Beverly Press Park Labrea News: Friedman leans in to help as LGBTQ+ providers face cuts

U.S. Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) held a roundtable discussion with LGBTQ+ service providers in Hollywood on June 2 to explain measures she is taking in Washington, D.C. to support the community, and to hear their concerns.

Many health care and social service providers are under threat from Trump administration funding cuts that representatives said will translate into fewer services available, including life-saving health care for people with HIV/AIDS, as well as LGBTQ+ youth, seniors and people living on fixed incomes. The roundtable discussion was held at the L.A. LGBT Center and included representatives of AMAAD Institute, APLA Health, Bienestar Human Services, St. John’s Community Health, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Essential Access Health, APAIT and Equality California.

“Today’s roundtable was about hearing directly from the people on the front lines, and I’m taking your voices back to Washington with me,” Friedman said. “These cuts aren’t just numbers – they’re patients who won’t get health care and more people put at risk. Our providers deserve consistent support – not an administration that treats fellow Americans as less than equal.”

Trumps budget proposal includes significant cuts to LGBTQ services provided through the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The budget would restructure the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, eliminating $74 million for education and training, according to a report by the Human Rights Campaign. It cuts funding for HIV/AIDS and STD testing and prevention, terminates funding for gender-affirming care research, eliminates mental health and harm reduction programs, and reduces funding for outreach and intervention.

Friedman recently led 23 members of Congress in demanding that withheld funds be immediately released, and that grant recipients receive transparency about the situation. The service providers said the need is dire. For example, if funding isn’t continued, HIV infections are projected to increase exponentially.

“On the HIV prevention end, we don’t know. The funding for the second year of a five-year prevention grant was due on June 1. It has not been forthcoming in L.A. County, it has not been forthcoming at the state. L.A. County has terminated all of its HIV and STD prevention contracts. That means staff gets laid off, work stops, testing stops, knowing your status stops. So yes, it’s dire,” said Phil Curtis, with APLA Health’s Government Affairs Division. “There continues to be word out of Washington, from various sources, that there will be prevention funding forthcoming, but we don’t know. So we’re working with the center and with other organizations to try to get stop gap funding, at least for maybe June, July, from the county and from the state. But so far, nothing has happened.”

Jazzmun Nichalo Crayton, a member of the Los Angeles Transgender Advisory Council and health and policy coordinator at APAIT/SSG, said the cuts will translate into fewer mental health and substance abuse treatment options for the LGBTQ+ community.

“There’s a scarcity effect that’s happening here, and it’s a trickledown effect. We don’t know, and if we don’t have the answers, they’re questioning, who does have the answers?” Crayton said. “People are in communication with each other, so oftentimes they’re communicating and letting people know where to go, if they’re not getting services at one particular place they say try this place. But if nobody is able to provide, what do we do?”

Friedman said she is working to get funding restored for programs and pledged to fight for the LGBTQ+ community in Washington, D.C. She added, however, that a lot of uncertainty lies ahead.

“It is really scary and challenging times. Challenging for people to access basic social safety net programs, certainly medical care, particularly for some of our most vulnerable residents,” Friedman said. “And this will affect everyone. They’ll have ripple effects all across Los Angeles, once people get sicker, infectious diseases spread. I’ll be in Washington doing my best to represent you and continue the funding of these programs, but it isn’t out right now.”