President Donald Trump's plans to close the 988 suicide hotline for LGBTQ youths were met with fierce condemnation on Wednesday.
The Trump administration sent The Trevor Project, a national nonprofit that operates the 998 hotline, a notice of its intent to close the hotline. The notice was issued by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a branch of the Department of Health and Human Services.
"This is devastating, to say the least," Jaymes Black, CEO of The Trevor Project, said in a news release Wednesday. "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."
The closure announcement was released on the same day that the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee's prohibition on gender-affirming care for transgender youths.
It also garnered strong reactions across several social media platforms.
"The Trump administration are all b------s that want LGBTQ youth to die," American civil rights attorney Alejandra Caraballo noted on Bluesky.
"Queer genocide is pretty much an explicit policy goal of this administration and the GOP in general. They're not really hiding it," another Bluesky user wrote.
"F---ing hell, they're taking the LGBT support line off of 988 too. They really do just want to kill people," another post on Bluesky reads.
"We know this care works: it’s backed by decades of research and supported by every major U.S. medical association," Austin Montoya, senior communications officer at The Gill Foundation, posted on LinkedIn. "When trans youth receive affirming care and family support, they have higher self-esteem, better mental health, and healthier, happier childhoods."
