Six resign from presidential HIV/AIDS council because Trump 'doesn't care'
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Six members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS have angrily resigned, saying that President Trump doesn’t care about HIV.
Scott Schoettes, Lucy Bradley-Springer, Gina Brown, Ulysses Burley III, Michelle Ogle and Grissel Granados publicly announced their resignations in a joint letter published in Newsweek titled, “Trump doesn’t care about HIV. We’re outta here.”
The group said that the administration “has no strategy” to address HIV/AIDS, doesn’t consult experts when working on policy and “pushes legislation that will harm people living with HIV and halt or reverse important gains made in the fight against this disease.”
“As advocates for people living with HIV, we have dedicated our lives to combating this disease and no longer feel we can do so effectively within the confines of an advisory body to a president who simply does not care,” they wrote.
The group noted that Trump took down the Office of National AIDS Policy website when he took office and hasn’t appointed anyone to lead the White House Office of National AIDS Policy.
They also said that the GOP’s ObamaCare repeal bill will dramatically hurt those with HIV/AIDS, making it the “final straw for us — more like a two-by-four than a straw” in deciding to leave the council.
“We will be more effective from the outside, advocating for change and protesting policies that will hurt the health of the communities we serve and the country as a whole if this administration continues down the current path,” they wrote.
“We hope the members of Congress who have the power to affect healthcare reform will engage with us and other advocates in a way that the Trump Administration apparently will not.”
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The Trump administration is dangerous. Pence already caused an HIV outbreak in rural Indiana with his terrible public health policy. Taxpayers are now on the hook to pay for their healthcare since these were poor people on Medicaid. It would have been much cheaper to just hand out the condoms and clean needles. They cost pennies.
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Yes, this is very dangerous. What Mike Pence did in Indiana is just downright awful; however, if these investigations leads to #45 resigning or being removed from office, it's up to people to hold Pence accountable to what he did to his own state and keep him from being elected to a full term.
We're going to see more people resign from multiple councils because it's obvious at this point that our president has zero plans for anything. Even if he does, there's too much infighting in the Republican party to get anything done. The only thing they're focused on doing is snatching healthcare away from 23 million people and forcing people to choose between feeding their children or dying. I'm not sure the president understands the need for an HIV/AIDS council, but we all know for a fact Pence doesn't care because of his own disgusting record as Indiana's governor. He was chosen as #45's VP because the state Republican party knew the Democrat would have defeated Pence had he run for reelection there as governor.
