I am building an oral history of the hundreds of interviews I have conducted over this impossible year to capture the suffering, the anger and the resilience I have encountered. You can view it here: forsaken.life

At the same time, I have met hundreds of people living with HIV, activists, nurses and officials in the months since the cuts began. Each is determined this will not be their fate, no matter what Washington does. That gives me hope this World AIDS Day: theforsaken.substack.com/p/world-aids...

In less than 10 months, thanks to Trump administration funding cuts, we have gone from talking about ending AIDS to worrying about a return to the days when an HIV diagnosis was a death sentence.

This even includes countries like Botswana, which I visited in November. The government there has invested in the country's HIV response and with incredible results. But cuts by Trump have widened emerging gaps and put the entire response in jeopardy: theforsaken.substack.com/p/a-differen...

Despite these efforts, countries are beginning to abandon any hope of reaching an end of the AIDS epidemic by 2030: foreignpolicy.com/2025/12/01/t...

By the time I traveled to Malawi in July, the government and local organizations were struggling to rebuild what had been lost: theforsaken.substack.com/p/taking-mat...

And in countries like Uganda, which were even more dependent on U.S. support, people started to die, no matter what Marco Rubio claimed. This included Lydia Nabirye: theforsaken.substack.com/p/lydia-nabi...

Even in places like Thailand, where the government funds most of the country's HIV services, the U.S. government played a critical role in ensuring services were available for gay men, sex workers and other marginalized groups. That support has disappeared: theforsaken.substack.com/p/what-will-...

The danger was particularly acute for the most vulnerable, who lost access to safe services that were funded by the U.S. government. They suddenly face a resurgence of stigma, harassment and possibly worse: foreignpolicy.com/2025/03/14/u...

I first started reporting from Uganda in the immediate aftermath of the freeze the Trump administration imposed on all HIV programs it supported. Fear was rampant, as people living with HIV worried they were losing access to their life-saving treatment: www.devex.com/news/a-month...

And here's a gift link to get around that pesky paywall: foreignpolicy.com/2025/12/01/t...