In this powerful conversation, we sit down with Rowan Murphy, co-author of Why Are We Like This? Stories of Transformation, a book exploring the extraordinary global response to Netflix’s Heartstopper. Rowan shares his personal journey as a transgender gay man in his early 50s, including: His lived experience navigating identity, visibility, and authenticity Why he ultimately chose to leave the United States How growing civil rights restrictions on LGBTQ people are shaping real-life decisions The deep emotional and psychological impact Heartstopper has had on LGBTQ audiences worldwide.
Kansas Republicans are trying to take away currently valid driver’s licenses from transgender people in the state if they have corrected the gender marker on them in a new bill that has also been expanded – under a sneaky maneuver that allows changes to a bill without a public hearing – to be one of the “most extreme” bathroom bills in the nation.
H.B. 2426 was already very anti-trans. It defines “gender” under the law in terms of “chromosomes,… hormones, gonads and nonambiguous internal and external genitalia present at birth” and says that driver’s licenses can only have someone’s sex assigned at birth on it. The bill instructs the state government to invalidate all driver’s licenses that do not have a gender marker on them that reflects a person’s sex assigned at birth and to reissue new driver’s licenses.
But state Republican lawmakers expanded the bill last week, adding a strict anti-trans bathroom ban to a bill already seeking to ban trans Kansanians from changing the gender markers on their driver’s licenses.
The legislators used a state procedure called gut-and-go, which allows lawmakers to completely replace an existing bill’s language with pretty much anything they want while bypassing a public hearing.
Even before the addition of the bathroom amendment, Kansas lawmakers were already trying to push the bill through with as little public input as possible.
Republicans introduced the gender marker aspect of the bill with less than 24 hours’ notice before a public hearing. But residents nonetheless rose to the occasion, submitting hundreds of testimonies opposing the bill.
“You had a bill introduced one day at 3:58 p.m., it was scheduled for a hearing the next day, less than 24 hours notice,” state House minority leader Brandon Woodard (D) told theTopeka Capital-Journal. “Testimony had to be submitted by 10 a.m., and yet Kansans cobbled together hundreds of pieces of testimony that we were still able to print and submit.”
Republicans, Woodard said, “do those sorts of things in an attempt to shield. They know that the public’s not on the side with them. That’s not civil. When we delivered those pieces of testimony, the committee assistant said, ‘Oh my goodness, this is going to take me days and days to upload.’ I said, ‘Next time, the chair should consider giving people and Kansans a couple of days notice.’”
After all that, the Republicans weren’t done. Democrats are enraged over the addition of the bathroom amendment, proposed by State Rep. Bob Lewis (R). “We all thought that this bill was probably a bathroom bill, and now it’s showing its true colors,” state Rep. John Carmichael (D) told the Kansas Reflector.
“What this bill is about, with this amendment, is making it so that people who are transgender or people who are intersex have no safe place to go to the bathroom.”
“This is an attempt to obfuscate what we’re doing here,” Carmichael added. “If you’re in favor of a lack of transparency, if you’re in favor of taking bill numbers and playing them like a shell game, this is the amendment for you.”
Lewis claimed the amendment was “for privacy concerns and for public safety concerns.”
“I think this is a necessary bill,” he told the Capital-Journal.
Trans journalist Erin Reed called the bill “the most extreme anti-transgender measure in the United States,” explaining that it could punish trans people who use the bathroom that does not align with their sex assigned at birth with a misdemeanor with possible jail time.
But what “turbocharges it,” she said, is a provision allowing individual people to sue trans people for using the bathroom they deem “incorrect.”
“Critically, nothing in the provision limits its application to publicly owned buildings,” Reed explained. “As written, it would not only be the first bathroom bounty law to target transgender people directly, but also the first to extend a bathroom ban into private spaces—effectively creating the nation’s first private bathroom ban if enacted by empowering bounty hunters to search for trans people in bathrooms.”
Reed said she confirmed with multiple legal experts and lawmakers that, despite the bill appearing to only target public spaces, it would also apply to private bathrooms.
The bill is supported by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach (R). Republicans have made it a major priority and are trying to pass it as quickly as possible. Democratic Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly will likely veto it if it makes it to her desk.
