CONTACT: Kendall Martinez-Wright, Kendall.Martinez.Wright@treatmentactiongroup.org

February 11, 2026, NEW YORK, NY — Earlier this week, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposed $600 million in unconstitutional and illegal retroactive cuts to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) programs in four Democratic led states – California, Colorado, Illinois, and Minnesota. The cuts are illegal because Congress has already appropriated the funds. They are unconstitutional because they amount to the impoundment of funds that Congress has directed be spent in a particular way. The cuts – to state and local public health and HIV programs – are senseless, vindictive, and, as public health does not stop at state lines, damaging to neighboring states as well.

This news comes as no shock, especially with the regime’s adamant attacks on public health workers on the ground laboring to improve the health of people across the country.

Due to flawed and deadly policies at the Department of Health and Human Services, we are seeing the reemergence of vaccine-preventable diseases, including ongoing measles outbreaks in 20 states: Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.

TAG’s Government Relations and Policy Associate Kendall Martinez-Wright said, “The administration’s withholding of funds from states where democrats hold a majority of statewide offices is a cruel act of vengeance and flies in the face of Congress’s expressed will.” 

Mark Harrington, TAG’s Executive Director, said, “Enough is Enough! Congress must stand up to reclaim its constitutionally mandated power of the purse, and the courts must hold OMB’s acts illegal and unconstitutional. The nation’s fight against HIV and for public health for all are too important to be held hostage by a racist, homophobic, misogynistic administration that only acts to harm people it believes do not support its lawless, violent, hate-filled agenda.”

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