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WASHINGTON — The leaders of the Congressional HIV/AIDS Caucus are demanding answers from the White House after a mass exodus from a presidential advisory group.

Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the co-chairs of that group, delivered a letter last week to President Trump that called for the White House to back off proposed budget cuts to HIV/AIDS programs, revamp the currently blank website it scrubbed in January, and to appoint a national AIDS policy director, all after six council members jointly resigned. Those members slammed Trump for not caring about the issue in a public letter of resignation earlier this month.

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A seventh member of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) — Dr. Jeffrey Akman, the dean at George Washington University’s school of medicine and health sciences — also resigned recently, according to a spokesman from the Department of Health and Human Services.

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