“If passed,” Reed said, “what follows would be the bill’s most consequential test: an effort to override that veto in a Legislature where Republicans currently hold a veto-proof majority, but where some may view the bill as too extreme. For transgender people in the state, that effort may be the most consequential in years.”
The Spanish government has announced a plan to legalise the status of undocumented migrants, a measure expected to benefit at least half a million people.
Regularisation will be available to foreign nationals who do not have a criminal record and can prove they lived in Spain for at least five months prior to 31 December 2025.
“This is an historic day for our country,” said Elma Saiz, Spain’s minister of inclusion, social security and migration.
The measure will provide beneficiaries with an initial one-year residence permit, which can then be extended. Requests for legalisation are expected to begin in April and the process will remain open until the end of June.
“We are reinforcing a migratory model based on human rights, integration, co-existence and which is compatible with economic growth and social cohesion,” Saiz said.
Spain has seen a large influx of migrants in recent years, mainly from Latin America.
The conservative think-tank Funcas found that the number of undocumented migrants in Spain had risen from 107,409 in 2017 to 837,938 in 2025 – an eight-fold increase.
The highest number of undocumented arrivals currently living in Spain are believed to be from Colombia, Peru and Honduras.
Spain’s socialist-led coalition government has been an outlier on this issue among the larger European nations, underlining the importance of migrants for the economy.
The country has been outperforming the other main EU economies in recent years, posting expected growth of close to 3% in 2025.
Unemployment, a longstanding weakness of the Spanish economy, has dipped below 10% for the first time since 2008, according to figures released on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has described immigrants as representing “wealth, development and prosperity” for Spain, pointing to their contribution to the social security system.
The government and parties on the left have also emphasised the need to treat migrants in a humane way.
“Providing rights is the answer to racism,” said Irene Montero, of the far-left Podemos party and a former minister in a coalition government with the Socialists.
She has campaigned for this measure, which followed an agreement between the party and the government. A civic legislative proposal, calling for a mass migrant regularisation, received the support of around 700,000 people but had been languishing in parliament.
This measure will be approved by royal decree, meaning it does not require parliamentary approval.
It is the first large-scale migrant regularisation in Spain for two decades.
Several such initiatives, by governments of both the Socialists and the conservative People’s Party (PP), legalised the status of an estimated half a million migrants between 1986 and 2005.
However, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the PP, said the latest mass legalisation would “increase the pull effect and overwhelm our public services”.
Pepa Millán, spokeswoman for the far-right Vox, said the initiative “attacks our identity”, adding that the party would appeal before the Supreme Court in a bid to block it.
Two of Wisconsin’s largest pediatric hospitals have stopped providing gender-affirming care for transgender youth, Wisconsin Public Radio reports.
Children’s Wisconsin and University of Wisconsin (UW) Health have ended the treatment for minors, after pressure from the Trump administration. Advocates say the end of gender-affirming medical care will lead to negative mental health effects for trans youth.
In a statement, Children’s Wisconsin cited “escalating legal and federal regulatory risk” facing providers across the nation as the reason it is “currently unable to provide gender-affirming pharmacologic care.” The hospital added that LGBTQ+ children should be treated with “support, respect, dignity, and compassion.”
The hospital will continue to offer mental health services for patients and families.
In December, the Department of Health and Human Services, under the direction of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced plans to end all Medicaid and Medicare funding for hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to minors.
“Under my leadership, and answering President Trump’s call to action, the federal government will do everything in its power to stop unsafe, irreversible practices that put our children at risk,” Kennedy said, announcing the funding threat. “This administration will protect America’s most vulnerable. Our children deserve better — and we are delivering on that promise.”
In reality, gender-affirming medications for young people are considered by every major American medical association to be safe, reversible, and essential to the well-being of trans youth.
UW Health said its hospital system will pause prescribing puberty blockers and hormone therapy for patients under 18 years old “due to recent federal actions.” The hospital remains committed to providing “high-quality, compassionate” care to LGBTQ+ patients, officials said in a statement.
“We recognize the uncertainty faced by our impacted patients and families seeking this gender-affirming care and will continue to support their health and well-being,” they said.
Steve Starkey, executive director for OutReach LGBTQ+ Community Center in Madison, said the consequences of ending the care will be grave.
