National
AIDS group criticizes Obama as int’l conference approaches
Others praise administration, call attacks ‘misplaced’
Tom Myers, chief of public affairs and general counsel for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (Blade photo by Michael Key)
President Obama is facing criticism from an HIV/AIDS group for not yet committing to speak at the upcoming International AIDS Conference and not doing more to confront the global and domestic epidemic. Other groups, meanwhile, are calling the criticism of Obama misguided.
On Monday, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation held a news conference in D.C. at the offices of Parry, Romani, DeConcini & Symms Associates to call on Obama to speak at the conference and take more action to confront HIV/AIDS. The organization provides advocacy and medical care to more than 166,000 people with HIV/AIDS in 26 countries.
Tom Myers, chief of public affairs and general counsel for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, was particularly critical of Obama for not yet confirming that he’ll make an appearance at the upcoming 19th International AIDS Conference, which will will take place at D.C.’s Walter E. Washington Convention Center during the week of July 22.
“We are here to express our concern and dismay that, less than two weeks from the start of the conference, President Obama has yet to commit to attending it,” Myers said. “In the 20-odd year history of this conference, it is virtually obligatory for the head of state of the host nation to address the conference at its opening.”
It’s the first time since 1990 that the conference will take place in the United States. Organizers agreed to hold the conference in D.C. after the lifting of the HIV travel ban in 2009, which had prevented HIV-positive foreign nationals from entering the United States. The process for removing the ban started under the Bush administration through legislative action and ended under the Obama administration.
As of Monday, the conference hadn’t yet announced whether it had received confirmation that Obama would speak. Shin Inouye, a White House spokesperson, said he had no updates on whether Obama will attend the conference.
Former President Bill Clinton has agreed to speak at the conference this year as well as former first lady Laura Bush. High-ranking administration officials who are set to speak include Secretary of Health & Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and Eric Goosby, U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator.
It’s not unprecedented for the head of state to be absent from the conference, according to organizers. The Canadian prime minister didn’t speak when the conferences were held in that country in 1996 in Vancouver or 2006 in Toronto, nor did Spain’s prime minister attend the 2002 conference in Barcelona. In 1990, then-President George H.W. Bush didn’t address the conference in San Francisco, but then-Secretary of Health & Human Services Louis Sullivan delivered remarks at the closing ceremony.
While criticizing Obama for not confirming his attendance, Myers at the same time said the administration wasn’t doing enough to confront HIV/AIDS and said “it may be better if the president not attend the conference if he is coming without any concrete proposals to fix these problems.”
For starters, Myers criticized the president for cutting funds in the fight against the global AIDS epidemic, calling on Obama to restore the money that was cut from PEPFAR, as part of the fiscal year 2013 budget request.
“Internationally, the Obama administration is the first administration to actually propose cutting funding to America’s efforts, including cutting almost half a billion dollars from PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief,” Myers said. “A retreat in the efforts to fight the global epidemic is unprecedented.”
The sentiment that Obama has taken a step back in global fight against HIV/AIDS was echoed by Omonigho Ufomata, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s director of global policy and advocacy.
“We demand he restore funding to PEPFAR and expand treatment prior to addressing the International AIDS Conference,” Ufomata said. “We have a blueprint for stopping AIDS, i.e get more people on treatment, but that can only be achieved if President Obama gets real about the money.”
Further, Myers faulted Obama for not providing enough support to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, the primary program for providing lifesaving HIV/AIDS drugs to low-income people, saying the wait list for the programs stands at 2,000 people.
“Domestically, President Obama has presided over the longest and deepest waiting lists for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, or ADAP in history,” Myers said. “ADAP is the primary program for providing lifesaving HIV/AIDS drugs to uninsured people of limited means in this country and for years, thousands of people, at one point almost 10,000 people, have had to wait to receive these drugs.”
Myers called on Obama to redirect funds within the Department of Health & Human Services “to immediately end the ADAP waitlists once and for all.”
