Prism & Pen

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Trump is Snatching HIV Meds Out of the Hands of People in Desperate Need

This is not hyperbole. But a “shock and awe” series of executive orders is making it hard to keep up with the cruelty

James Finn
Prism & Pen
Published in
9 min readJan 29, 2025

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USAID logo licensed from Adobe stock. Black ribbon symbolizing the death of HIV treatment superimposed by author. A red ribbon of this shape is the traditional symbol of hope for the end of AIDS.

The Trump administration is VERY busy implementing an extremist playbook called Project 2025, a playbook Trump the candidate disavowed knowledge of.

The president is busy issuing executive orders, some of them quite cruel, that legal experts say exceed Constitutional executive powers, and nobody is certain if the rule of law will survive his presidency or not. Every LGBTQ person I know in the U.S. is living with fear and anxiety right now, because many of those orders are aimed squarely at us. Turning on the news has become an exercise in fear management.

As therapist Gino Cosme just wrote in Prism & Pen, many of his older LGBTQ clients are suffering from flashbacks to the worst of the HIV/AIDS era. I certainly am!

Last night, as I read about the president trying to criminalize trans youth and adults, my body remembered those days, even though I regularly sweep specific memories of suffering friends into hidden corners. I found myself trembling yesterday, and I needed time to realize I was reliving old fears. I don’t want to revisit all those memories…

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Prism & Pen
Prism & Pen

Published in Prism & Pen

Amplifying LGBTQ voices through the art of storytelling

James Finn
James Finn

Written by James Finn

James Finn is an LGBTQ columnist, a former Air Force intelligence analyst, an alumnus of Act Up NY, and an agented but unpublished novelist.

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