“It will definitely have a negative impact on the rates of suicide, and the mental health of the trans community” in general, he said. “It affects trans adults as well, because it’s like an attack on all trans people.”
Starkey pointed to rates of suicide and suicidal ideation, which are already high for the trans community.
A 2023 study by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law found that more than 80% of trans adults had suicidal thoughts, while more than 40% had attempted suicide.
“For trans people of all ages, being able to express themselves in the gender that they feel that they are is important for their mental and physical health,” Starkey said. “By not allowing trans people to do that, to have the support, it just means that they are not able to be wholly who they are.”
In the last week alone, hospitals and clinics in Orange County, Riverside, and San Diego, California — and in Tacoma, Washington too — announced plans to shutter gender-affirming care programs for trans youth.
A year ago this week, Trump issued an executive order vowing to end what he called the “chemical and surgical mutilation” of children with gender-affirming care. Republicans have used these terms to outrage people and vilify medical providers of the care, but puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapies don’t “mutilate” kids, and gender-affirming surgeries are rarely (if ever) conducted on minors.
A protester at Children’s Hospital of Orange County this week described the same care as life-saving.
“I’m a transgender woman, and I’m here to tell you that denying people this gender-affirming care doesn’t make gender dysphoria go away,” Stephanie Wade, chair of Lavender Democrats of Orange County, told LAist. “All it does is make it metastasize into suicidal depression. And I’ve been there. I dealt with this as a child. We can’t take this away from kids.”
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. The Trans Lifeline (1-877-565-8860) is staffed by trans people and will not contact law enforcement. The Trevor Project provides a safe, judgement-free place to talk for youth via chat, text (678-678), or phone (1-866-488-7386). Help is available at all three resources in English and Spanish.
According to a press release dated Jan. 30 and time-stamped 7:38 p.m., the city of Dallas has officially caved to the rainbow-hating homophobes in Texas government, and Oak Lawn’s privately-funded rainbow crosswalks — and any other nonstandard crosswalk designs in the city — will be removed within the next 90 days.
The press release says: “The City of Dallas has notified the Texas Department of Transportation that it will comply with TxDOT’s directive requiring removal or correction of non-compliant pavement markings.”
The TxDOT “request” (aka Greg Abbott’s homophobic demand in order to kowtow to Trump, just like he did with the mid-decade congressional redistricting and by turning over Texas voter rolls to the feds) covers 30 decorative crosswalks citywide, the press release said.
“In a letter signed by Dallas City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert, the city notified the director of the TxDOT Traffic Safety Division that it will comply with the order within 90 days,” the press release continues, quoting Tolbert as saying that “The city appreciates TxDOT’s partnership in sustaining safe multimodal transportation in Dallas. The city will work with affected communities on ways to recognize their neighborhoods.”
The press release concludes: “TxDOT rejected the city’s appeal of the directive to remove pavement markings stating the intersections identified did not meet current Texas Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices requirements. TxDOT emphasized that all treatments must comply with the TMUTCD, the Secretary of Transportation’s Safe Road Initiative, and the governor’s directive issued Oct. 8, 2025, which prioritize uniformity and predictability in traffic control devices statewide.”
Considering that numerous studies and incidental data have proven that creative crosswalk designs actually enhance safety, the obvious truth is that Abbott and his minions don’t actually give a fat rat’s ass about safety; they just want to try and suppress the LGBTQ+ community and, at the same time, lick Trump’s boots.
Knowing our LGBTQ+/Oak Lawn community, however, we feel sure that while the homophobes may be winning this battle in the Rainbow War, the fight continues. We expect to see even more rainbows waving proudly across Oak Lawn soon.
Missouri’s Supreme Court upheld the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors this week, along with a prohibition on Medicaid coverage of gender-affirming care for anyone in the state.
As the Missouri Independent reports, the court’s unanimous decision upholds a 2024 circuit court ruling in a case challenging Senate Bill 49. The law, signed by Gov. Mike Parson (R) in 2023, bans minors from accessing any form of gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, and surgeries. It also bans the state’s Medicaid program from covering gender-affirming care for people of all ages.
The challenge against the law was brought by Lambda Legal and the ACLU of Missouri on behalf of three families of transgender young people, medical providers, and LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations, who argued that the law should be subject to heightened scrutiny, a more rigorous legal standard applied to cases involving the classification of individuals by specific characteristics like gender.
