NBC News reported this week that President Donald Trump’s administration is thinking about getting rid of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s division that focuses on HIV prevention and giving those responsibilities to the Department of Health and Human Services. There’s apparently another potential plan, a source told NBC News, that would cut up to $700 million from the CDC’s HIV division.

As a person who was diagnosed with HIV and AIDS in 2006, I’m dreading what comes next.

As a person who was diagnosed with HIV and AIDS in 2006, I’m dreading what comes next. Just how far will any of this go or end? When I was diagnosed, I was prescribed antiretrovirals, and, within months, my viral load dropped to undetectable levels. The virus has remained undetectable since then, and I am now healthy and thriving. I’ve come a long way from the opportunistic infections I was constantly dealing with at the time of my diagnosis.

Then, I was barely insured and terrified that I might never recover. Within months, my insurer rescinded my health insurance policy. How was I going to pay out of pocket for the costly medications I needed to keep me alive?

I soon learned about the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act. It provides HIV primary care, treatment and supportive services for low-income people living with HIV. The law provides a safety net  that covers the copays for my HIV prescription, which would otherwise cost about $4,000 a month. This is stabilizing for my physical and mental health.

People living with HIV work very hard to suppress the virus so that it cannot be detected in our blood because if the virus is undetectable, then it is “untransmittable.” That is, it cannot be passed on to others through sex. In short, treatment is everything, and treatment is prevention.

Knowing we cannot expose our partners to HIV and pose no threat to others is affirming and liberating. It allows us to safely have pleasurable relationships with others and make babies.

The Trump administration has already worked to eliminate USAID and hamper PEPFAR (President Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), which is credited with saving more than 26 million lives in 55 countries since its creation in 2003. Now, the CDC may be eliminating funding for HIV prevention or incorporating it into HHS’s Ryan White program. I and others in my community are nervous for the future of HIV treatment and the future of HIV prevention.

Treatment is everything, and treatment is prevention.

State and local health departments and community-based nonprofits depend on the CDC’s HIV division for HIV testing, HIV education, funding for the pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, funding and technical support in public health efforts. Removing funding for this could potentially fuel new cases. PrEP, when used correctly, can stop someone from acquiring HIV during intimate encounters.

Shoehorning HIV prevention services into the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program, which provides HIV care, could overburden the program. Resources to serve the 1.2 million people living with HIV in the U.S. are already stretched thin. Resources can be even scarcer in the Deep South, especially in its rural and urban areas.

At the same time, House Republicans seem bent on slashing Medicaid.

Many low-income or disabled people living with HIV depend on Medicaid for health care.

I am more concerned than ever about the unraveling of safety nets that wrap around not only people living with HIV but anyone with a chronic health condition. Some days, everything seems under threat.

Trump’s flurry of executive orders against DEI pose a particular danger to people like me, a Black person and member of the LGBTQ community. Many HIV prevention and treatment programs focus on LGBTQ people (sometimes trans people in particular), Black people and women. These programs for treatment and prevention may not be in alignment with Trump’s anti-DEI agenda.

Until this week, there was not a lot of talk from leaders in the HIV-positive community about preparing people living with HIV for potential service interruptions. In their defense, they didn’t have a crystal ball to predict this, and they have received no guidance from federal funding agencies. Nevertheless, that failure to plan or consider contingencies does not help clients or patients sleep better at night.

We can see from PEPFAR the consequences of reduced services or zero funding. Millions of lives are affected and rationing of medication and care has started in Africa.

When might we need to start to rationing medication or care in the U.S.? I could probably last a couple of months but what then? Being undetectable and healthy is great. We’re living long lives now and getting old.

Too many have fought hard to get the science where it is and to get the funding where it is.

Even though I am trying to remain hopeful that any reshuffling of the CDC or Ryan White will be minimal, I realize hope is not a strategy. Too many have fought hard to get the science where it is and to get the funding where it is.

Last year, I traveled to the southwest corner of France and noticed that many of the road signs were turned upside down. I was told farmers did that to protest government policies they opposed.

It seems to me that now’s the time to turn some things upside down in this country and fight back. We cannot let Trump make HIV a fatal disease again.

Dorian-gray Alexander

Dorian-gray Alexander is an opinionated person who muses about health, HIV and humanity.

President Donald Trump has railed in recent weeks against federal judges who have ruled against his administrationpainting them as threats to the country and demanding that the Supreme Court halt all nationwide injunctions.

