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The Trump administration’s proposed budget would cut all funding to specialized services for LGBTQ+ youth who call the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
LGBTQ+ youth are at an elevated risk for suicide. In 2021, 45% of LGTBQ+ high school students said they seriously considered suicide in the past year. Since 2022, 988’s LGBTQ+ service has received nearly 1.3 million contacts, including almost 59,000 just this past February, the most recent month of published data.
“I worry deeply that we will see more LGBTQ young people reach a crisis state and not have anyone there to help them through that,” Janson Wu, the director of advocacy and government affairs at the Trevor Project, told Mother Jones. “I worry that LGBTQ young people will reach out to 988 and not receive a compassionate and welcoming voice on the other end—and that will only deepen their crisis.”
If President Donald Trump’s budget is passed, the specialized service for LGBTQ+ youth would end this October.
It is just the latest Republican attack on vulnerable LGBTQ+ youth. After stoking panic around transgender children during last year’s election, Trump spent his first days in office signing executive orders that curtail access to gender-affirming care and protections for LGBTQ+ children in schools.
Trump’s proposed budget would also harm America’s health more broadly. For instance, it would slash the Department of Health and Human Services’ discretionary spending by roughly a third, according to documents first reported on by The Washington Post.
As of late March, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also planned to either close or consolidate the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which funds 988, the distribution of anti-overdose drugs, and addiction treatments across the nation. SAMHSA was created by Congress in 1992. To fully close it would require another act of Congress.
Under Kennedy’s leadership, HHS has announced plans to slash its full-time workforce by 20,000 jobs, including both firings and employees who took the government’s so-called buyout offer. This and other moves from the federal government have caused chaos as the nation responds to a worsening measles outbreak and one of the largest avian flu outbreaks in U.S. history.
The Trump administration has been a disaster, and while much of it seems borne of plain old incompetence, its desire to leave at-risk youth out in the cold is pure, bigoted malice.
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