Despite these criticisms, Obama has generally received praise for his work on HIV/AIDS. On World AIDS Day in December, President Obama announced an additional $35 million for the ADAP program and $15 million more for Part C of the Ryan White Care Program as well as a three-year, $4 billion pledge to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Additionally, under the FY-13 budget request, funding for the Ryan White AIDS Drug Assistance Program would increase by $75 million. The budget also bumps up $1 billion for AIDS drug assistance programs, an increase of $67 million above the previous fiscal year’s levels. The administration is predicting this funding will end ADAP waiting lists next year.
A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said PEPFAR is able to accomplish more with less money in previous years as the number of people the United States directly supports with lifesaving antiretroviral treatment has more than doubled from around 1.7 million to more than 3.9 million.
“PEPFAR continues to improve efficiency and lower costs,” the official said. “By using generic drugs, shipping commodities more cheaply, task-shifting to nurses and community health workers as appropriate, and linking AIDS services to other programs (such as maternal and child health), the per-patient cost to the U.S. of providing anti-retroviral treatment for AIDS patients has fallen by over 50 percent since 2008.”
Based on this commitment, the leaders of other HIV/AIDS groups said they didn’t share the criticisms levied against Obama by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
Carl Schmid, deputy executive director of the AIDS Institute, said he’s still hoping Obama will make an appearance at the AIDS conference, but believes the criticism is “misplaced” and should be directed elsewhere.
“We feel the president has been leading on domestic AIDS and has put forth an ambitious National HIV/AIDS Strategy, passed health care reform, and proposed budget increases for ADAP and HIV prevention,” Schmid said. “While he could always do more, we feel the criticism is misplaced and instead the focus should be on some members of the Congress, many of whom want to repeal health reform and cut funding to AIDS programs.”
Chris Collins, vice president and director of public policy for the Foundation for AIDS Research, or amfAR, said Obama has “greatly advanced” the domestic response to HIV.
“His national strategy, the Affordable Care Act — these are game changers in the domestic epidemic, so we should be proud of what the president has done on domestic AIDS,” Collins said.
Collins added he wants “to see increases” in PEPFAR funding, but said Obama has made historic commitments to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria and “new and more substantial commitments in terms of scaling up services.”
Asked by the Washington Blade during the news conference if Obama deserves credit for increasing funds for the Ryan White Care Program, Myers said Obama deserves some praise, but more is needed.
“The problem is, again, even with that, the ADAP waiting list – and ADAP is a part of the Ryan White Program — it’s chronic, it’s ongoing. … So, again, increases that have occurred, credit is where credit is due, but the point is, it is not enough,” Myers said.
Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, who joined the conference via telephone, dismissed Obama’s increase in funds for the Ryan White Care Program on the basis that a minority percentage of people with HIV/AIDS are in regular care under the program.
“We are sending out a really mixed message when we have more waiting lists for these drug programs and we’re telling people that they should be tested,” Weinstein said. “I mean, why would they want to get tested when they don’t know if they can have access to treatment? But the bottom line is that to have only 41 percent of people in routine care and having more than 600,000 people who either don’t know that they’re positive or are not in routine care is not a success.”
Weinstein added his organization has tried “without a lot of success” to enlist help from the administration in bringing down the cost of medications, saying the federal government could offer more support “in negotiations with the drug companies to make these drugs more accessible.”
Blade photo editor Michael Key contributed to this report.
CORRECTION: An initial version of this article misquoted the AIDS Institute’s Carl Schmid as saying the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s criticisms of Obama were “misguided.” The word he used was “misplaced.” The Blade regrets the error.
The White House
Report: Grenell wants Russian ambassadorship
Country’s anti-LGBTQ record a reported barrier
Richard Grenell, President Donald Trump’s special envoy for “special missions,” is making it known that he is interested in the Russian ambassadorship.
According to reporting by the Daily Mail, Grenell has “floated” his interest in the role to coworkers, but issues surrounding the former German ambassador’s sexuality have made securing the position more difficult.
“He had an interest in the job — or at least he floated the idea to select colleagues. But Putin’s regime is extremely anti–LGBTQ, so I’m sure they didn’t take that thought too seriously,” one source close to Grenell told the Daily Mail. “That would never happen anyway.”
