On World AIDS Day 2025, humanity should be celebrating that there is a new shot available which offers six months of protection against the transmission of HIV, the virus which has already infected approximately 40 million living people and taken the lives of 44 million more.
Instead, public health workers are reeling from how President Donald Trump has helped HIV to circulate in more humans this year than last. The lethal ways the current U.S. health policy is harming the health and wealth of LGBTQ+ people worldwide will be felt for years, if not decades.
That’s because on the first day of his second term, Trump issued a stop-work order for all foreign aid and several orders that jeopardized the health outcomes of minority groups within the U.S.
The cuts were far-reaching yet highly specific. They reduced resources for short- and long-term health research conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, universities, and community groups in the U.S. and around the world.
Through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s gutting of the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, the administration curtailed or ended funding for programs like the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief, also known as PEPFAR.
These cuts disparately harmed several distinct but often overlapping populations: LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, sex workers, and people living with HIV/AIDS. They were swift, halting scientific trials and critical services within days (or even mere hours) of their posting on January 20, 2025.
And they were significant, contributing to acute medical crises, hunger, homelessness, or even death.
In the U.S., cuts to federal spending resulted in the cancellation of over $125 million in National Institutes of Health grants for LGBTQ-focused health research.
