{"id":21381,"date":"2026-04-15T15:46:40","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T15:46:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/aids-activists-disrupt-voughts-testimony-on-trumps-budget\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T15:46:40","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T15:46:40","slug":"aids-activists-disrupt-voughts-testimony-on-trumps-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/aids-activists-disrupt-voughts-testimony-on-trumps-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"AIDS activists disrupt Vought\u2019s testimony on Trump\u2019s budget"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>A group of AIDS activists and former USAID employees disrupted White House budget director Russ Vought\u2019s testimony before the House Budget Committee on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Capitol police officers escorted the protesters out of the room as the group chanted \u201cPEPFAR saves lives \u2014 spend the money\u201d and held signs that read statement such as \u201cProtect PEPFAR from Vought,\u201d forcing the director to pause his opening statement for several minutes. <\/p>\n<p>The Trump administration has tried to slash funding for the program that seeks to reduce HIV and AIDS in developing nations. But Congress <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/02\/03\/congress-ends-shutdown-00762482\" target=\"_blank\">rejected those proposals<\/a> earlier this year, clearing $4.6 billion for the program for the current fiscal year, down from $4.8 billion enacted for the prior fiscal year.<\/p>\n<p>Republicans also bucked the Trump administration\u2019s request last summer to claw back $400 million Congress had already approved for the AIDS-fighting program, nixing that reduction from the $9 billion rescissions package <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/07\/18\/house-passes-public-media-foreign-aid-clawbacks-after-epstein-scramble-00462085\" target=\"_blank\">Congress cleared in July<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In August, Secretary of State Marco Rubio <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/08\/29\/rubio-usaid-closeout-vought-00536088\" target=\"_blank\">handed off the reins of the U.S. Agency for International Development<\/a> to Vought, to \u201coversee the closeout\u201d of the agency Trump moved to dismantle after he was inaugurated last year. <\/p>\n<p><i>Carmen Paun contributed to this report. <\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A group of AIDS activists and former USAID employees disrupted White House budget director Russ Vought\u2019s testimony before the House Budget Committee on Wednesday. Capitol police officers escorted the protesters out of the room as the group chanted \u201cPEPFAR saves lives \u2014 spend the money\u201d and held signs that read statement such as \u201cProtect PEPFAR [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}