According to the Missouri Independent, the state Supreme Court rejected that argument, as had the lower court. While plaintiffs had argued that the law discriminates on the basis of sex and transgender status, Judge Kelly Broniec wrote in the court’s decision that S.B. 49 “classifies only based on medical use and age.”
The court’s reasoning echoes that in the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last year in United States v. Skrmetti, which held that Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth does not discriminate on the basis of sex or transgender status.
As the Missouri Independent notes, Supreme Court precedent allows lawmakers broad discretion when it comes to issues “fraught with medical and scientific uncertainty.”
While for decades there has been broad scientific consensus — including among all major American medical associations — that gender-affirming care is safe, evidence-based, and often lifesaving for minors experiencing gender dysphoria, conservative organizations and some American media outlets have made massive strides in recent years in sowing doubt about that consensus.
In September, Lambda Legal attorney Nora Huppert argued that the lower court’s decision upholding S.B. 49 included “legal and factual errors.” But writing for the Missouri Supreme Court this week, Broniec nonetheless said that the state had “demonstrated the ongoing debate among medical and ethical experts regarding the risks and benefits associated with the treatments at issue.”
The court also rejected arguments that the Medicaid ban violates Missouri’s constitution, with Broniec noting that adults in the state can still pay out-of-pocket to receive gender-affirming care.
Gillian Wilcox, director of litigation at the ACLU of Missouri, responded to the decision saying that it “not only allows the state to target transgender Missourians access to health care but also leaves everyone’s health care options at the whims of politicians, should certain care ever fall into the political arena.”
Under a new bill introduced Wednesday, the Idaho Legislature would ban local policies in more than a dozen cities that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
The bill, written by the Idaho Family Policy Center, a conservative Christian group, and sponsored by Nampa Republican state Rep. Bruce Skaug, would block local governments in Idaho from having more strict antidiscrimination policies than established in state law.
Skaug argued that the varying local rules hinder economic growth.
“In addition to threatening our religious freedoms, all of these conflicting local antidiscrimination ordinances create a tangled web of red tape that varies from city to city, county to county,” Skaug told lawmakers. “In the business sector, it burdens the entrepreneurs and the employers.”
Since 2011, 13 Idaho cities and towns have passed nondiscrimination ordinances including Sandpoint, Boise, Idaho Falls, Moscow, Lewiston, Meridian, Ketchum, Hailey, Bellevue, Driggs, Victor, Pocatello and Coeur d’Alene. In 2020, Ada County, home to Boise, passed its own, KTVB reported.
Chelsea Gaona-Lincoln, executive director of Add the Words Idaho, a group that has pushed for LGBTQ+ antidiscrimination protections, called the bill embarrassing.
“There are real issues Idaho needs addressed,” she said in a statement. “Lawmakers should move on and find something meaningful and responsible to do with the time and taxpayers’ money. Let queer and trans people live in peace.”
Idaho Family Policy Center, which wrote the bill, echoed Skaug’s arguments
The Idaho House Local Government Committee voted to introduce Skaug’s bill Wednesday, teeing it up for a full committee hearing with public testimony. All 14 Republicans on the committee supported introducing it, and the committee’s two Democrats opposed it.
Rep. Steve Berch, a Boise Democrat, called the bill “an overreach of legislative power or state power over the cities and communities.”
Skaug told the committee that the bill would ban more than just local antidiscrimination policies for LGBTQ+ protections, saying it would also prevent housing-related measures that deal with income and familial status. In an interview after the committee hearing, Skaug couldn’t immediately share which localities have those other nondiscrimination measures.
In preparing the bill, Skaug told the Idaho Capital Sun that he worked with the Idaho Family Policy Center and the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group.
In a statement, Idaho Family Policy Center President Blaine Conzatti said local antidiscrimination ordinances “are frequently weaponized against small business owners — especially wedding vendors or those offering creative design services.”
“No small business owner should ever be forced to choose between violating their sincerely held religious beliefs or leaving the marketplace altogether,” he said. “… Government officials have forced bakers, photographers, florists, graphic designers, and wedding venue operators to participate in same-sex wedding ceremonies and pride festivals.”
