Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) on Tuesday threatened to vote against President Donald Trump’s ambassador nominees for Jamaica and Slovakia unless the Trump administration released the money Congress appropriated for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) — before he got “assurances” that convinced him to drop the plan.
A member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Cornyn said he would single-handedly stop the nominations of Kari Lake and Doug Mastriano from being discharged from the committee, and therefore slowing down their confirmation, unless he received assurances on PEPFAR.
“The only way it seems like you can get the administration’s attention on some of these funding issues is by using the leverage to withhold votes on nominees,” Cornyn told Semafor. “We are going to use the committee vote tomorrow as a way to … get the money distributed the way Congress appropriated it.”
Cornyn did ultimately vote to advance the nomination of Lake and Mastriano out of committee on Wednesday, saying he received assurances from the Trump administration on the funds in question.
PEPFAR, the longstanding program to combat HIV/AIDS around the world, has slowly suffocated under the Trump administration and Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought.
Since February 2025, PEPFAR has been operating under a waiver that restricts the program to “life-saving HIV services.” Even then, Trump officials have largely declined to spend money on PEPFAR that Congress has appropriated.
Under the Impoundment Control Act (ICA), the executive branch cannot pause funding unless it sends Congress a deferral request — which has to meet certain specific requirements. Experts say that “not liking a policy” does not meet any of those requirements and argue that the Trump administration’s pause on PEPFAR funds violates the ICA.
“PEPFAR is one of the most effective programs that the United States government has ever put together in terms of lives saved and people helped versus cost. The Trump administration has been illegally impounding funds — either through letting funds lapse or through illegal deferrals — basically since Trump came back into office,” Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at Center for American Progress, told TPM.
“But in addition to the illegality, in addition to breaking budget laws, the actual human impact is a lot of dead people,” Kogan added. “It’s not just that they are telling Congress to fuck off. It’s not just that they’re ignoring the Constitution. They’re also killing people by doing it.”
The Trump administration’s curtailing of foreign aid, including PEPFAR, has wreaked havoc on the world’s poorest people. The freezing of PEPFAR funds came as part of DOGE’s destruction of USAID – surgeon and public health researcher Atul Gawande estimated this month that the end of U.S. foreign aid had caused 700,000 deaths. On PEPFAR specifically, a recent study found that in fiscal year 2025, two million fewer people with HIV were receiving antiretrovirals after the cuts – a 10 percent decline.
It’s not clear from the statement that Cornyn’s office provided to TPM that the senator managed to change much of this.
He received “confirmation that all unobligated PEPFAR funds expiring in September will be obligated as expeditiously as possible and include appropriate notification to Congress.”
The statement said Cornyn also secured “spending plans for FY25 and FY26 PEPFAR funds,” with a timeframe for “future awards to faith-based organizations.” He also received “a guarantee that the more than $270M planned transfer from the U.S. State Department to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will be completed.”
Per budget documents reviewed by TPM, the Trump administration had not spent nearly $1 billion in PEPFAR funding by late last year. In Zambia, the State Department offered the country a deal it couldn’t refuse: PEPFAR funding would be restored, provided the government give U.S. companies access to minerals rights.
Party guy, through and through. He’ll cave on everything. The last thing he wants to be remembered as was the guy who wasn’t a coward like the rest of his colleagues.
He has learned nothing.
This administration always LIES.