California, other states sue over Trump’s latest cuts to HIV programs
California and three other states sued the Trump administration on Wednesday over plans to cut $600 million from programs designed to prevent and track the spread of HIV, including in the LGBTQ+ community; He argued that this movement was based on “political hostility and disagreements over unrelated issues such as federal immigration enforcement, political protest, and clean energy.”
“This action is unlawful,” attorneys for California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota said in the complaint filed in Illinois federal court against President Trump and several of his officials.
Despite the California Advocate, funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was allocated to disease control programs in all four states. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office said his state faces the “largest share” of the cuts.
That includes $130 million to be paid to California under the Public Health Infrastructure Block Grant, which the state and local public health departments use to fund the public health workforce, monitor the spread of diseases and respond to public health emergencies, Bonta’s office said.
“President Trump… is using federal funding to force states and jurisdictions to follow his agenda. All of these efforts have failed before, and we expect it to happen again,” Bonta said in a statement.
One of the named defendants, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., repeatedly distanced his agency from evidence-based HIV monitoring and prevention programs last year, and the Trump administration has broadly attacked federal spending that goes to blue states or is allocated to initiatives aimed at the LGBTQ+ community.
The White House justified the latest cuts by claiming the programs “promote DEI and radical gender ideology” but did not provide further explanation. Health officials said the cuts were due to programs that did not reflect the CDC’s “priorities.”
Neither the White House nor Health and Human Services immediately responded to requests for comment.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said the cuts would derail an estimated $64.5 million for 14 county grant programs, leading to “increased costs, more illnesses and preventable deaths.”
The Ministry stated that these programs focus on responding to disasters, controlling epidemic diseases such as measles and influenza, preventing the spread of diseases such as West Nile, dengue fever and hepatitis A, monitoring and treating HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, combating chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity, and supporting public health.
These cuts will also include approximately $1.1 million in department spending. National HIV Behavioral Surveillance ProjectIt focuses on detecting emerging HIV trends and preventing epidemics.
D., an epidemiologist at the UCLA Fielding School and former chief science officer for the county’s public health department. Paul Simon said cutting the program was a “dangerous” and “shortsighted” move that would leave public health officials in the dark about what was happening with the disease.
Significant cuts to the City of Long Beach, UCLA and nine community health providers providing HIV prevention services are also expected, including $383,000 for the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s community HIV prevention programs, local officials said.
Leading California Democrats opposed the cuts. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said the move was an unlawful attempt by Trump to punish blue states that “will not bow to his extremist agenda.”
“His message to the 1.2 million Americans living with HIV is clear: political revenge, not their lives, comes first,” Padilla said in a statement. he said.
The states argue in the lawsuit that the administration’s decision “identified jurisdictions that were disliked based not on any rational purpose regarding the goals of any program, but rather on partisan animus.”
The lawsuit asked the court to declare the cuts illegal and bar the administration from enforcing them or “engaging in future retaliatory conduct regarding federal funding or other participation in federal programs” based on the states’ exercise of sovereign authority over unrelated matters.
