President Trump’s administration has ordered a crisis service for LGBTQ youth to close within 30 days in a move that opponents have said will have dire consequences.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) said in a news release late Tuesday that 988, the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, will “no longer silo” LGBTQ youth services, also known as the “Press 3 option,” beginning July 17 “to focus on serving all help seekers, including those previously served through the Press 3 option.”
The agency’s announcement, made during Pride month, said the program, which launched in 2022 under former President Biden, had provided specialized services to “LGB+ youth,” removing “transgender” from the acronym in line with a January executive order proclaiming the U.S. recognizes only two sexes, male and female, and that those sexes “are not changeable.”
Other government agencies, including the State Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have scrubbed references to transgender people and trans-specific resources from their websites since Trump took office.
The fate of the LGBTQ youth suicide hotline has been in flux since April, when The Washington Post reported that a leaked Department of Health and Human Services budget proposal for 2026 would eliminate the program’s funding. The White House confirmed those plans earlier this month but said funding for 988 would remain unchanged at $520 million for the year.
The Health Department’s annual budget “does not, however, grant taxpayer money to a chat service where children are encouraged to embrace radical gender ideology by ‘counselors’ without consent or knowledge of their parents,” said Rachel Cauley, a spokesperson for the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.
The service for LGBTQ youth has received nearly 1.3 million calls, texts and online chat messages since its launch in 2022, according to SAMHSA. In February, the program received an average of 2,100 crisis contacts daily.
In an email, a spokesperson for the Trevor Project, a nonprofit that responds to roughly half of 988 calls and texts from LGBTQ youth, said the suicide prevention organization had received an official stop-work order from the Trump administration for its work supporting 988’s specialized services for LGBTQ youth.
“This is devastating, to say the least. Suicide prevention is about people, not politics,” said Jaymes Black, the Trevor Project’s CEO. “The administration’s decision to remove a bipartisan, evidence-based service that has effectively supported a high-risk group of young people through their darkest moments is incomprehensible.”
A report released by the group last year found that 39 percent of LGBTQ 13- to 24-year-olds in the U.S. considered suicide over the past year, including 46 percent of transgender and nonbinary youth. Half of LGBTQ young people who wanted mental health care said they were unable to access it.
News that the Trump administration would terminate funding for 988’s specialized services for LGBTQ youth drew intense backlash from opponents across the aisle.
More than 100 House Democrats wrote in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last month that the move would have “lethal consequences if enacted,” and two Republicans, in a separate letter, said cutting the program would strip “a critical resource for youth already at elevated risk.”
“Elimination of services that help keep youth alive is reckless, and we urge you to reconsider your proposal,” seven Senate Democrats wrote last month in another letter to Kennedy.
Celebrities across the entertainment industry have also called for the administration to reconsider its decision.
“This is about people, not politics,” performers including Pedro Pascal, Daniel Radcliffe, Ariana Grande and Dua Lipa wrote in an open letter organized by the Trevor Project. “At a time of deep division, let this be something we as people can all agree on: no young person should be left without help in their darkest moment.”