In a post on Truth Social Thursday, Trump attacked the judges who have issued injunctions against his policies, calling them “radical left judges” and “lunatics” who “want to assume the Powers of the Presidency, without having to attain 80 Million Votes.” (Trump won the 2024 election with 77 million votes, and federal judges are appointed to their positions, not elected.)

“STOP NATIONWIDE INJUNCTIONS NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,” he added, before calling on Chief Justice John Roberts to intervene. “If Justice Roberts and the United States Supreme Court do not fix this toxic and unprecedented situation IMMEDIATELY, our Country is in very serious trouble!”

On Friday morning, Trump again suggested in a Truth Social post that federal judges are attempting to “assume the duties of the President of the United States.”

With more than 100 lawsuits against Trump’s policies to date, the administration has claimed that judges are improperly using nationwide injunctions to impede the president’s agenda and to override his executive powers. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt accused those judges of being “partisan activists.”

“They are trying to dictate policy from the president of the United States,” she said. “They are trying to clearly slow-walk this administration’s agenda, and it’s unacceptable.”

Nationwide injunctions have stymied both Republican and Democratic presidents in the past. However, Trump and his allies argue that his administration has faced more injunctions than any other in recent decades. According to the Harvard Law ReviewTrump faced 64 injunctions in his first term in office, far more than any president since 2001.

But Trump has wielded executive power in ways that other presidents have not, and in his second termhe has aggressively sought to expand the boundaries of his office. As my colleague Steve Benen pointed outRepublicans are leaning on the assumption that courts are engaged in a widespread conspiracy to undermine Trump’s agenda, rather than face the more straightforward explanation that his actions may simply be at odds with the law.

Nevertheless, the president and his billionaire ally Elon Musk have also called for judges who rule against the administration to be impeachedwhich provoked Roberts to take the rare step of issuing a statement saying “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”

The Justice Department is currently awaiting the Supreme Court’s ruling on a request to narrow orders from several judges who have blocked Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order from taking effect nationwide. But as The Associated Press pointed outthe high court appears to be in no hurry to decide.

Clarissa-je Lim

Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking/trending news blogger for BLN Digital. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.

In the recent past, there was reason to believe Donald Trump might face criminal accountability for Jan. 6 and his actions after his 2020 defeat. Those hopes were dashed, however, by the results of the 2024 election and the demise of former special counsel Jack Smith’s case against the president.

There is, however, another potential avenue for accountability — a series of civil lawsuits filed against Trump — though as The New York Times reportedthe Justice Department appears to be taking steps to derail this option, too.

The Times’ report, which has not been independently verified by BLN or NBC News, added that the legal maneuver appeared to be the latest effort to use the powers of the Justice Department to Trump’s advantage “by effectively having himself removed from the lawsuits.”

For those who might benefit from a refresherin the aftermath of the insurrectionist violence, among those who filed lawsuits against Trump were police officers injured during the insurrectionist violence. In fact, multiple cases were filed:

• In March 2021two Capitol Police officers, James Blassingame and Sidney Hemby, sued Trump, claiming he was liable for the injuries they suffered during the riot.
• In August 2021seven more police officers who were attacked and beaten during the Capitol riot sued the former president.
• In January 2022three more police officers — including two who aided the evacuation of lawmakers — sued Trump, seeking damages for their physical and emotional injuries.
• In January 2023the longtime partner of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died after the Jan. 6 riot, filed a wrongful death civil suit against Trump.

Those civil cases have since been consolidated and are pending before U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta.

To be sure, even if Trump were to lose the civil suits, there would be no criminal consequences, but they could prove to be politically embarrassing and financially costly. Indeed, let’s not forget that he has suffered several major legal setbacks and defeats in recent years — the E. Jean Carroll case, the Trump Organization’s fraud case, the demise of his fraudulent charity, the demise of his fraudulent “university,” et al. — and those were all civil cases.

What’s more, while the Justice Department has a policy prohibiting federal criminal charges against a sitting president, the Supreme Court has already ruled that sitting presidents can face civil suits while in office, and claims from Trump’s lawyers that he’s immune in these cases have already been rejected by two courts.

It’s against this backdrop that the Justice Department decided to intervene. The Times’ report added, “The department has argued that under the law federal officials acting within the scope of their office or employment cannot be sued personally, and that in such instances the government is the only entity that can be targeted.”

It’s an argument rooted in the idea that those who claim to have been harmed by the president’s actions on Jan. 6 should be able to sue the federal government, but shouldn’t be able to sue the Republican directly.

Will this work? Watch this space.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

Steve legs

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”