More than two dozen activists descended on Sen. Susan Collins’ (R-ME) office on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to protest cuts to the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), an HIV-prevention and treatment program that has saved an estimated 26 million lives worldwide. Five of the pro-PEPFAR demonstrators were arrested by U.S. Capitol Police.

Activists from the same advocacy coalition — consisting of the groups Housing Works, Health GAP, and Disability Voters of Maine — “delivered mock ‘body bags’” to Collins’ office in Portland, Maine, according to the groups’ statement. Collins has previously asked Republicans not to cut PEPFAR funding.

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“Activists were reacting to deadly harms caused by Collins’s unwillingness to hold Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought accountable for illegally obstructing the release of already appropriated funding for lifesaving HIV treatment and prevention,” the groups’ press release said.   

Blake Kernen, Collins’s press secretary, told The Washington Blade on Wednesday that “a member of Sen. Collins’s staff offered to speak with the group, but they continued to shout over her and refused the offer.”

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Collins’s office in the Dirksen building was packed with demonstrators, Kernen said, many of whom sat on the floor and used a “loud” noisemaker.

Charles King, CEO at Housing Works, was among those arrested in Washington. A total of 30 HIV/AIDS activists participated in the protest.

PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief, was an early target in the Trump administration’s radical foreign policy realignment and budget-cutting efforts by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

While Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a waiver allowing PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to operate during Trump’s freeze on nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending, confusion and dysfunction crippled the program.

As the administration dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), PEPFAR recipients were denied both the money that had been promised as well as guidance on how to access what remained of those funds.

PEPFAR’s many supporters in Congress, Collins among them, demanded the program’s funding be fully restored after Trump initiated a $400 million cut to PEPFAR’s budget in July. As head of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Collins was a public face in that congressional resistance.

But while the administration backed off the funding reduction publicly, Budget Director Vought worked behind the scenes to make even more radical cuts to the program, “apportioning” just under half of the $6 billion that Congress set aside for PEPFAR for fiscal year 2025 for the program to actually spend.

Exactly how much funding PEPFAR has left to spend is unclear, and the government shutdown, now entering its third week, is only exacerbating uncertainty around the program’s future.

“In July, we applauded Collins’s willingness to fight for people with HIV which resulted in a temporary reprieve from further unlawful cuts,” said Health GAP Executive Director Asia Russell. “In response, Vought has gone behind Collins’s back. Why isn’t she fighting back? We cannot allow Collins to refuse to take action now — just because Vought is violating the law doesn’t mean she can break her promise to people with HIV.” 

The protesters had two demands for Collins: fully restore PEPFAR programming by directing Vought to release withheld PEPFAR funding consistent with congressional appropriations, and include that release as part of a plan to reopen government.

“Collins has said that PEPFAR funds are not reaching people in need, yet she refuses to use the full power of her position to end the political obstruction and lawlessness while people continue to die,” said Marie Follayttar of Disability Voters of Maine. “The consequences of her inaction, and of her votes, will be measured in body bags around the world.”

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