Grenell has long been one of Trump’s closest allies and was the first openly gay person to hold a Cabinet-level position. He was ousted last month as acting director of the Kennedy Center, a position he had held since Trump reestablished the board to be composed of his political supporters in 2025.
In addition to leading the nation’s cultural arts center, Grenell previously served as the U.S. ambassador to Germany from 2018 to 2020, and as the special presidential envoy for Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations from 2019 to 2021. He was also a State Department spokesperson to the U.N. under the George W. Bush administration and a Fox News contributor.
Russia has a longstanding history of being anti-LGBTQ.
In 2013, the country passed a law banning any public endorsement of “nontraditional sexual relations” among minors. In December 2022, Putin signed legislation expanding the ban, making it illegal to promote same-sex relationships or suggest that non-heterosexual orientations are “normal” for people of any age, widening censorship across media and public life.
The Russian courts have also supported the restriction of LGBTQ identity in the country. In November 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court granted a request from the Justice Ministry to outlaw the “international LGBT movement” as “extremist,” allowing authorities to criminalize advocacy and potentially prosecute individuals for expressions of LGBTQ+ identity or support.
In addition to LGBTQ rights issues, the war between Russia and Ukraine has become a global concern. Ukraine, which was part of the former Soviet Union, includes the territory known as Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. The annexation remains a major point of international dispute over sovereignty. Since 2022, Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine has escalated the conflict, drawing global attention and sanctions while straining U.S.-Russia relations.
The U.S. has spent $188 billion in total related to the war in Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February 2022, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
The Russian ambassadorship seems to be a difficult role to fill, according to additional information presented by the Daily Mail. With Trump already being seen as relatively positive by Russian President Vladimir Putin, and with close ties to members of his Cabinet and family — like son-in-law Jared Kushner — the ambassadorship is complicated and viewed as less critical than in previous administrations.
“There is no rush to fill that role because it has now been deemed unnecessary,” another source told the U.K.-based publication.
Bob Foresman, a seasoned businessman with decades-long ties to the Kremlin, was reportedly once the frontrunner, according to the Daily Mail. Foresman served as vice chair of UBS Investment Bank and Deputy Chairman of Renaissance Capital between 2006 and 2009, and earlier led investment banking for Russia at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein from 1997 to 2000.
“This is a pattern, especially in the Trump administration — special envoys big–footing the ambassadors,” a source told the Daily Mail. “It is shocking that we are already in April and we don’t have an ambassador to one of the most important countries in the world.”
Tennessee
Tenn. lawmakers pass transgender “watch list” bill
State Senate to consider measure on Wednesday
The Tennessee House of Representatives passed a bill last week to create a transgender “watch list” that also pushes detransition medical treatment. The state Senate will consider it on Wednesday.
House Bill 754/State Bill 676 has been deemed “ugly” by LGBTQ advocates and criticized by healthcare information litigators as a major privacy concern.
The bill would require “gender clinics accepting funds from this state to perform gender transition procedures to also perform detransition procedures; requires insurance entities providing coverage of gender transition procedures to also cover detransition procedures; requires certain gender clinics and insurance entities to report information regarding detransition procedures to the department of health.”
It would require that any gender-affirming care-providing clinics share the date, age, and sex of patients; any drugs prescribed (dosage, frequency, duration, and method administered); the state and county; the name, contact information, and medical specialty of the healthcare professional who prescribed the treatment; and any past medical history related to “neurological, behavioral, or mental health conditions.” It would also mandate additional information if surgical intervention is prescribed, including details on which healthcare professional made a referral and when.
HB 0754 would also require the state to produce a “comprehensive annual statistical report,” with all collected data shared with the heads of the legislature and the legislative librarian, and eventually published online for public access.
The bill also reframes detransitioning as a major focus of gender-affirming healthcare — despite studies showing that the number of trans people who detransition is statistically quite low, around 13 percent, and is often the result of external pressures (such as discrimination or family) rather than an issue with their gender identity.
This legislation stands in sharp contrast to federal protections restricting what healthcare information can be shared. In 1996, Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, requiring protections for all “individually identifiable health information,” including medical records, conversations, billing information, and other patient data.
