#HIVResists: June 2026 Monthly Policy Update

Hot Topic
Necropolitics of The Trump Administration – How The Federal Government is Using Federal Funding to Determine Who Lives and Who Dies 

The Trump administration track record on HIV is deplorable: gutting funding, terminating advisory committees, and even using the lives of people living with HIV as a bargaining chip for global mineral extraction. Although this proposed rule is another attack on our communities, we have the power to fight back. It’s not over yet!

• Learn more, attend the Federal Aids Policy Partnership (FAPP) working group meeting on July 1st, 2026, 11:30am CT/12:30pm ET. REGISTER HERE. 
• Contact your legislators, especially if they’re Republicans, and request they urge the White House to withdraw the proposed OMB proposed rule.
• Submit a personalized public comment by July 13th, 2026. Check out the following for more information: Nation Council of Nonprofits Guide. 

Top News Roundup

LGBTQ+ Health, Rights, and Justice

• Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit on behalf of national HIV medical associations to challenge new federal guidance for Ryan White programs that would restrict access to health care services for transgender people living with HIV. 
• Cleveland Clinic is the second hospital, after Texas Children’s Hospital, to fund “detransition” services as part of its settlement with the Department of Justice.
• The Maine Secretary of State ruled that a ballot initiative regarding banning trans students from school sports and bathrooms will not appear on the November ballot.

Access to Healthcare

• FY27 Appropriations Update: the Labor, Health, and Human Services bill has passed the House full committee with around $1.4 Billion in cuts. HIV funding cuts include cuts to Ryan White Part F, Minority AIDS Fund, CDC Division of HIV prevention, and SAMHSA Minority AIDS Funding. 
  • Action Alert: Use this Save HIV Funding alert to urge your congressional representatives to increase FY27 funding for HIV Programs. 
• Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released the interim final rule for the Medicaid work requirement implementation. Trump’s One Big Ugly Bill established work requirements of at least 80 hours a month for those on Medicaid and allowed medical frailty exemptions. The new interim rule makes the medical frailty exemption harder because it requires that a person’s medical condition prohibits someone from working and limits people’s ability to declare their own inability to work (otherwise known as “self attestation”). 
  • Action Alert: Contact your representatives and demand them to delay the interim final rule, AIDS United Email Template or AIDS United Call Script.

Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice

• The Trump administration issued a proposed rule claiming to improve access to in vitro fertilization (IVF). However, the proposed rule falls short on meeting current need, merely affirming that fertility benefits may be offered as a supplementary health plan, like dental or vision coverage. It does not include any federal IVF coverage mandate, subsidy, or tax credit. 
• Colorado midwives are suing the state’s Division of Professions and Occupations because of how the department regulates  direct-entry midwives. Currently, direct-entry midwives (certified professionals), who make up 100 out of 550 midwives in the state, are solely regulated by one person, Program Director Mayhugh, leading to a lot of subjective decision making without proper understanding of the field. 
• A young woman is suing an Illinois hospital and doctor after delayed care for an ectopic pregnancy resulted in a loss of fallopian tube, proving that even in states where abortion is legal inadequate access to reproductive healthcare continues.

Economic Justice

• Trump signed a new executive order that will make it easier to fire 8,000 highly paid government workers. The order is an extension of the administration’s efforts to downsize the federal government and ensure remaining workers are aligned with Trump’s agenda.
• Congress appropriated over $200 million to the Office on Violence Against Women, and yet $150 million is still unaccounted for, and the Department of Justice refuses to address the missing funds. As a consequence, shelters, organizations, and municipalities working in gender-based violence face the reality of suspending programs and laying off staff due to financial constraints. 
  • Action Alert: Urge Congress to Address Funding Delays that Threaten Victim Services! 
• Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, forces a fourth city to yield to his will by threatening to withhold public funds. Abbott threatened to withdraw public safety grants totaling $530,000 if Grand Prairie hosted a Muslim-only celebration at a public water park, resulting in the event being canceled.

Ending Criminalization

• Despite growing economic insecurity, negative impacts of the first reconciliation bill (H.R.1), and the continued terror by law enforcement, a second reconciliation bill has passed for $70 billion. Also known as the Secure America Act, the reconciliation bill ends the partial government shutdown by funding Trump’s growing criminalization and deportation machine by providing $38.5 billion for ICE, $26 billion for Customs and Border Protection, and $5 billion for the Department of Homeland Security. 
• During the first Trump Administration, Congress passed the First Step Act which allowed people who are incarcerated to make compassionate release claims directly to a judge. But two recent Supreme Court rulings are restricting the ability for early release under the Act. 
  • The First Step Act eliminated mandatory stacking for federal charges. In Rutherford v. In the United States, the Supreme Court held that non-stacking did not apply to old cases. Even though the U.S. Sentencing Commission issued a 2023 policy guideline that long sentences under specific circumstances can serve as a reason for compassionate release depending on “extraordinary and compelling reasons.” 
  • In Fernandez v. In the United States, the Supreme Court went even further to rule that possible innocence is not an extraordinary and compelling reason for compassionate release. 

• Delaney Hall, an ICE detention center in New Jersey operated by the private prison company, GEO Group, has become a flashpoint in the fight against ICE detention. People who are detained in Delaney Hall started a hunger strike to bring attention to the horrendous conditions inside which include inadequate medical care, rotten food, and abusive guards.
  • Action Alert: You can fight back against the conditions at Delaney Hall. Check out THIS TOOLKIT for organizing options.

• • Contact Your Congressional Reps to request they visit Delaney Hall and Defund ICE!

• In line with Trump’s September 2025 executive order targeting activists as “domestic terrorists,” the Department of Justice charged 15 Minneapolis residents with a felony for “conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers” during Operation Metro Surge protests. Similar to the targeting of protestors in the Prairieland Case, these charges raise serious concerns about political freedom and the use of state power to quash dissent.

Election Updates

• The United State’s Supreme Court approved Alabama’s ability to use a 2023 congressional map in the upcoming 2026 elections, despite the fact that lower courts found the 2023 map to be racially discriminatory. The Supreme Court rejected the lower court’s opinion that the 2023 map intentionally diluted the voting power of Black residents, instead the Supreme Court presumes the legislature acted in “good faith” in creating the map.

• MAGA’s playbook for upcoming midterms involves taking action on conspiracy theories on election fraud. In response to Trump’s conspiracy regarding California elections, First Assistant U.S. The Attorney for the Central District of California confirmed investigations are underway into California elections.