Last week, the Trump administration announced that it was ending a partnership with a rabidly pro-transgender organization called The Trevor Project. The partnership was part of the federally funded suicide prevention 988 Lifeline. By pressing "3," a transgender youth in distress could reach The Trevor Project or another LGBTQ organization for specialized support.
The administration announced that the hotline would now serve "anyone seeking help directly, through a single point of contact," writes Brad Polumbo of The Free Press. No more "press 3 for service." Transgender kids can still get the help they need to deal with their crisis, it's just that the other end of the phone will not be manned by a representative of The Trevor Project.
That's not exactly the way the media reported the story.
"This is a fatal decision," said The Trevor Project CEO Jaymes Black. His organization stands to lose a share of $33 million in government funding for giving questionable advice to kids about what they're feeling and the distress they're experiencing.
Reporter Katelyn Burns wrote for MSNBC that “this administration does not seem to care if trans children die.”
“Is cruelty the point?” mused CNN anchor Sara Sidner.
No. "The point" is another deliberate, dishonest attack on the Trump administration. Thank God no one watches CNN or MSNBC.
To be clear: The Trevor Project will continue to operate a suicide prevention hotline specifically for LGBTQ+ people that anyone who seeks specialized services can call. The 988 hotline will also continue to operate, and to offer services to anyone seeking help.
“Everyone who contacts the 988 Lifeline will continue to receive access to skilled, caring, culturally competent crisis counselors who can help with suicidal, substance misuse, or mental health crises, or any other kind of emotional distress,” the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which helps run the 988 hotline, said in a statement announcing the change.
The complete inaccuracy of the mainstream press’s narrative hasn’t stopped Democrats from likening the White House’s move to discontinue a referral button to nothing short of child sacrifice.
“Donald Trump wants to cut funding for the LGBTQ+ suicide hotline for kids,” Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said. “This is a terrible decision that would cost lives.”
And New York Gov. Kathy Hochul accused Trump of “targeting suicidal kids.”
As the statement from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration makes clear, these are lies made to portray the administration as hating on disturbed kids.
The biggest change to the 988 hotline will be sidelining The Trevor Project and cutting them out of a lucrative federal contract. Why did the Trump administration decide to cut out The Trevor Project?
Make no mistake: The Trevor Project is an explicitly ideological activist organization that promotes fringe, debunked theories about gender identity—and, even more crucially, takes a pseudoscientific, non-evidence-based approach to LGBTQ+ youth suicide prevention.
Consider the organization’s “resources about gender identity” web page. It suggests that using “neo-pronouns” such as “ze/zim/zer,” “ey/em,” and “it” is a legitimate way of expressing your “gender identity.” It also routinely relies on the factually false claim that biological sex is a spectrum. Most crucially, it suggests to youth that if they don’t conform to crude gender stereotypes, they might actually be transgender.
The organization’s website reads: “If you decide that your current gender or sex just isn’t right for you, you may want to make your gender identity fit with your ideal gender expression and presentation. This is called transitioning, and can include social (like telling other people about which pronouns you like), legal (like changing your name), or medical (like taking hormones or having surgery).”
This "advice" has the potential "to create immense confusion for gender-nonconforming kids, drawing them into gender ideology and making them vulnerable to unnecessary medicalization,” evolutionary biologist Colin Wright told Polumbo.
We've known since Great Britain's "Cass Review" was published in 2024 that most of what The Trevor Project is promoting is pseudoscience or worse.
“There is no high-quality study showing that use of puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones reduces death by suicide in adolescents identifying as transgender,” Michael Ziffra, a psychiatrist and associate professor at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, told Polumbo.
Only one major study reached another conclusion. An April 2022 study published in the Adolescent Journal of Health found a correlation between reduced suicides and suicidal thoughts in kids who took hormone blockers. However, the study has been largely dismissed for a large number of errors, omissions, and poor methodology.
"The study's findings are often presented as evidence that GAHT directly causes improvements in mental health. However, it's crucial to acknowledge that the observed associations may be due to a complex interplay of factors, and not solely due to GAHT" (Gender Affirming Hormone Therapy).
Since most adolescents suffering from gender dysphoria also suffer from comorbidities like depression, cutting, and other conditions, it's difficult to make a broad stroke statement that hormones prevent suicide in kids.
"Yet The Trevor Project’s resources about LGBTQ+ suicide prevention overwhelmingly focus on gender transition, almost framing it as a cure for mental distress and suicidality," Polumbo writes. This is incredibly dangerous, leading vulnerable kids already in tremendous psychic pain down a road that doesn't end where the activists say it does.
Just who is it that's putting trans kids' lives in danger?
