the streets, barricades and riots everywhere, there’s armed camps.”
“He’s been attacking cities,” she said, and we need to reclaim them.
Together, America’s largest metropolises are “like 80 percent of the GDP,” Lightfoot added. “So, why are you attacking the economic engine of our country? Why are you attacking the places where innovation happens? Of all the good things that come in America, a huge percentage of that comes from big cities.”
Not only has Trump characterized D.C. as a crime-ridden hellscape, but he has also pledged to “take over” the district — potentially exercising the authority he would have, if elected, to put the police force under his control and arrogate powers that are exercised by the D.C. Council and the mayor.
“I think Mayor [Muriel] Bowser has done a yeoman job under difficult circumstances where she doesn’t get to make her own calls, because she’s got to worry about folks in the federal government, and particularly in Congress, second guessing everything that the good citizens of D.C. do,” said Lightfoot, who noted that Bowser is a close personal friend.
Cities “are the heartbeat of this country, and I think a leader who says, ‘I want to bring everybody together, I want to be the leader of the free world,’ — well, you got to start with being a leader of cities and recognizing our importance on every single issue domestically,” she said.
Parker and Lightfoot agreed that the Harris-Walz campaign would be well served in the election by reclaiming cities.
“All things local,” Lightfoot said. The chief executives of municipalities are some of “the best surrogates to get the message out, particularly mayors of the towns like those that we represented.”
“If the [Harris-Walz] campaign is smart, and it’s getting there, it’s going to galvanize mayors all across the country to be those surrogates,” she said. “Mayors like me who governed under Trump, governed under Biden and Harris, and [can speak to] the sea change and the difference in how cities in particular were helped and recognized and respected in a way that we didn’t see in the previous four years in the previous administration.”
Parker agreed. “Mayors can talk about their cities. Mayors are the public face and the voice of their cities.”
This does not mean one should avoid talking about the challenges facing places like D.C. or Chicago, but there must be an understanding that “cities have to be strong and healthy, or America’s not strong and healthy,” she said.
Next up for Victory
Parker announced her planned departure from Victory at the beginning of February, though she will continue leading the organizations past the election and through the end of 2024 or “until I find my successor.”
She told the Blade that “the goal” is to choose a new president and CEO in September.
“I’m sure that they’re going to find somebody amazing to step in,” Parker said, but in the meantime, “I’m going to leave it in good shape, I can tell you that.”
Over Parker’s six-year tenure, annual budgets were doubled, contributions to candidates served by the Victory Fund were increased fourfold, and the Victory Institute’s David Mixner Political Appointments Program was relaunched to advocate for LGBTQ representation in government.
Strikingly, during this time the number of LGBTQ officials served by Victory swelled from 450 to more than 1,300. “I would love to take credit for that, but some of it is truly the Trump effect,” she said. “The more we are attacked as a community, the more people want to stand up and say, ‘no, I’m not going to put up with this.'”
“The work of Victory has continued for more than 30 years,” Parker said. “The work is still there, it’s still important, representation still matters.”
“We need to elect tens of thousands more [LGBTQ] people to achieve parity,” she said, because even though the number of out elected officials has more than doubled in six years, 1,300 is only 0.25 percent of the “hundreds of thousands of open positions.”
Lightfoot added, “her leadership has been phenomenal. Phenomenal. I mean, really, the organization is stronger now than when she found it. It’s going to be stronger when she leaves it. The amount of things that we’ve been able to accomplish — the programmatic gains, the financial gains, these would not have happened without Mayor Parker.”
Congress
EXCLUSIVE: Pelosi reflects on four decades of LGBTQ advocacy
Blade spoke with House speaker emerita before her 2027 retirement
For nearly four decades, House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has been one of the most influential champions of LGBTQ rights in American politics.
The former U.S. House of Representatives speaker helped lead landmark LGBTQ legislation through Congress; including the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, and multiple House approvals of the Equality Act. She also played a central role in congressional efforts to combat HIV/AIDS and oppose restrictions targeting transgender Americans.
In an exclusive interview with the Washington Blade; Pelosi reflected on those accomplishments, the role grassroots activists played in achieving them, and the ongoing challenges facing the LGBTQ community during President Donald Trump’s second term.
When asked which LGBTQ-related achievement she is most proud of, Pelosi pointed not to a specific bill, but to the movement that made those victories possible — and the loud, strong-willed grassroots believers in a better America than the one they had found themselves in.
“Anything that we accomplished, whether it was fighting HIV and AIDS, ending discrimination, passing hate crimes legislation, or ending ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ would never have happened without outside mobilization,” Pelosi said, expressing gratitude for those who saw a problem and dared to speak its solution into existence. “Our inside maneuvering was important, but we couldn’t do our best job without the community. Every chance I get, I thank them for their patriotism because they make democracy function.”
