The 988 Funding Cut Is More Than An Attack On One Suicide Crisis Line

July 3, 2025 Katie Hanson

On July 17, the 988 National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline’s services for queer youth will lose funding.

It’s impossible to ignore the onslaught of attacks the queer community has faced in less than one year of Trump’s second term. It seems like every month, week, and moment, we’re encountering news that limits our expression and mere existence. From the Supreme Court upholding Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth to their more recent decision allowing parents to opt their kids out of classes with LGBTQ+ books, systemic homophobia is becoming increasingly visible.

This governmental prejudice took on a new dimension last month, when Trump ordered the haltage of funding to the 988 National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline’s services specifically for queer youth. Mind you, this decision was made during Pride Month, a supposedly government-recognized celebration of queer identity since 1999. It’s hard to overstate the importance of 988’s specialized services, and the weight the resource carries for queer youth. Even worse, 988 callers and responders have a limited time to respond to the funding cut.

In less than a month, on July 17, The Trevor Project, a non-profit focused on supporting queer youth, and the accompanying providers that 988 collaborates with will lose access to this funding. 988, the federally funded suicide and crisis lifeline, has been collaborating with this group, termed the LGBTQ+ Youth Subnetwork, since 2022. This partnership has made it possible for any ordinary caller of 988 to elect to speak with a counselor specialized in servicing queer individuals.

It was simple, easy, and clear: by pressing 3 during a phone call or texting “PRIDE” to 988, LGBTQ+ messengers up to the age of 25 could quickly access robust, informed life-saving care. Soon, that will no longer be an option.

Prior to the funding cuts, the LGBTQ+ Youth Subnetwork received close to $50 million in federal funding. Even so, in the fiscal year 2024, the subnetwork only required $33 million. Meanwhile, 988, as a whole, received close to $520 million. The administration is not taking away from this general funding. Instead, the funding is only being reduced from services tailored to queer youth.

To make matters worse, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), a subdivision of the Department of Health and Human Services, is perpetuating the transphobia implicit in the funding change. On June 17, the day the change was announced, SAMHSA declared in a statement that the “988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline will no longer silo LGB+ youth services.”

This devastating wording, which excludes any reference to trans and queer lives (as the normative acronym LGBTQ+ promotes), only furthers a path of painful rhetoric on a national scale. 988’s specialized services expanded vital mental health support and care to millions of Americans; it didn’t silo it. Worse than attacking 988 and its network of supporting organizations, this single sentence harms the vitality of queer youth who are already in danger, fans the flames of transphobia and homophobia, and it does so on a national stage.

SAMHSA’s statement continued, noting the decision came from an effort “to focus on serving all help seekers.” Once more, their backwards approach reverses the meaning of first-glance inclusivity. In emphasizing “all,” they clearly mean some. While this attention to language may seem nitpicky, this critique of communication is vital in a time when language is so closely monitored and censored.

Language is at the root of much of this administration’s legally manifested homophobia. The aforementioned Supreme Court case allowed parental avoidance of queer books in schools. One of Trump’s many executive orders on his first day in office this year declared there are only two sexes, in writing. Language has been, and will continue to be, a tool of erasure. At the same time, it is also paramount to community and healing. Through the words and messages of specialized 988 counselors, queer youth were able to feel understood, to reach safety, to be less alone. Trump’s termination of funding isn’t just an attack on these meaningful organizations and who they support; it’s an attack on how we support one another and exist as a community.

Therefore, queer youth, and frankly, queer people of any age, deserve an array of resources, not just a singular chat or call line. In the name of safety and community, it’s crucial for a rich ecosystem of varied, stable resources to exist so that, if and when, more resources have their existence threatened, there are other pillars for queer individuals to rely on at a national and institutional scale.

Shockingly, the partnerships between 988 and its coalition of supporting organizations began from a Trump-approved piece of legislation in 2020 that required 988 to join forces with several organizations. The network model was aimed at diverting 988 callers seeking specialized help into organizations that could, and eventually did, expertly address callers’ needs. The landmark legislation also granted the 988 phone number to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, prompting further safety through ease.

Within the LGBTQ+ Youth Subnetwork, the Trevor Project carried the largest volume of calls. As a nationally recognized non-profit, complete with its own chat, text, and call lines, the Trevor Project fielded half of all the calls within the network. In 2024 alone, this amounted to 230,000 calls, responded to by around 250 Trevor Project crisis counselors.

Rachel Cauley, a spokesperson for the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, framed the change similarly to SAMHSA, centering homophobia and promoting dangerously flawed misconceptions of the subnetwork’s services. She declared that the funding cut “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.”

Parental consent has never been a cornerstone of children’s daily conversations, so why should it come into play in questions of personal identity and support? Further yet, her use of the Trump-popularized term “radical gender ideology” dehumanizes and demeans anyone who has used or considered using 988’s services. This alienation goes against the very ethos of 988.

Other administration members built off this rhetoric, continuing its harm along the way. One senior official said the funding reallocation aimed to reduce “radical grooming contractors,” yet another disparaging and wrongful characterization of the queer community. This language is especially threatening for a service that aims to support people enduring vulnerable situations, including sexual abuse.

988’s subnetwork met an inarguable need for many queer youth, a group who is more than four times as likely to contemplate suicide compared to their peers. A group where one in five has attempted suicide. A group where at least one young queer person attempts suicide every 45 seconds. The 1.3 million callers of 988’s specialized program, along with the estimated 1.8 million LGBTQ+ youth who consider suicide each year, will, at the hands of their government, no longer receive the crucial support they need.

This cause for concern is only greater when considering transgender youth. One in three transgender young people have attempted suicide, and more than a quarter of transgender and gender-questioning students have attempted suicide in the past year.

The Trevor Project, which reported on many of these statistics, eagerly denounced the funding cut. CEO Jaymes Black said in a press release, “This is devastating, to say the least. Suicide prevention is about people, not politics. 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.”

Jaymes Black continued their denouncement, calling attention to the exclusion of a “T” in SAMHSA’s “LGB” statement, an exclusion that was clearly based on attempted erasure in the same way the funding cuts were. Black concluded by urging both the administration and Congress to reinstate the funding to support “our nation’s youth.” The Trevor Project also circulated a petition with the same plea.

While the Trevor Project is an exceptional resource that remains (separate from their 988 partnership), they cannot be wholly responsible for all crisis care for queer youth. For starters, many queer youth are unfamiliar with the Trevor Project’s services. Secondly, the Trevor Project is largely run by volunteer counselors. It is unsustainable for counselors to adequately support such a volume of contacts. It is unsafe for contacts to face predictably longer waiting times.

And finally, as with any singular resource, a tumultuous administration and polarizing politics should not be a determinant of access to crucial care. If the Trevor Project’s services, or any other resource’s model, were to somehow become further diminished under this administration, there needs to be a well-known, popularized network of alternative resources that queer youth in need can reach out to at a moment’s notice. Right now, there are still many strong alternatives to 988’s specialized services. As mentioned, the Trevor Project is available 24/7 via chat, call, and text. Over call, the LifeLine is available at 1-866-488-7386. TrevorChat is available here. You can reach TrevorText by messaging START to 678678. Further, the Trans Lifeline offers 24/7 support, staffed by transgender people at 1-877-565-8860. Additionally, the LGBT National Help Center has a hotline from 2:00-11:00 pm EST on weekdays and 12:00-5:00 pm on Saturdays, available at 1- 888-843-4564.

Katie Hanson is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn, NY.