AIDSWatch 2025
Opening Remarks
By
Jesse Milan, Jr., JD
AIDS United President & CEO
April 1, 2025
Good morning! Welcome again to day two of AIDSWatch 2025. I’m Jesse Milan, CEO of AIDS United…. until July 1. After nine years at AIDS United and 40 years in the HIV field, the time has come for me to switch gears and enter my “retirement phase.”
I want you to know that serving as your President & CEO of AIDS United’s has been the capstone of my career and the honor of a lifetime. But please know that I’m not leaving our movement. HIV has been my life’s work and as a person living with HIV, I can never give up advocating for my own health and for the health and rights of us all.
While I would prefer to be spending time planning out the details of my retirement from this role (and believe me, my husband has lots in store for me!), but the Trump administration has other plans for me and for us. We knew since the day after the election that the HIV community would have a challenging road ahead. But I think we can all agree we were not fully prepared for how fast and furiously bad it would be. Our people, our programs and our progress are at risk. Our organizations and our lives are at risk. These first weeks have been shocking and discouraging, but they’ve also enflamed us and enraged us to stand up, to fight back and unleash our power.
Since day one after the inauguration, the Trump Administration has worked to downsize our federal government and destroy public health structures. Executive orders and DOGE are eliminating government agencies and programs, reducing our global aid, and recklessly firing federal employees. These actions are creating massive chaos across the country and the world. And it is now very clear they are aiming directly at HIV programs and people.
The news on Friday that the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Infectious Disease Policy was closed and its staff terminated was devastating. That office known as OIDP staffed the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (known as PACHA) and it supported our National HIV/AIDS Strategy, and it created and supported our national STI and Hepatitis plans – even tick-borne diseases and vaccines. And the HHS Office of Minority Health and CMS Office of Minority Health are now closed and their staff gone.
My heart goes out to the thousands of our federal colleagues who are losing their jobs. Many of them are our friends who have worked so tirelessly for us on the inside. At OIPD, I’ve known many of them for years. The wonderful Kaye Hayes and Caroline Talev who both served as executive director of PACHA, and Dr. Tim Harrison, a Black man who worked to quietly and hard on the inside for years. Also, Chloe Loving who staffed my PACHA committee on HIV & Aging and Long-term and Lifetime Survivors. They are the best of public servants, and they were the best advocates for us on the inside of both Republican and Democratic administrations. But now they are gone and now those offices created to address our health are gone too.
And USAID is essentially gone. It’s gone from a staff of 10,000 around the world doing great humanitarian work to only 15 people. And the dismantling of USAIDS and the termination of hundreds of contracts and grants, and executive orders freezing our global aid has been disastrous for our people. AmFAR tells us that over 200,000 people pick up their HIV meds each day from PEPFAR funded clinics. Those people aren’t some distant cousins or ancestors, they are our brothers and sisters today! I’m a board member of AVAC that sued the State Department to stop this freeze on global aid. And they won. But we have not won the reauthorization of PEPFAR yet – it expired on March 25th. We need this Congress and this president to refund and reauthorize it. We should all be clear that the HIV diaspora spans from South Africa to South Sudan to South Carolina, and to the south side of Chicago to South L.A. America’s vision for health equity should know no border.
But that vision is now dimmed and we’re in danger here at home.
Executive orders denouncing “gender ideology” and transgender people and executive orders ending DEI have targeted us, they terrified and traumatized us. Even at AIDS united, we’ve wondered if these orders would end our federal programs. And in some organizations, they have.
But they will not deter us in our advocacy.
We’ve already shown our power in these last few weeks. It was only days ago when we heard reports that the administration has plans to eliminate the CDC’s Division of HIV Prevention – a division with a budget of over $700 Million to stop the spread of HIV in our country. Those funds create access to HIV testing and education; to PrEP and PEP, and they support data collection and surveillance that guide who we will address to end this epidemic. Our friends at AmFAR have already analyzed the if these cuts to CDC prevention happen there could be more than 100,000 new HIV transmissions by 2030, more than ten thousand new deaths, and the cost to our healthcare system could be upwards toward $60 Billion! This must not happen.
