Trump administration removing 988 hotline service tailored to LGBTQ+ youth in July
The decision was was made to 'no longer silo' the services and 'to focus on serving all help seekers, including those previously served through the Press 3 option,' the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) said in a statement dated Tuesday on its website.
Advertisement
News of the LGBTQ+ service shutting down comes as the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors on Wednesday.
Get Starting Point
A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.
Enter Email
Sign Up
The Trevor Project said it received official notice Tuesday that the program was ending. The nonprofit is one of seven centers that provides 988 crisis support services for LGBTQ+ people — and serves nearly half of the people who contact the lifeline.
" Suicide prevention is about people, not politics," Trevor Project CEO Jaymes Black said in a statement Wednesday. '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.'
In its statement on the 988 decision, SAMHSA referred to the 'LGB+ youth services.'
Advertisement
Black called the omission of the 'T' representing transgender people 'callous.' 'Transgender people can never, and will never, be erased,' he said.
The Trevor Project will continue to run its 24/7 mental health support services, as will other organizations, and leaders of 988 say the hotline will serve anyone who calls with compassion.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there were 49,300 suicides in 2023 — about the highest level in the nation's history, based on preliminary data.
Studies have shown that LGBTQ+ youth are at higher risk of suicide, including a 2024 analysis by the CDC that found 26% transgender and gender-questioning students attempted suicide in the past year. That's compared with 5% of cisgender male and 11% of cisgender female students.
Young transgender people flooded crisis hotlines with calls after President Donald Trump was re-elected. Trump made anti-transgender themes central to his campaign and has since rolled back many civil rights protections and access to gender-affirming care.
Trump signed the National Suicide Hotline Designation Act of 2020 into law in October 2020.
The specific 988 subprogram for LGBTQ+ youth cost $33 million in fiscal year 2024, according to SAMHSA, and as of June 2025, more than $33 million has been spent on the services. The Trump administration's 2026 budget proposal called for keeping 988's total budget at $520 million even while eliminating the LGBTQ+ services.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to wrap SAMHSA and other agencies into a new HHS office called Administration for a Healthy America, where it would coexist with employees from other agencies responsible for chemical exposures and work-related injuries.
Advertisement
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Newsweek
an hour ago
- Newsweek
How Animal Testing in US Could Be Transformed Under Trump
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Millions of animals each year are killed in U.S. laboratories as part of medical training and chemical, food, drug and cosmetic testing, according to the non-profit animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). For many animals held captive for research, including a huge range of species from dogs, cats and hamsters to elephants, dolphins and many other species, pain is "not minimized," U.S. Department of Agriculture data shows. The issue of animal testing is something most Americans agree on: it needs to change and gradually be stopped. A Morning Consult poll conducted at the end of last year found that 80 percent of the 2,205 participants either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement: "The US government should commit to a plan to phase out experiments on animals." Since President Donald Trump began his second term, his administration has been making moves to transform and reduce animal testing in country, although the question remains as to whether it will be enough to spare many more animals from pain and suffering this year. Animal Testing In US Could Be Transformed Animal Testing In US Could Be Transformed Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Getty/Canva What Is The Trump Administration Doing About It? There have been various steps taken in different federal agencies to tackle the issue of animal testing since Trump was sworn in on January 20. In April, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it was "taking a groundbreaking step to advance public health by replacing animal testing in the development of monoclonal antibody therapies and other drugs with more effective, human-relevant methods." The FDA said that its animal testing requirement will be "reduced, refined, or potentially replaced" with a range of approaches, including artificial intelligence-based models, known as New Approach Methodologies or NAMs data. A Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) official told Newsweek: "The agency is paving the way for faster, safer, and more cost-effective treatments for American patients. "As we restore the agency's commitment to gold-standard science and integrity, this shift will help accelerate cures, lower drug prices, and reaffirm U.S. leadership in ethical, modern science." The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced it was "adopting a new initiative to expand innovative, human-based science while reducing animal use in research," in alignment with the FDA's initiative. The agency said that while "traditional animal models continue to be vital to advancing scientific knowledge," new and emerging technologies could act as alternative methods, either alone or in combination with animal models. The NIH Office of Extramural Research told Newsweek it was "committed to transparently assessing where animal use can be reduced or eliminated by transitioning to [new approach methodologies (NAMs)]." "Areas where research using animals is currently necessary represent high-priority opportunities for investment in NAMs," the agency added. It added that it will "further its efforts to coordinate agency-wide efforts to develop, validate, and scale the use of NAMs across the agency's biomedical research portfolio and facilitate interagency coordination and regulatory translation for public health protection." During Trump's first term, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) signed a directive to "prioritize efforts to reduce animal testing and committed to reducing testing on mammals by 30 percent by 2025 and to eliminate it completely by 2035," an EPA spokesperson told Newsweek. Although, the spokesperson added: "the Biden Administration halted progress on these efforts by delaying compliance deadlines." As a member of the House, Lee Zeldin, the EPA's current administrator, co-sponsored various bills during Trump's first term regarding animal cruelty, covering issues such as phasing out animal-based testing for cosmetic products; ending taxpayer funding for painful experiments on dogs at the Department of Veteran Affairs; empowering federal law enforcement to prosecute animal abuse cases that cross state lines; and others, the spokesperson said. What The Experts Think Needs To Be Done The Trump administration's efforts to tackle the issue of animal testing appear to be a step in the right direction, according to experts who spoke with Newsweek. "I was pleasantly surprised and quite frankly a bit shocked to