Before Congress can cut crucial funding for HIV prevention and treatment, Broadway stars Javier Muñoz and Peppermint are making them listen to the people who will be impacted.
Muñoz, best known for starring as Alexander Hamilton in Hamilton, and Peppermint, runner-up on season nine of RuPaul’s Drag Race and the first out transgender woman to originate a principal Broadway role in Head Over Heels, met with Democrat and Republican lawmakers alike on Wednesday afternoon to persuade them not to vote for a budget they warned will "eviscerate" government programs dedicated to HIV.
For Muñoz, an out gay man who has been living with HIV for over 20 years, it could be a matter of life or death.
"This is not something that is outside of my existence or my life. This is my life, this is my health, this is my future," Muñoz tells The Advocate. "This is my ability to actually maintain breathing and living and access to my treatment on a daily basis."
The House Appropriations Committee recently released its FY26 funding bill, which would cut HIV treatment and prevention by $1.7 billion — cuts much steeper than even those initially proposed by Donald Trump. This would revoke over $1 billion through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including $220 million from the president's Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) initiative.
The proposed budget would slash the budget for the Ryan White CARE Act by 20 percent ($525 million), ending grants to over 400 clinics that provide care. It would also threaten the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the global program started by Republican President George W. Bush in 2003 which has saved an estimated 26 million lives; Medicaid, which provides health insurance for 40 percent of Americans living with HIV; and access to prevention drugs such as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.
This would destroy "any advancement, things that are on the horizon, things that might put us towards closer and closer towards ending this virus," as Muñoz describes it; advancements such as combination therapies, one-pill-a-day treatments, and "the fact that I have no side effects with my medication."
Broadway actors Javier Muñoz (Hamilton) and Peppermint (Head Over Heels) on Capitol Hill to lobby Congress against cutting HIV prevention and treatment funds (September 3, 2025).
Morrison Media Group
"They will put us back to where we started. We will be back to HIV wards — AIDS wards — in hospitals," Muñoz says. "We will be dwindled down. We will watch our loved ones die again, and it is completely needless. We are in the position to do more and better, and it's inexcusable to even have these cuts on the table."
The U.S. House of Representatives and Senate have not yet voted on the cuts, but must do so before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. Until that happens, Peppermint is urging others to "take advantage of these services while you have them" by utilizing the clinics near them and "routinely getting checked" for STDs.
"After nearly 30 years living in New York City, I've really been proud of the things I've been able to do, and that is in huge part thanks to my being able to identify as a trans woman and have matching documents, matching paperwork, matching IDs, and then also the healthcare that I was able to utilize," Peppermint says. "The healthcare services that I was able to utilize in times when I was flying high on a TV show or on Broadway, but also times when I was in between jobs and wasn't able to work."
Those who wish to speak directly to the budget cuts should "reach out to local politicians," Muñoz advises, as he says "the only way we're going to really apply pressure is to say to these elected officials who are going to vote for these cuts, 'We will vote you out.'"
Both actors are aware of the significance their meetings hold as they represent LGBTQ+ people at a turning point for the community. They hope their personal experiences can sway the hearts of some lawmakers, as Peppermint notes "they might not always have the opportunity to connect with their constituents in this way." For Muñoz, the opportunity forces politicians to confront the reality of what they're doing.
"Look at me dead in the eye and tell me I don't deserve to live," Muñoz says. "Tell me that right now, because I am exactly the person who's going to be directly affected by these cuts."
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