But look what has happened. Within hours of learning of this plan to end CDC’s HIV prevention we galvanized our movement to respond. AIDS United action alerts, and media alerts, and news reports by the New York Times and NBC, Bloomberg and Reuters, and letters from members of Congress — all within a matter of hours and days. And that plan seems for now on pause. Sound familiar? Remember last year at AIDSWatch? Congress was preparing to cut $767 Million from the federal budget for HIV and at AIDSWatch we did over 240 meetings with Congress in one day and two days later that cut was stopped.
We can do it again.
I’m proud that AIDS United and our Public Policy Council (PPC) have jumped into action since the very first day after the election. Within hours over 100 of you gathered with us online, and our policy team and PPC have been on overdrive everyday single since the inauguration. And I’m proud that with our partners we’ve been planning feverishly for this year’s AIDSWatch as the most important in decades.
When I think about all those decades I’ve been reflecting much on my own journey. It was exactly 40 years ago this month in April 1985 when my late partner, George was diagnosed with AIDS and 8 months later he died. I was only 29 when he died. I was a young lawyer in Philadelphia starting my professional career and my life as Black gay man. And I soon learned that I was also now a person with HIV. 40 years later, someone who asked me just last month, “Jesse did you ever think you would live this long to face retirement?” The person who asked me that question had also faced his own HIV diagnosis and he told me that as he waited for his results, he was certain he would die soon. To be honest, it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t live this long because I had access to care and to cutting edge medical innovations including a clinical trial. But I understood his fear. Disease and death from AIDS were all around us when I was in my 20s and 30s. The physical signs of AIDS were horrific and emotional scars of AIDS deaths were unforgettable. We planned beautiful funerals and memorial services like the beautiful services gay men plan today for their weddings. Those signs and scars of disease and deaths are what we are working and advocating for to never happen again.
But so much of what we hoped and prayed and worked and fought for over these decades has become true. ARVs now in single dose and injectable form – so different from when we had no medications at all or when we had to take fists full of pills multiple times a day. And PrEP to keep people from ever acquiring HIV, now in forms that can be injected only once every few months. And things we never envisioned like the lifesaving and stigma stopping message of U=U! These advances have allowed me to reach retirement age, and they can stop anyone from ever having to live a life with HIV or ever dying of AIDS again.
And we worked and fought and advocated for federal investments to save our lives. The Ryan White Program and PEPFAR and the Minority AIDS Initiative, HOPWA, and CDC prevention funds, and NIH research funds. And yes, the Ending the HIV Epidemic – that was created by President Trump and modeled after the huge roadmap document that AIDS United and our PPC created. Our advocacy has led to biomedical advances and programs that have saved lives across the decades and for decades yet to come.
And I’m grateful that across the decades Millennials like Carl, and Gen Xers and Gen Zers have joined this fight –because they know, you know — that the work for health equity, equality, and social justice seems to never end in our country— be it racial justice, queer and trans justice, reproductive justice, economic justice, justice for immigrants.
And this community is forever committed to diversity, equity and inclusion. And we will not have our lives, our history or our data erased by a fascist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, and authoritarian regime!
Our work is not done. And our fight goes on today and tomorrow on the Hill and in every one of these long four years this Administration. I know that AIDS United under Carl will continue that fight. And I will support him in every way I can, and I’ll aways be with you as part of this movement and fight.
So, let’s gird ourselves for our fight and let’s go to the Hill tomorrow. We’ve done it before and we’ve won, and we’ll do it again. Hundreds of legislators and their staff need to hear from us. Be brave. Be bold. Be you. All those who have died and all those living who are not here with in DC are relying on us. That’s what AIDSWatch has been for year after year for 30 years, and this year we will fight like never before.
Let’s do it! We can do it. We must do it. We will win!
