As the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline approaches its third full year of operation, the Trump administration has announced plans to shutter the specialized crisis line for LGBTQ+ youth and young adults in the next 30 days.
Since the LGBTQ+ youth line launched in September 2022, it’s received more than 1.2 million crisis contacts nationally, accounting for nearly 1% of all crisis contacts.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration released the statement June 17 about removing the line, arguing the 988 Lifeline should serve all people in crisis. The statement also suggested the cost of maintaining the line, at more than $33 million as of June 2025, was too burdensome. The Administration is under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Supporters watch the 21st Milwaukee Pride Parade, with the theme “Remember, Resist, Rejoice,” on June 8, 2025.
LGBTQ+ advocates like Abigail Swetz, executive director of Fair Wisconsin, a nonprofit focused on protecting the rights of LGBTQ+ Wisconsinites, said that budget cost simply illustrates the need for having a specialized line in the first place.
“I cannot think of a better way to use money if it saves kids’ lives,” Swetz said. “But for the Trump administration, it’s about a version of politics that plays games with children’s lives and plays games with children’s struggles and turns their very identities into weapons. That’s unconscionable and it has to stop.”
988 Lifeline currently has three specialty lines. Line 1 connects veterans to the Veterans Crisis Line and line 2 connects callers to Spanish-speaking counselors. Line 3 connects LGBTQ+ youth and young adults to specialized counselors.
Lines 1 and 2 will remain for now.
Since Trump took office, he has used his executive orders as a cudgel when it comes to LGBTQ+ people.
Though SAMHSA’s statement emphasized a desire to “no longer silo” these services, a spokesperson for the White House’s Office of Management and Budget described the LGBTQ+ youth section in a recent NBC report as “a chat service where children are encouraged to embrace radical gender ideology by ‘counselors’ without consent or knowledge of their parents.”
President Donald Trump signed into law the National Suicide Hotline Designation Act of 2020 during his first term, creating a statute that converted the National Suicide Hotline 10-digit number into the easy-to-remember three-digit number. It launched in July 2022.
But recently, word spread that the LGBTQ+ crisis line was under threat after a budget proposal from the Trump administration leaked in May. So far, Trump’s budget bill has only passed through the House. Though the Senate has yet to pass the budget bill, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat, called the move to axe these services part of a larger trend by the Trump administration to circumvent congressional authority.
Baldwin, who authored the legislation to create the three-digit 988 Lifeline and pushed for the specialized LGBTQ+ line, released a statement condemning the move and vowing to “fight tooth and nail to protect these children.” She called on her Republican colleagues who have long supported the program to follow suit.
“Children facing dark times and even contemplating taking their life often have nowhere else to turn besides this 988 Lifeline, and the Trump Administration is cruelly and needlessly taking that away,” Baldwin said.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reached out to state Sen. Jesse James, R-Thorp, who chairs the Committee on Mental Health and Substance Abuse Prevention and recently authored a bill that would create statutory requirements to fund 988 Wisconsin Lifeline in the state budget. He was not immediately available.
A majority of Wisconsin’s youths struggle with their mental health, but conditions like anxiety, depression and suicidal thought disproportionately impact the state’s LGBTQ+ students. The 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which surveys high schoolers across Wisconsin, has found lesbian, gay and bisexual youth have the highest rates of mental health concern and the least amount of access to supports.
Nearly one in five lesbian, gay and bisexual youths living in Wisconsin attempted suicide in 2023. That number rises to nearly one in four when adding in trans youths. Studies show those struggles aren’t due to their identities in the LGBTQ+ community, but from the discriminatory rhetoric and policies targeting them.
Increasingly, LGBTQ+ youths and young adults have used the specialized line, according to data from SAMHSA, which has data from September 2022 through February 2025. It peaked in November 2024 when it served more than 61,000 youths that month, and has remained at more than 55,000 per month since September 2024.
“Our kids are listening and our kids are watching,” Swetz, from Fair Wisconsin, said. “They are listening when we adults use respectful language and when we use hateful language. Hatred has an emotional cost.”
Jaymes Black, CEO of The Trevor Project, the national nonprofit focused on the well-being of LGBTQ+ youth, called the decision fatal.
“Suicide prevention is about people, not politics,” Black said in a statement June 18. “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.”
If you or someone you know needs help or support, The Trevor Project’s trained crisis counselors are available 24/7 at 1-866-488-7386, via chat at TheTrevorProject.org/Get-Help, or by texting START to 678678.
Natalie Eilbert covers mental health issues for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She welcomes story tips and feedback. You can reach her at neilbert@gannett.com or view her X (Twitter) profile at @natalie_eilbert.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Trump administration singles out LGBTQ+ youth crisis line to be cut