Pelosi explained that her initial LGBTQ advocacy efforts were directly shaped by the LGBTQ community in the San Francisco area and by the HIV/AIDS epidemic that decimated the community during the 1980s.
The former speaker recalled arriving in Congress in 1987 and making HIV/AIDS a centerpiece of her agenda from the start.
“My first words on the House floor were that I had come here to fight HIV and AIDS,” Pelosi told the Blade. “People asked why I would make that my first statement. To me, that reaction showed just how much discrimination still existed and how much work remained to be done.”
She continued, explaining that advocating for San Francisco — with its once-vibrant LGBTQ community that was dying more with every passing day — became a joint effort between community-driven activists and government officials trying to manage and mitigate the crisis that claimed more American lives than the Vietnam War.
“When we were trying to bring the Democratic convention to San Francisco, people were saying they couldn’t come because of HIV/AIDS,” she said. “What emerged from that moment was community-based advocacy, community-based care, prevention, and research. Every success we had sprang from the community itself.”
Multiple times during the interview, Pelosi returned to those four pillars of the effort to combat HIV/AIDS: community-based advocacy, community-based care, prevention, and research.
She argued that the epidemic, despite its horrific toll, ultimately helped many Americans better understand and accept LGBTQ people in a society that had not been as tolerant.
“When families learned that a son or daughter was HIV-positive and gay, barriers started to break down,” Pelosi said. “Love prevailed in many cases. I actually give HIV/AIDS some credit for the acceptance of marriage equality because people began seeing these issues through the lens of family.”
Pelosi also highlighted the passage of federal hate crimes legislation as one of her — and the LGBTQ rights movement’s — most defining victories.
“Matthew Shepard’s mother came and spoke to members. (The late-former Massachusetts Congressman) Barney Frank told his story. We had to convince people that leadership means leading, not following,” Pelosi said. “That legislation was incredibly important because it forced people to confront the real consequences of hate.”
She said she refused pressure to remove transgender protections from the bill, despite promises from others that it would pass more easily if lawmakers only protected what they viewed as the least vulnerable groups.
“People told me, ‘You can pass this in a minute if you take out trans,'” Pelosi recalled. “I said, ‘I won’t pass it in 100 years because I’m not ever taking out trans.’ We passed it with trans protections included.”
The Blade also asked Pelosi about the stalled passage of the Equality Act — which would add federal protections for LGBTQ people through amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that would explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity. She expressed confidence that the Equality Act will eventually become law, though she acknowledged the political obstacles that have persisted since its creation in the 1970s.
In her office, among bowls of Ghirardelli chocolates and prints depicting national parks in her district, a large photo hangs on the wall showing Pelosi standing at the House rostrum with LGBTQ advocates beneath the words “#EQUALITY ACT” — photographic proof that she had already passed the landmark legislation in the House, if only the U.S. Senate had agreed.
“We passed it in the House again and again,” she said. “The Senate is more difficult because of the procedural hurdles, but we’re not stopping. We’ll stick with it until the job is done.”
The longtime Democratic leader also credited civil rights icon John Lewis with helping build support for the legislation when others argued the growing LGBTQ rights movement was, as one California Democratic legislator put it, “too fast, too much, too soon.”
“There were people who worried about opening up the Civil Rights Act to include LGBTQ protections,” Pelosi said. “John Lewis told us, ‘We can’t wait. We must do it now.’ He was instrumental in helping move that effort forward.”
Much of the conversation eventually turned to the Trump-Vance administration’s policies affecting trans Americans.
Pelosi argued that Executive Order 14183, “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” which puts restrictions on trans military service weakens national security, and efforts to limit gender-affirming healthcare for trans children with the Executive Order “Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation” ignores the needs of families.
“When they diminish the ability of transgender people to serve in the military, they diminish our national security,” she said. “At the same time, families are being told they can’t get the care their children need. That is deeply troubling.”
She recounted hearing testimony from conservative parents whose views changed after their own children came out as trans — a transformation she said changed hearts and minds, even among people she had once seen wearing red MAGA hats.
“One mother told us she was a Trump supporter until her child needed medical care and her state wouldn’t allow it,” Pelosi said. “She said she had to leave Texas to care for her child. Hearing stories like that reminds people that these are families, not political talking points.”
Pelosi described efforts to restrict healthcare access for trans youth as both discriminatory and morally wrong.
“Some of the things they’re doing by refusing to support clinics that meet the needs of trans kids are sinful,” she said. “I’m a religious person, and I believe every child is God’s child. We have a responsibility to meet their needs.”
Asked what she would say to people who oppose LGBTQ equality, Pelosi returned to a theme that surfaced throughout the interview: love.
