By: Al Ballesteros
Hilda L. Solis, Chair of the LA County Board of Supervisors is Running for Congress
Hilda L. Solis is running for the United States Congress for California’s 38th Congressional District as a result of redistricting passed by voters in November, i.e., the approval of Proposition 50.
Hilda Solis is the present Chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors representing the First District which spans from parts of downtown Los Angeles, East and Northeast L.A., El Monte through the San Gabriel Valley to Pomona. She previously served in the Congress and as Secretary of Labor in the Obama administration. Solis is a “proven fighter” who will represent the people of her district, Los Angeles County and Southern California.
“The working people of Southern California are under assault by the Trump administration — and I won’t just stand by and let it happen,” Solis said in a statement posted on her campaign website.
“As the president attacks workers, immigrants, educators, housing that working people can afford, women’s reproductive rights, veterans’ services, labor unions, the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid/Medi-Cal and democracy itself, we must fight back,” Solis added. “I’ve been standing up for the people — and against Trump — as a supervisor, and now it’s time to campaign for the House and fight for the people and democracy in the Congress.”
Hilda Solis has been an unwavering supporter of the LGBTQ+ and HIV positive communities since she has been in public office. As a California State Assemblymember and State Senator from 1992-2000, Solis was an advocate for increasing the State’s response to the AIDS epidemic. Her support for HIV screening and testing in the early to mid1990s was critically important at that time to slow down the epidemic and because new and effective HIV antiretroviral medications had just been made available to all people with HIV and AIDS. These new medicines called protease inhibitors ended up being life savers for thousands of HIV positive people but one needed to know their status to benefit from these and other treatments. Solis supported state-funded increases in access to free HIV testing in communities of poor, minority and underserved people.
Also, while in the State Legislature, Solis stood with the community for the expansion of the State’s AIDS Drug Assistance Program, ADAP which provided free HIV medications to people with HIV/AIDS. This included supporting legislation which added state funds into the overall budget to keep pace with the growing financial support needed to cover the numerous break-through and life-saving drugs which came available in the mid-late 1990s. As a member of Congress, Solis voted to increase funding for the Ryan White Care Act as well as its reauthorization multiple times. The Ryan White Care act is the country’s main source of funding for comprehensive care and treatment for people living with HIV for which hundreds of thousands of people across the United States rely.
As a County Supervisor since December of 2014, Solis has continued her support for health care access for people living with HIV and all communities across her district and in the County of Los Angeles. She has been an advocate for increasing health care access through the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid expansion while at the same time, supporting the expansion of care management, HIV prevention and PrEP and PEP and housing support through other county, state and federal dollars.
The 38th Congressional District sweeps around L.A. County to include Bell, Commerce, El Monte, Diamond Bar, Hacienda Heights, Montebello, Pico Rivera, West Whittier and also goes into Orange County and picks up the City of Yorba Linda. Those interested in her campaign for Congress can visit her website at HildaSolis.com.
Los Angeles LGBT Center Condemns Trump Administration’s Proposed Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Rules Endangering Transgender Youth and Countless Americans
LOS ANGELES, CA, Dec. 18, 2025 —In response to the release of the proposed rules by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services concerning trans youth health care, Los Angeles LGBT Center CEO Joe Hollendoner issued the following statement:
The Los Angeles LGBT Center condemns the Trump Administration’s proposed rules from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which cruelly target transgender youth by attempting to deny Medicaid recipients access to lifesaving care. These rules would also destabilize safety-net hospitals by blocking all Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement if they continue to provide gender-affirming care to anyone under the age of 19—regardless of a patient’s insurance status.
This is yet another attack by the Trump Administration on the transgender community and on healthcare access for all Americans. These proposals are unprecedented in their insidiousness, placing countless lives—not only those of transgender youth—at risk. Hospitals should never be forced to choose between providing lifesaving care to transgender young people and delivering critical services like cancer treatment to other patients. Yet this is exactly the division and harm these rules are designed to create.
This isn’t a hypothetical either. We have already seen Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and other health systems across the country pre-comply with executive orders that sought to accomplish exactly what these rules attempt to do. Thousands of transgender youth have already lost access to gender affirming care, and unless these rules are stopped, it is believed that the vast majority of trans youth will be without care.
Let’s be clear: these rules are dangerous for all Americans and the consequences of approving them would be devastating. They ignore overwhelming medical evidence backing the benefits of gender-affirming care for transgender youth and politicize healthcare decisions that should remain between families and their medical providers.
The Center demands that CMS immediately withdraw these proposed rules and implore healthcare providers not to pre-comply with them. We call on Congress, state leaders, and healthcare advocates to publicly and unequivocally condemn them. We also urge Attorney General Bonta to continue his efforts to ensure that gender-affirming care remains a legal and required service in California, and we call on Governor Newsom to champion and fund statewide efforts to protect access to this essential care.
The Center will fight relentlessly alongside the TGNBI+ community to defeat these rules and protect access to gender-affirming care. We are prepared to pursue and support legal challenges and will stand with trans youth, their families, and healthcare providers to defend their medical care.
