{"id":218463,"date":"2025-09-08T17:50:24","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T22:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/?p=218463"},"modified":"2025-09-08T18:03:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T23:03:16","slug":"fight-like-hell-federal-funding-cuts-threaten-hiv-aids-programs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/2025\/09\/08\/fight-like-hell-federal-funding-cuts-threaten-hiv-aids-programs\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Fight like hell’: Federal funding cuts threaten HIV\/AIDS programs"},"content":{"rendered":" \"Todd<\/a>
Holding a sign reading “#CutsKill,” Todd Theringer, a citizen of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe who serves as a delegate to the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board, rallies in support of funding for HIV\/AIDS programs at the U.S. Capitol on September 3, 2025. Photo by Indianz.Com (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)<\/a><\/figcaption>\r\n
‘Fight like hell’: Federal funding cuts threaten HIV\/AIDS programs<\/div>\r\n
Monday, September 8, 2025<\/div>\r\n
By Acee Agoyo<\/div>\r\n
Indianz.Com<\/div>\r\n

<\/p>\r\nWASHINGTON, D.C. —\r\nAdvocates for Americans with HIV and their allies in Congress are vowing to “fight like hell” in the face of funding cuts that they say will cost lives.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nLegislation pending in the 119th Congress cuts $2 billion from HIV prevention and treatment programs<\/a>. Everything from life-saving medication to housing assistance for the most vulnerable is on the chopping block as Republicans and President Donald Trump look for ways to reduce and outright eliminate federal spending.\r\n

<\/p>\r\n“It is all threatened,” Rep. Maxine Waters<\/a> (D-California) said at a rally at the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday.\r\n

<\/p>\r\n“It is all threatened in ways that we never envisioned,” added Waters, who has been advocating for HIV\/AIDS programs for more three decades as one of the longest-serving Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives<\/a>.\r\n

<\/p>\r\n \"Maxine<\/a>

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California), right, speaks in support of funding for HIV\/AIDS programs during a rally at the U.S. Capitol on September 3, 2025. Photo by Indianz.Com (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)<\/a><\/figcaption>\r\n

<\/p>\r\nWaters spoke ahead of the U.S. Conference on HIV\/AIDS<\/a> that took place in the nation’s capital. Amid a heavy presence of law enforcement and military personnel ordered to Washington, D.C., by Trump, thousands of advocates met at a critical time.\r\n

<\/p>\r\n\u200a”Let’s not feel like we are so intimidated by what is going on with the president,” Waters observed.\r\n

<\/P>\r\n“Let’s not be intimidated. Let’s say it’s time to fight like hell,” Waters continued.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nJust a day before Waters spoke at the rally, Republicans in the House advanced a fiscal year 2026 appropriations bill<\/a> that eliminates $2 billion in federal funding for HIV and AIDS programs. A companion bill in the U.S. Senate<\/a>, however, does not contain the same cuts.\r\n

<\/p>\r\n“These cuts threaten to take us back to those times — back to that grief and that suffering and that violent neglect, which needlessly took thousands of lives,” \r\nactor Javier Mu\u00f1oz<\/a> said at the U.S. Capitol.\r\n

<\/p>\r\n“Cuts to HIV funding kill. Period,” added Mu\u00f1oz, who has been living with HIV for more than two decades, during which he became well known for his Broadway performances in Hamilton<\/em> and In the Heights<\/em>.\r\n

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