President Donald Trump is marking Pride Month by slashing specialized counseling services for young LGBTQ+ people who call the National Suicide Hotline.
The Department of Health and Human Services’ proposed 2026 budget cuts LGBTQ+ youth resources provided by the hotline, also known as 988. Although $520 million is still set aside to fund the organization, government support for LGBTQ-specific counseling will be eliminated.
When Trump signed the suicide prevention line into law in 2020, the legislation put in place special counseling for high-risk populations like LGBTQ+ people under the age of 25. The hotline service was required to employ “specially trained staff and partner organizations” because—the legislation states—queer and trans youth “are more than 4 times more likely to contemplate suicide than their peers, with 1 in 5 LGBTQ youth and more than 1 in 3 transgender youth reporting attempting suicide.”
Less than five years later, a senior administration official told NBC that the money has been reallocated so that it doesn’t go to “radical grooming contractors,” perpetuating a discriminatory stereotype that equates LGBTQ+ individuals or allies with sexual abusers.
Rachel Cauley, a spokesperson for the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, said that the proposed budget funds 988 but not “radical gender ideology.”
“It does not… 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,” Cauley said.
The contractors that partner with 988 are mental health organizations that typically provide care to the general population and LGBTQ+ people. This includes The Trevor Project, which has long advocated for LGBTQ+ youth.
Jaymes Black, The Trevor Project’s CEO, said in a statement to NBC: “Attempts to discredit these life-saving services will not change the reality of what this administration is proposing: the elimination of a national suicide prevention program, run by seven leading crisis contact centers, that has supported over 1.3 million LGBTQ+ youth across the U.S. with best-practice crisis care.”
Black, who urged Congress to rethink the proposal, said that “every young life is worth saving.”
The Trump administration chose to announce the move during Pride Month, a season meant to honor queer representation and commemorate the pioneers who paved the way toward equality. The first Pride marches were held in 1970 to honor the one-year anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Riots, a pivotal event in the LGBTQ+ rights movement. It took nearly 30 years for the U.S. government to officially recognize the significance of the month; in 1999 former president Bill Clinton issued a proclamation recognizing June as “Gay and Lesbian Pride Month.” Its name was subsequently updated to include other identities, like bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals, by former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. It formally became LGBTQ+ Pride Month in 2021.
Trump had already signalled that he would officially spite Pride Month last week when White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the president has no intention to formally recognize it.
“There are no plans for a proclamation for the month of June,” Leavitt said. “But I can tell you this president is very proud to be a president for all Americans, regardless of race, religion, or creed.”
Trump’s critique of “gender ideology” has been a cornerstone of his second term. He has declared that there are only two biological sexes; scrubbed agency websites of any mention of transgender or intersex people; stripped diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs from the federal government; barred transgender women from women’s sports; prevented federal funding from going to transition-related care for minors; and removed transgender people from the military.
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