The California Legislative LGBTQ Legislative Caucus Announces Endorsement of Scott Wiener for Congressional District 11
SACRAMENTO, CA — The California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus is proud to announce our endorsement of State Senator Scott Wiener for U.S. House of Representatives in Congressional District 11 in 2026. Senator Wiener has built one of the most impactful and nationally recognized records on LGBTQ+ civil rights, health, safety, and equality in modern California history. For more than three decades, from volunteering on an AIDS hotline in the early 1990s to authoring some of the most consequential LGBTQ+ laws in the nation, Scott has demonstrated unwavering commitment to advancing dignity and justice for LGBTQ+ people. Among Senator Wiener’s landmark accomplishments:
● Gender Recognition Act (SB 179): Established a nonbinary “X” gender marker on state IDs and streamlined processes for transgender and nonbinary people to obtain accurate identification – a first-in-the-nation model.
● LGBTQ+ Seniors Bill of Rights (SB 219): Provided explicit protections for LGBTQ+ seniors in long-term care facilities, ensuring they are free from harassment and discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or HIV status.
● Expanding Access to PrEP: Authored the first law in the country allowing pharmacists to dispense HIV-prevention medication (PrEP) without a prescription, dramatically expanding access to lifesaving care.
● HIV Criminalization Reform (SB 239): Modernized outdated HIV-exposure laws, reducing stigma, improving public-health outcomes, and aligning California law with current medical science.
● Securing LGBTQ+ Health Investments: Delivered significant funding for HIV prevention, treatment, and LGBTQ-specific health programs, including historically underfunded services to support lesbian and bisexual women’s health.
Scott has also been a longtime community leader beyond the legislature, serving on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors as well as advocate for major LGBTQ civil-rights organizations and advancing policy at every level of government. In a time of escalating threats, violence, and political targeting of the LGBTQ+ community nationwide, Scott Wiener’s courageous and principled leadership is exactly what is needed in Congress. His decades-long record, his integrity, and his proven ability to pass nation-leading protections for our community make him the strongest possible advocate for California’s 11th Congressional District and for LGBTQ people across the country. The California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus is a diverse group comprised of 14 LGBTQ+ legislators and 1 statewide officer. The Caucus serves to advance equity and equality in California for all members of the LGBTQ+ community.
CalKids: New LapTops help Los Angeles County Students bridge the digital divide:
More than 5 million children in California already have CalKIDS Scholarship Accounts set aside for their future, but for many families, the first barrier to higher education is far more immediate: having reliable technology at home.
As part of a statewide effort, CalKIDS provided laptops to eight families across Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, and Sacramento. The goal was simple: help students access the basic tools they need to keep up in school while increasing awareness of the CalKIDS Scholarships already available to them.
Families described the impact in real, everyday terms.
● One mother shared that her three sons are required to use a computer for school, but the family had only been able to rely on rented devices. Having a laptop at home will make their schoolwork easier and more consistent.
● Another family shared that the laptop will go to their 13-year-old nephew, whose computer had just broken. They said the timing could not have been better and that it will help him stay on track with his assignments.
Please find below the caption for the attached images. All photos may be credited to CalKIDS.
California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus Condemns Proposed Federal Rules Aiming to Limit Life-Saving Health Care for Transgender Youth Across America
SACRAMENTO, CA — The California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus issued the following statement after the release of two long-awaited proposed rules by the federal Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that aim to limit life-saving, medically necessary health care for transgender youth across the nation:
“In yet another willfully cruel and inhumane move, this federal administration escalates its campaign to hurt transgender Americans by putting forth two proposed rules that strip parents of their rights and ability to care for their children as they see fit. Ignoring a wealth of evidence, scientific research, and medical consensus, these reckless rules will only place children at greater risk of harm.
President Trump should not be making private health care decisions for parents and their children. Those intimate and personal decisions should be only made between the parent, their child, and their doctor. We condemn in the strongest terms possible this attempt to remove the ability for parents to make the right choice for their children as they see fit.
Taken together, these proposed rules would bar the use of federal Medicaid funds for health care for transgender youth under age 18 and penalize hospitals that provide such care by threatening their Medicare and Medicaid funding.
These proposed rules will hold healthcare institutions hostage and put them in an impossible position: to uphold their ethical obligations and comply with California law by providing medically necessary health care, or to lose federal Medicare and Medicaid funds they rely on to serve entire communities.
It should be appalling to all Americans that President Trump is willing to risk the health care of millions of Americans in his effort to harm and erase the smallest and most vulnerable groups of young people.
Transgender youth deserve the same opportunity to be themselves as any other child. They deserve the ability to shape their future in a way that makes them feel affirmed and safe. They deserve to receive the utmost health and well-being as their non-transgender peers. These overtly discriminatory proposed rules take away not only access to health care, but access to that future as well.
This Caucus will not stand idly by as the Trump Administration targets children and sidelines parents. To be clear – even if these rules were to go into effect, health care for transgender individuals would remain legal and protected here in California. And rest assured, the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus will do everything in its power to keep it that way.
As a reminder to all healthcare providers in California: health care for transgender youth is legal, medically necessary, and supported by every major U.S. medical association. We urge hospitals and clinics to continue prioritizing high-quality patient care and well-being, and to resist political intimidation or threats from Donald Trump.
To our resilient parents and incredibly brave transgender youth: We have your back! This Caucus will do everything in its power to fight back against these proposed rules and continue working to make sure California is a place you feel proud to call home. We will be working with community partners, our legislative colleagues, and Governor Newsom to challenge these rules and anything else this administration throws our way.”