Contact: Natalie Shure, natalie.shure@treatmentactiongroup.org

February 6, 2025 — Treatment Action Group (TAG) fiercely condemns the new presidential administration’s deadly and hateful attack on people living with HIV and their communities at home and around the world. We’ve co-organized a direct action and will put our bodies on the line to protest this flagrant assault on the President’s Emergency Plan to Fight AIDS (PEPFAR). The rally and potential civil disobedience^[1], bringing together determined activists from many well-known organizations including HealthGAP, Housing Works, and ACT UP, among others, will start at 11 a.m. E.T. on Thursday, February 6, 2025, at State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C..

“Secretary of State Marco Rubio purported to be a strong supporter of PEPFAR and of U.S. global health diplomacy for the past two decades,” said TAG Executive Director Mark Harrington. “As soon as he became Secretary of State, however, he immediately froze all PEPFAR programs around the world, cutting off life-saving HIV treatment for 20 million people and prevention for millions more, including babies being carried to term by mothers living with or at risk for HIV. This broad attack on one of the most successful humanitarian aid programs that the U.S. has ever created flies in the face of over two decades of generosity by the American people since PEPFAR was set up – with bipartisan support in Congress at the initiative of Republican President George W. Bush in 2003.”

“What we’ve seen from the incoming administration is just sickening,” added Harrington, who cofounded TAG — an activist think tank dedicated to ending HIV, TB, and HCV — in 1992 to push for accelerated HIV treatment research. “Activists have spent four decades fighting for expanded government investment to prevent, treat, and ultimately end HIV. Science and policy advances, including PEPFAR, have saved and are saving tens of millions of lives in communities around the world. We’re unwilling to stand by and let the new administration destroy decades of progress against one of the world’s deadliest pandemics.”

A cadre of  activists at the demonstration may risk arrest, building on a rich history of unrelenting action to end the AIDS crisis at the heart of the HIV activist movement.

PEPFAR has saved an estimated 35 million lives since 2003, changing the trajectory of the global HIV pandemic and is the single largest funder of the global HIV response. When its funds were suddenly frozen Jan. 24, delivery of life-sustaining antiretroviral therapy (ART) for an estimated 20.6 million people^[2] hung in the balance. While the Trump administration later insisted that PEPFAR funds would be exempt from the freeze, few programs have yet reopened, while civil society and health care providers report an ongoing shutout^[3] from key resources they rely on to protect their communities’ health.

The administration has also taken steps to remove scientific knowledge and guidance for affected communities. For example, scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health have been prevented from interacting with the public. Their websites have suffered selective black-outs and removal of vital health information regarding, for example, pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, transgender health services, accompanied by the deletion of public databases on government websites. LGBTQI+ health and safety information across government websites has been among the worst targeted. “This vile and dangerous bigotry is designed to compromise the health and dignity of vulnerable populations,” said TAG Government Relations & Policy Associate Kendall Martinez-Wright, who will be one of the rally’s speakers.

“We’ll work together as a movement – as we have for the past four decades, under seven Presidents and regardless of the composition of Congress – to ensure that people living with HIV and those at risk are protected, honored, respected, and treated with dignity and the medical and social services they need to live long and productive lives,” said Riko Boone, TAG’s HIV Project Director. “For millions of people living with HIV, this is truly  a matter of life and death.”

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[1] Civil Disobedience for PEPFAR in Washington, DC. 2025 Feb.

[2] International AIDS Society. Restore Access to All Pepfar-Supported HIV Services Immediately. 2025 Jan 29.

[3] Knibbs K, Wired. Elon Musk’s DOGE Is Still Blocking HIV/AIDS Relief Exempted From Foreign Aid Cuts. 2025 Feb 3.

ABOUT TAG: Treatment Action Group (TAG) is an independent, activist, and community-based research and policy think tank committed to racial, gender, and LGBTQ+ equity; social justice; and liberation, fighting to end HIV, tuberculosis (TB), and hepatitis C virus (HCV). TAG works to ensure that all people with HIV, TB, or HCV receive lifesaving treatment, care, and information.