Margaret Riley, professor of law, public health sciences, and public policy at the University of Virginia, has written about similar efforts at the federal level, noting the Trump-Vance administration’s push to subpoena multiple hospitals’ records of gender-affirming care for trans patients despite no claims — or proof — that a crime was committed.
It has “sown fear and concern, both among people whose information is sought and among the doctors and other providers who offer such care. Some health providers have reportedly decided to no longer provide gender-affirming care to minors as a result of the inquiries, even in states where that care is legal.” She wrote in an article on the Conversation, where she goes further, pointing out that the push, mostly from conservative members of the government, are pushing extracting this private information “while giving no inkling of any alleged crimes that may have been committed.”
State Rep. Jeremy Faison (R-Cosby), the bill’s sponsor, said in a press conference two weeks ago that he has met dozens of individuals who sought to transition genders and ultimately detransitioned. In committee, an individual testified in support of the bill, claiming that while insurance paid for gender-affirming care, detransition care was not covered.
“I believe that we as a society are going to look back on this time that really burst out in 2014 and think, ‘Dear God, What were we thinking? This was as dumb as frontal lobotomies,’” Faison said of gender-affirming care. “I think we’re going to look back on society one day and think that.”
Jennifer Levi, GLAD Law’s senior director of Transgender and Queer Rights, shared with PBS last year that legislation like this changes the entire concept of HIPAA rights for trans Americans in ways that are invasive and unnecessary.
“It turns doctor-patient confidentiality into government surveillance,” Levi said, later emphasizing this will cause fewer people to seek out the care that they need. “It’s chilling.”
The Washington Blade reached out to the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, which shared this statement from Executive Director Miriam Nemeth:
“HB 754/SB 676 continues the ugly legacy of Tennessee legislators’ attacks on the lives of transgender Tennesseans. Most Tennesseans, regardless of political views, oppose government databases tracking medical decisions made between patients and their doctors. The same should be true here. The state does not threaten to end the livelihood of doctors and fine them $150,000 for safeguarding the sensitive information of people with diabetes, depression, cancer, or other conditions. Trans people and intersex people deserve the same safety, privacy, and equal treatment under the law as everyone else.”
Iran
LGBTQ groups condemn Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian civilization
Ceasefire announced less than two hours before Tuesday deadline
The Council for Global Equality is among the groups that condemned President Donald Trump on Tuesday over his latest threats against Iran.
Trump in a Truth Social post said “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Tehran did not reach an agreement with the U.S. by 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
Iran is among the handful of countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain punishable by death.
Israel and the U.S. on Feb. 28 launched airstrikes against Iran.
One of them killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran in response launched missiles and drones against Israel and other countries that include Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, and Cyprus.
Gas prices in the U.S. and around the world continue to increase because the war has essentially closed the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway that connects the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s crude oil passes.
Trump less than 90 minutes before his deadline announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran that Pakistan helped broker.
“We the undersigned human rights, humanitarian, civil liberties, faith-based and environmental organizations, think tanks and experts are deeply alarmed by President Trump’s threat regarding Iran that ‘a whole civilization will die tonight’ if his demands are not met. Such language describes a grave atrocity if carried out,” reads the statement that the Council for Global Equality more than 200 other organizations and human rights experts signed. “A threat to wipe out ‘a whole civilization’ may amount to a threat of genocide. Genocide is a crime defined by the Genocide Convention and by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as committing one or more of several acts ‘with intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, racial or religious groups as such.'”
The statement states “the law is clear that civilians must not be targeted, and they must also be protected from indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks.”
“Strikes on civilian infrastructure — such as the recent attack on a bridge and the attacks President Trump is repeatedly threatening to carry out to destroy power plants — have devastating consequences for the civilian population and environment,” it reads.
“We urge all parties to respect international law,” adds the statement. “Those responsible for atrocities, including crimes against humanity and war crimes, can and must be held accountable.”
The Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice, Amnesty International USA, Human Rights Watch, the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP, MADRE, and the Robert and Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center are among the other groups that signed the letter.
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Tenn. lawmakers pass transgender “watch list” bill