read the simultaneous announcements by the NIH and the FDA regarding a new emphasis on the use of alternatives to animals," Jeffrey Morgan, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Brown University in Rhode Island, told Newsweek. Morgan, who is also the director of the Center for Alternatives to Animals in Testing at Brown University, said that both agencies are moving together in the same direction on the issue "sends a unified and very powerful message to the research and biotech communities." He added that the announcements showed "a major acknowledgement of the limitations of the use of animals in research and testing." "What is especially exciting is that the NIH announcement will encourage the entry of new investigators into the field, further accelerating innovation in alternatives with exciting impacts for both discovery and applied research across all diseases," he said. He added that the FDA announcement and its emphasis on a new regulatory science that embraces data from alternatives was "equally exciting." "The demands of this new regulatory science will likewise accelerate innovation because it will establish the much-needed regulatory framework for the rigorous evaluation of data from alternatives," he said. While the administration's initiatives to shift research away from animal testing is heading in the right direction, its policies are "overdue," Dr. Thomas Hartung, a professor in the department of environmental health and engineering at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Maryland, told Newsweek. "The animal tests for safety were introduced more than 50 years ago. There is no other area of science where we do not adapt to scientific progress," he said. Hartung added that animal "testing takes too long and is too expensive to really provide the safety consumers want." He said that running animal tests for new chemicals can cost millions and take years in some cases. "Nobody can wait that long, even if they can afford the testing costs," he said. Hartung also believes the shifts in the industry to reduce animal testing have been "coming for a while," as over the last two decades, America's opposition to animal use in medical research has been increasing. "The alignment of FDA and NIH really makes the difference now, which I think is evidence of a strong relationship of their leaderships," he said. Yet in order to make a real difference, Hartung said clear deadlines are key to show that "this is not just lip service." He also said that he thought "the transformative nature of artificial intelligence in this field is not fully acknowledged." "We also need an objective framework for change to better science, such as the evidence-based toxicology approach," he said.
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
Iranians saw America as better friend than Russia before war: Official
(NewsNation) — Iran's Health Ministry spokesman told NewsNation that Iranians viewed America as a better friend than Russia before President Donald Trump backed Israel's attacks. 'There was no perception about America prior to this. Some didn't like America, some had no opinion, and some considered America a better friend than Russia,' spokesman Hossein Kermanpour in an interview with NewsNation. A week into their war, Israel and Iran exchanged more strikes Friday as new diplomatic efforts led by the Europeans took place in Geneva. Kermanpour said Iranians were 'very surprised' by Trump and European support for the Israeli operation, adding that it confirmed suspicions that 'America is not to be trusted.' He said the strikes came 'in the midst of fruitful negotiations.' Iran nuclear weapons claims: What we know and what we don't However, he said that Iranians do not support U.S. involvement in the conflict with Israel following the recent strikes. Iran's Health Ministry reported more than 3,000 people injured in Israeli strikes, with 90% being civilians, and about 400 killed, according to Kermanpour. Kermanpour said about 2,000 of the injured have been treated and discharged. The casualties include a 2-month-old baby who was killed and a 4-year-old boy among the wounded, making them the youngest victims and injured, respectively. The Health Ministry spokesman said the attacks occurred 'while the people were sleeping' and targeted 'more than ten provinces of the country, including Tehran,' killing what he described as 'a significant number of civilians and military,' calling them 'martyrs.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
Trump administration makes sweeping changes to ObamaCare, ends ‘Dreamer' coverage
The Trump administration is shortening ObamaCare's annual open enrollment period and ending the law's coverage of immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally as children, according to a final rule announced Friday. The Biden administration made it easier and more affordable to sign up for Affordable Care Act plans, causing enrollment to swell to an all-time high. The Trump administration claims those moves opened a wave of fraudulent enrollment that's costing taxpayers billions of dollars. According to the rule, the federal open enrollment period will run from Nov. 1 through Dec. 31. Currently, federal open enrollment ends Jan. 15. States operating their own health insurance exchanges will have the flexibility to set their open enrollments, so long as they run no longer than nine weeks between the November and December dates. In addition to the shortened enrollment period, the administration said it is ending ObamaCare coverage for immigrants who came into the U.S. illegally as children, also known as 'Dreamers.' The provision will undo a Biden-era rule that was estimated to allow 147,000 immigrants to enroll in coverage. A federal judge blocked the rule from being enforced in 19 states, and it is still being litigated. The administration also banned plans from covering 'sex-trait modification' as an essential health benefit beginning in plan year 2026. The policy will apply to the five states that currently include coverage for gender-affirming care, as well as in states that do not have such coverage expressly mentioned. But many of the other changes announced Friday, like requiring more income verifications for people to enroll in coverage on federal exchange plans, will last only a year. The one-year sunset is a change from when the rule was proposed in March. It's designed to give Republicans on Capitol Hill an opportunity to codify the provisions into law for the long-term and use the savings to fund their massive party-line tax and spending bill. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the rule is projected to save up to $12 billion in 2026 by 'reining in wasteful federal spending, and refocusing on making health insurance markets more affordable and sustainable for hardworking American families.' For instance, the rule requires federal exchange plans to check consumers' eligibility for special enrollment periods and raise the burden of verification for people who are automatically re-enrolled in subsidized plans. The rule also requires plans to charge those people a $5 monthly premium until they confirm or update their eligibility information. The rule also ends a monthly special enrollment period for people with income below 150 percent of the federal poverty line, which CMS said 'has been exploited to enroll consumers or change their plans without their knowledge.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
