Amazing People of 2025: Javier Muñoz

Additional reporting by Ryan Adamszeski.

Best known to most for his starring role as Alexander himself in the Broadway hit Hamilton, Javier Muñoz is also an outspoken advocate for HIV causes. He’s worked with such organizations as Gay Men’s Health Crisis, RED, the Latino Commission on AIDS, and the Broadway Relief Project. But it's more than a cause for Muñoz; it's personal.

Muñoz started living openly about his own status in 2005, just 3 years after testing positive. His choice to share his HIV diagnosis with publically was due to other challenges, including the ART regimen that significantly impacted his ability to act on a full time basis while he was cast in In The Heights.

He was again prompted to speak up about his status in 2016, due to proposed HIV funding cuts under Trump's first administration. Then, when the COVID-19 pandemic first began to take its grip on the world, he was one of the first to be vocal about the mishandling of the situation on a federal level.

“The great disservice this government, our current administration, has demonstrated is to call [COVID-19] the ‘Chinese virus,’” Muñoz told Plus in May of 2020. “That is an absolute echo of when the Reagan administration called HIV the ‘gay cancer.’”

He also praised people living with HIV — and urged us to look to this experienced community for guidance during a global health crisis.

“What’s empowering in that situation is, as people living with HIV and as long-term survivors, we have a skill set for this,” added Muñoz. “We have lived through so much that we can offer a perspective to help others. We can help other people to understand how to live through this moment — emotionally, mentally, and physically — and that’s a gift. That’s a power we have that we can offer.”

Broadway stars Javier Muñoz and Peppermint on Capitol Hill, September 3, 2025Morrison Media Group

These days, Muñoz continues to be a fierce advocate for HIV causes. He recently joined forces with fellow Broadway star and Drag Race alum Peppermint to rally against the continued federal cuts to HIV funding. Their trip was mainly in response to the release of the House Appropriations Committee’s FY26 funding bill, which would cut HIV treatment and prevention funds by $1.7 billion.

The two met with Democrat and Republican lawmakers on September 3 to persuade them not to vote for a budget they warned would "eviscerate" government programs dedicated to HIV.

"This is not something that is outside of my existence or my life,” Muñoz told our sister publication The Advocate. “This is my life, this is my health, this is my future. This is my ability to actually maintain breathing and living and access to my treatment on a daily basis."

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 described it; advancements such as combination therapies, one-pill-a-day treatments, and "the fact that I have no side effects with my medication."

Javier Muñoz on the May/June 2020 cover of Plus magazineAlejandro Ibarra