Late on February 25th, the United States House of Representatives passed a budget resolution, which is a blueprint for how federal funding will be allocated for the 2025 fiscal year. The resolution, supported by every Republican congressman except Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, promises to cut $880 billion from Medicaid.

To be clear: the House resolution is not law. This is just the beginning of the fight. The Senate has passed their own budget resolution, which omits many of the catastrophic cuts contained in the House Resolution. The House and Senate must pass the same version of a bill for it to go into law.

Right now, it is critically important to keep contacting your Senators and Congresspeople to let them know Medicaid is not negotiable, and that the cuts contained in the House resolution are unacceptable.

• Contact your representatives using these call scripts, email scripts, and email tools!
  • Take Action to Protect Medicaid (AIDS United)
  • Medicaid Defense: Congressional Outreach Tools for Advocates (Community Catalyst)
• Learn more about defending Medicaid using these informational resources!
  • Medicaid Defense – Resources and Analysis (National Health Law Project)
  • Medicaid State Fact Sheets (KFF)

What did most Republicans deem a worthier cause than fully funding Medicaid? Providing tax cuts to the wealthiest people in the country. The top 1%, making over $700,000 a year, will see $1.24 trillion in tax cuts over the next decade. Similarly, the top 10% of taxpayers, making over $200,000 a year, will see $2.5 trillion in tax cuts in the same time frame.

In addition to tax cuts, the budget resolution adds $100 billion in defense spending and an additional $90 billion for increased immigration enforcement.

If implemented, Medicaid cuts of this magnitude would be catastrophic. If states reduced coverage proportional to the proposed funding cuts, over 15 million people could lose their health insurance. We know that Medicaid is the largest source of healthcare coverage for people living with HIV. We also know that adult women are 5% more likely than men to be covered by Medicaid, particularly women who are low-income parents.

These cuts will also disproportionately impact other communities who are already under attack by malicious federal policy. Relative to their white counterparts, Medicaid covers a higher proportion of Black, Latine, and indigenous children and adults. Medicaid also provides approximately 164,000 trans adults in the United States with access to gender-affirming care.

While the newly passed House budget resolution poses a major threat to our folks, it is not the end of the fight to save Medicaid. Over the coming weeks and months, collective actions, stories, and advocacy from our communities has the power to change the tide. Together, we can all convince lawmakers to adopt a budget resolution that doesn’t put our folks at risk. Take action now!

• Two federal judges, in Baltimore and Washington, have blocked the enforcement of the Trump administration’s executive order that seeks to restrict access to gender-affirming care. Both orders temporarily prevent federal funding from being cut off for medical institutions providing gender-affirming care. 
• The U.S. Social Security Administration will no longer allow people with social security cards to change their gender markers, which they had been able to do since 1980. The new rule is a direct result of Trump’s anti-trans executive actions that seek to ban the federal government from recognizing trans identities.
• The ACLU is representing several trans plaintiffs who have filed a lawsuit that challenges Trump’s State Department’s refusal to allow gender marker changes to passports. The plaintiffs allege that the refusal violates their constitutional rights, including those under the Equal Protection Clause (non-discrimination) and the Due Process Clause (freedom of movement).

• Kansas has become the latest state to ban gender affirming care for trans youth. The state legislature overrode the governor’s veto of the measure, and the law is set to take effect in February. You can track other state level restrictions on gender affirming care here.

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been confirmed as the secretary of Health and Human Services. Many LGBTQ+ people and people living with HIV, including PWN members, strongly opposed his nomination. RFK Jr. is staunchly anti-vaccine, anti-abortion, and pro-conspiracy theory. Immediately after he was installed, HHS released a directive to federal agencies declaring that “biological sex” is a strict binary.

• The Trump administration has fired hundreds of employees in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health. Among those terminated were scientists helping local officials respond to infectious outbreaks, and employees ensuring the safety of medical devices used by cancer and diabetes patients. The loss of these employees will be felt for years to come.

• In January, the State Department announced a freeze on PEPFAR, a federal program providing HIV medication to people in over 50 countries. This was part of a broader 90-day freeze on foreign aid orchestrated by the Trump Administration. On February 6th, the State Department released a memo stating that PEPFAR is barred from providing PrEP to LGBTQ+ people, and can only provide it to pregnant and breastfeeding women. This coverage gap will leave millions of people across the world at an elevated risk of HIV exposure.

• Trump and Elon Musk’s coordinated attacks against the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) are cutting off contraceptive access to over one million women per week. At least forty-two countries rely on USAID for family planning projects, primarily in Africa. On February 26, the Trump administration announced a decision to end 90% of USAID foreign contracts, furthering the crisis of access to contraceptive, HIV and TB treatments around the world.

• In Louisiana and Texas, there are two ongoing legal disputes involving a New York doctor providing medication abortions to patients in the respective states. In Louisiana, the attorney general has brought a civil suit against the doctor. In Texas, a county judge issued an order fining the doctor and blocking her from sending abortion medication to Texas. Both of these legal disputes will test the validity of “shield laws” like the one implemented in New York, which provides that the state government won’t comply with prosecutions targeting abortion providers.

• Missouri health care providers have officially gotten the green light to resume providing abortion care after a judge in Jackson County temporarily blocked a restrictive anti-abortion law. The temporary block is pending the results of the full trial, which is set to occur in 2026.

• The acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA), Michelle King, has left the agency after declining to give Elon Musk’s task force access to a database with sensitive information on every American with a social security number. Musk’s task force is a part of the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Leland Dudek, a vocal supporter of DOGE, has been selected as acting commissioner of the SSA.

• The House budget resolution proposes $230 billion in cuts to SNAP, the largest in history. Throughout the appropriations fight, the Republican-controlled Congress will continue to jeopardize SNAP. Among the proposed policies are: taking SNAP away from those who lose their jobs, to cap maximum benefits, and to limit what SNAP can be used for.

• Early in February, Pam Bondi was confirmed as the next United States Attorney General. Since confirmation, Bondi has issued a series of memos aimed at expanding the carceral state and enacting further violence against Black and brown communities. The harmful guidance provided in these memos includes: encouraging federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in more cases, reinstating charging and sentencing parity for crack cocaine and powder cocaine-related offenses, making immigration enforcement a top priority of the Department of Justice, and targeting pro-Palestinian student protestors.

• The Trump administration has halted funding legal representation in immigration court for children who enter the United States alone. The Acacia Center for Justice, the primary provider of these services through federal contract, served about 26,000 migrant children through this funding. 

• The Trump administration has authorized Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to target and detain people attending mandatory immigration check-ins or court appearances. This targeting involves lying to and otherwise deceiving immigrants by luring them to the courthouse for seemingly routine case check-ins. These actions are part of an overall strategy to arrest between 1,200 and 1,500 people for immigration violations per day.