After President Trump abruptly halted U.S. funding for critical medicines to treat AIDS, clinics in South Africa, the nation hardest hit by AIDS, were forced to lay off staff. The end of U.S. funding has limited pregnant mothers’ access to anti-retroviral medicines and are now at risk of passing on HIV to their babies. In 2003, Republican President George Bush initiated U.S. funding for PEPFAR, known as “The president’s emergency plan for AIDS relief” to provide treatment, prevention and care for people living with or affected by HIV/AIDS.
(“Pregnant Women Face Sky High Viral Loads As Cuts Hit HIV Care in Africa,” The Guardian, June 15, 2025; “UN AIDS Chief ‘Shaken and Disgusted’ by U.S. Cuts That will Mean Millions of More Deaths,” Guardian, July 4, 2025)
The Trump administration has launched a major reorganization of how the U.S. investigates and prosecutes drug traffickers and other transnational criminal groups, setting out a strategy that would give new authority to the Department of Homeland Security and expands President Trump’s influence on these cases.
(“A New Trump Plan Gives DHS and the White House Greater Influence Over the Fight Against Organized Crime,” ProPublica, June 25, 2025)
Longtime farmworker and organizer Alfredo Juarez Zeferino was violently arrested by ICE agents in March while driving his girlfriend to work at a tulip farm in Washington state. According to the Guardian, ICE smashed his car window when he asked the agents to present a warrant for his arrest. Zeferino, a leading figure in the independent farmworkers union Familias Unidos por la Justiçia, has played a key role in protecting the rights of farm workers in Washington.
(“ICE ‘Politically Targeted’ Farm Worker Activist Juarez Zeferino,” Guardian, July 7, 2025)
