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🔥December’s Hot Topic🔥:


PWN-USA Post-Midterm Updates

PWN-USA members and volunteers threw down this election season with nonpartisan Get Out the Vote campaigns in Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Texas, reaching close to a million voters combined! PWN-USA members and volunteers fought for the right to vote in the face of widespread and concerted voter suppression. This work led to impressive voter turnout in key districts and helped shape elections at a local, state, and federal level.

  • PWN-Colorado had intentional and meaningful conversations with voters about abortion and abortion access. PWN also supported a ballot measure known as Proposition 123. The Proposition, which did pass, will direct over 300 million dollars and create a dedicated stream of funding for improved housing stability and homelessness prevention, including rental assistance and eviction defense.

  • PWN-Pennsylvania helped voters in North Philadelphia find and get to their polling locations after the City failed this predominantly Black community by closing down a long-time polling location with insufficient notice.

  • PWN-Houston helped protect the vote by pushing polling place officials to follow a court order extending Harris County polling place hours after completely avoidable malfunctions and mismanagement.

In Congress, Democrats maintained control of the Senate and Republicans won control of the House of Representatives. Shamefully, there are still no Black women in the U.S. Senate. Nationwide, there was a surge in abortion-related ballot initiatives this election. Voters in California, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, and Vermont all turned out in support of abortion rights. For example, Michigan voters amended their state constitution to explicitly protect “reproductive freedom,” and Vermont voters protected “personal reproductive autonomy,” including the right to an abortion. In Kentucky, voters rejected a proposal that would specify that the state’s constitution does not protect the right to an abortion.

Some notable highlights at the state level include progress around drug legalization: marijuana was legalized in Maryland and Missouri. Additionally, Medicaid expansion passed in South Dakota, which could soon make an estimated 50,000 individuals eligible for health care coverage. Oregon became the first state to decree that affordable health care is a fundamental right.

What does this all mean for people living with HIV? When the newly elected Congress Members are sworn in January 2023, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives will be controlled by opposing parties, nearly guaranteeing partisan gridlock that will make it challenging to pass progressive, far-reaching policy change. Nonetheless, there are still important advocacy opportunities. Between now and January 2023, when the new Congress begins, we are in a so-called “lame duck” session. This means that, for the next month, Democrats still have control of both chambers of Congress. They will likely push to advance key priority issues, including funding the government, election protection and marriage equality.

Additionally, this midterm election further highlights the power of community and community-led advocacy. There will continue to be opportunities for progress at the federal, state, and local level around issues critical to the lives of people living with HIV, including around healthcare, housing, and decriminalization.

To read more about the outcome of this year’s midterms, check out some election roundups including those focused on reproductive rights and criminal legal system reform.



Other Updates

The “hot topic” (above) is a deeper dive into one of the most pressing policy-related issues each month for people living with HIV and our communities. But a lot happens each month! Below we list some other important updates relevant to PWN-USA’s intersectional policy agenda.

Access to Healthcare

  • Potential cuts to the Medicare program would limit healthcare, particularly for people over the age of 65 and some younger people with long-term disabilities, in the new year. Congressional action can and should be taken to ensure that Medicare is fully funded for our aging neighbors and loved ones.
  • A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report found that most patients hospitalized for Monkeypox virus (MPV) were people living with HIV. At the same time, there are still racial disparities in MPV vaccine doses, leaving Black people, and particularly queer Black men, more vulnerable to MPV. These disparities are the predictable outcome of unaddressed inequities and systemic racism in the U.S. public health response system.

Reproductive Health Rights and Justice

  • The Georgia Supreme Court reinstated the state’s 6-week abortion ban, at least temporarily. Just days before the state Supreme Court ruling, a lower court judge put the extreme abortion ban on hold, saying the law violated the U.S. Constitution. This abrupt turn of events means that abortion is, once again, effectively banned in Georgia.
  • Anti-abortion groups have filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of medication abortion pills. This is just the start of the lawsuit and has no current impact on access to medication abortion. We will keep you updated on this case and anticipated impacts (if any) as it progresses through the courts.
  • California reproductive health, rights, and justice organizations helped craft and won passage of a historic abortion access and contraception equity bill package, which includes vital medical privacy protections and funding for sexual health providers.

LGBTQ+ Health, Safety & Justice

  • Florida’s medical boards approved a rule barring young people from receiving critical, life-saving, gender-affirming care. The rule is slated to go into effect after a 21-day public comment period. This rule is a hateful attack on LGBTQ+ youth and their individual personhood, bodily autonomy, and integrity.
  • Members of the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a national “Don’t Say Gay” bill inspired by the terrible Florida law, which bans instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade classes. Though it is unlikely that this bill will pass, it is an example of the rise in policies to oppress and harm LGBTQ+ people.
  • The U.S. Senate passed a bill to codify protections for marriage equality. This bill is a big step for LGBTQ+ and interracial couples, but also falls short of the demands by many community groups for stronger protections for the rights of same-sex couples.
  • The state of Idaho finally agreed to remove people from the state’s sex registry and expunge records for people convicted under an antiquated and unconstitutional “Crimes against Nature” law, which criminalized consensual oral and anal sex. The state will also have to pay $275k in legal fees for the three men who challenged the law.

Ending Criminalization

  • Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf (D) signed a harmful new law that 1) empowers police and prosecutors to punish people for “expelling” saliva, blood, or other bodily fluid onto a police officer, and 2) includes a harsher penalty if the person has a communicable disease. Given pre-existing racial disparities in surveillance and policing, this law will likely be used to disproportionately target queer and trans people and Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and other people of color.
  • The White House released a statement about a meeting with prosecutors and public health leaders, which was hosted over the summer, on HIV criminalization in the U.S..  
  • The Ninth Circuit ruling will make it harder to sue online platforms for a broad range of activities relating to sex, sex work and sex trafficking. This case is a crucial win for sex worker advocates. The ruling raises the legal standard under Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), a federal sex trafficking law. (Read more about how FOSTA actually harms sex workers and trafficking survivors alike, here.) Under this Ninth Circuit ruling, an online platform must go beyond knowing that there’s sex work on their website. Instead, the platform must knowingly facilitate sex trafficking, which is a high standard.
  • The Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) unanimously approved a Resolution on Molecular HIV Surveillance and Cluster Detection Response, which recommends that the federal government implement policies to better protect the health data, human rights and dignity of people living with HIV.
  • The impacts of HIV criminalization laws continue to have real and harmful consequences. The Sero Project and ACT UP New York are calling on New York District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, to stop criminalizing people with HIV by classifying a New York resident as a sex offender for an inappropriate and outdated HIV criminal prosecution in a different state. You can sign on to the letter here.

Economic Justice

  • Voters turned out for improved economic security this election. Nebraskans voted to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and Nevadans voted for an increase to $12 an hour. In Washington D.C., voters approved raising the minimum wage for tipped workers to $16.10 per hour.
  • Three people living with HIV sued the Pentagon and U.S. Army to challenge a decades-old policy barring people living with HIV from enlisting.

Ending Violence

  • A federal circuit court full of Trump-appointed judges ruled against the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The program continues for now, but is at risk of ending entirely. Immigrant families deserve to live in certainty and without fear. Congress must act now to permanently protect all immigrant youth, our families, and communities.
  • A judge ordered President Biden to lift a Trump-era immigration rule that allowed immigration authorities to quickly expel migrants without giving them a chance to seek asylum.