“I’ve seen families completely transform when these issues become personal,” she said. “People who once opposed HIV/AIDS funding became advocates when someone they loved was affected. Love has a way of changing hearts.”
As for how she hopes history remembers her role in the movement, Pelosi again shifted attention away from herself and toward activists.
“People were dying, and the community demanded action,” she said. “I hope people remember that the progress we made came from the very vocal participation of LGBTQ people and their allies. I was honored that they trusted me to carry that fight in Congress.”
Pelosi, who has announced she will not seek reelection and plans to retire from the House in 2027, said the struggle for equality is far from over.
“Every major expansion of rights in this country has been a long struggle,” she said. “We’ve laid a foundation, but there is still more work to do. We still have to pass the Equality Act.”
When asked what she credits for the change in public understanding and the growth of the LGBTQ movement, she said respect lies at its foundation.
“This month, Pride Month, people would say to me, ‘It’s easy for you because you’re from San Francisco, and San Francisco is so tolerant,'” Pelosi said. “And I would say to them, ‘Tolerant to me is a condescending word.’ Tolerance is a good word writ large, but in terms of the subject, it’s not about tolerance — it’s about respect. Respect is what made it almost inevitable that I would have nothing but enthusiasm for what I was doing. We don’t just respect — we take pride in our community. But that pride springs from respect that people have to have for everything, including the differences that they see.”
Congress
Ogles faces bipartisan backlash over anti-gay social media post
Tenn. congressman blamed the comment on staffer
U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), who represents Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District, is facing backlash from LGBTQ advocates and fellow Republicans after a social media post declared that “homosexuality has no place in America.”
“Homosexuality has no place in America. Happy Nuclear Family Month,” the congressman wrote in a post on X that was later deleted.
According to the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, an estimated 6.3 percent of U.S. adults identify as LGBTQ.
Following widespread criticism, Ogles removed the post and blamed it on a staff member.
“The post was stupid, hurtful and a complete distraction from my America First focus. The employee has been reprimanded,” Ogles said in a statement.
The Washington Blade reached out to Ogles’s office for comment but did not receive a response by press time.
Among those condemning the message was U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), who called it “absolutely idiotic” in a social media post.
“Homosexuality exists. In America,” Lawler wrote on X. “In fact, Andy, you have family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and constituents who are gay and lesbian. It doesn’t make them less than or somehow unworthy of being an American.”
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) also criticized Ogles’s remarks.
“For all of recorded history, homosexuals have been a part of humanity,” Cruz told TMZ DC. “I think the behavior of consenting adults is their business.”
Chris Sanders, the executive director for the Tennessee Equality Project and Tennessee Equality Project Foundation provided a statement to the Blade about Ogles’s comment.
“The Tennessee Nuclear Family Month resolution has really backfired on conservatives by ensnaring Congressman Ogles in scandal. He used the resolution as a pretext to say that our community doesn’t belong in America, resulting in incredible backlash from across the partisan divide,” Sanders said. “It is a good opportunity for him to pause and reflect on whether it’s time for him to resign. Fighting one’s own constituents is not the purpose of serving in Congress.”
Human Rights Campaign Senior Press Secretary Jarred Keller provided a statement to the Blade regarding Ogles’s comments.
“LGBTQ+ people are woven into the fabric of America, and any politician who questions that is severely out of touch with reality. When so many people are worried about whether they can afford gas to get to work or groceries for their families, the last thing we need is right-wing Republicans targeting marginalized communities with hateful attacks,” Keller said. “Representative Ogles should spend less time attacking LGBTQ+ people and start addressing the issues that actually matter, because last I checked, our community isn’t the reason families are struggling to make ends meet.”
The controversy comes as Tennessee continues to advance legislation affecting LGBTQ residents. The state already has several laws on the books that LGBTQ advocates have criticized, including the Adult Entertainment Act, enacted in 2023, which restricts certain “adult cabaret performances.”
Lawmakers have also introduced additional measures this legislative session, including the “No Pride Flag or Month Act,” which would prohibit state employees, volunteers, and agents from displaying Pride flags or participating in Pride observances while acting in an official capacity.
Another proposal, the “Banning Bostock Act” would seek to limit the application of state anti-discrimination protections based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. Tennessee lawmakers have also passed other measures restricting LGBTQ rights and access to gender-affirming health care.
Congress
10 HIV/AIDS activists arrested on Capitol Hill
Protesters interrupted Secretary of State Marco Rubio during hearing
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.”
PHOTOS: Fairfax City Pride
EXCLUSIVE: Pelosi reflects on four decades of LGBTQ advocacy
D.C. prepares to party as Pride celebrations kick off Saturday
David Archuleta, Monroe Alise named D.C. Pride parade marshals