Planned Parenthood critiques bill as stripping local control
Rep. Marco Erickson, an Idaho Falls Republican, made the motion to introduce the bill in committee.
In 2013, the Idaho Falls City Council first passed an ordinance barring LGBTQ+ discrimination in housing and employment, becoming the seventh Idaho town with such protections at the time, Boise State Public Radio reported. In 2020, the Idaho Falls City Council expanded the discrimination protections to public accommodations, the Post Register reported.
In a statement, Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates’ Idaho State Director Mistie DelliCarpini-Tolman critiqued the bill as stripping local control.
“In places across Idaho, locally elected officials are ready and willing to stop discrimination, and this bill blocks them from doing exactly that, what voters elected them to do,” Tolman said. “That isn’t small government. It’s a uniform denial of basic protections that tells LGBTQ+ Idahoans and other marginalized residents that their safety and dignity don’t matter.”
Two bills in Florida advanced out of committee last week that would give the state attorney general more power to investigate and press felony charges against health care professionals who provide gender-affirming care in the state, including against therapists who discuss gender issues with minor patients and pharmacists who fill prescriptions that may be used as gender-affirming care.
Last week, the Criminal Justice Subcommittee passed H.B. 743 in a 12-5 vote, Florida Politics reports. The bill would allow state Attorney General James Uthmeier to sue health care practitioners for up to $100,000 per violation for providing gender-affirming care to minors. Mainstream medical organizations support gender-affirming care for trans kids because it has been shown to be life-saving and safe.
S.B. 1010 would make it a felony for doctors, school counselors, or psychologists to advise minors on gender-affirming care or “aid or abet” another health care professional in helping minors get gender-affirming care. The bill gained near-unanimous support from the state senate’s Committee on Children, Families, and Elder Affairs, according to the Florida Phoenix.
If that version of the bill passes, medical professionals could get a $100,000 fine per violation and up to five years in prison.
“We have to uphold the principles and standards that made this country great, biblical, constitutional law, and order at all costs. And sometimes that stings,” state Rep. Taylor Yarkowsky said at last week’s hearing.
The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Lauren Melo (R), stressed that pharmacists would be punished under her bill, something she says is necessary because, she claimed, health care professionals are “committing fraud” by prescribing gender-affirming care medications but recording the purpose of the medications as something other than gender-affirming care.
“What we’re seeing is there’s coding that’s actually being used that is becoming the problem, and hundreds of thousands of dollars is spent per child for them to transition and codes are being misrepresented where they are saying that it’s an indoctrination disorder instead of saying it’s a gender identity disorder,” she said.
Democrats stressed that the bill could have unintentional side effects. State Rep. Kelly Skidmore (D) said that the bill is not about gender-affirming care but is being pushed by state Attorney General Uthmeier to expand his power.
“It is about giving one individual and maybe his successors authority that they don’t deserve and they cannot manage,” she said, referring to Uthmeier’s involvement in the Hope Florida scandal, where state Republicans are accused of laundering money and committing fraud. “They’ve proven that they cannot be trusted. This is a terrible bill.”
State Rep. Mike Gottlieb (D) said that doctors might be scared from prescribing hormonal medications to people with severe menstrual symptoms lest a pharmacist misinterpret the reason for the prescription.
“You’re going to see doctors not wanting to prescribe those kinds of medications because they’re now subject to a $100,000 penalty,” he said. “We’re really not considering what we’re doing and some of the collateral harms that it’s having.”
Behavioral health care professional Savannah Thompson told WUSF that the bill would make it more difficult for doctors to even talk to trans patients.
“This could increase the feelings of fear from my clients who are under 18, but it also can increase the likelihood that these professionals won’t be able to talk with their clients, honestly and openly, to give them the care and the support that they deserve and need,” she said.
The U.S. agency that enforces laws prohibiting workplace discrimination on Thursday rescinded legal guidance that had strengthened protections against unlawful harassment for LGBTQ workers and women who have abortions.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission voted 2-1 to repeal the 2024 guidance, which had incorporated major court rulings and laws passed in the roughly 25 years since the agency last updated its guidance.
The five-member EEOC can make rules and issue guidance explaining how federal laws that protect workers from discrimination based on characteristics such as race, sex, religion and disability should be applied. A separate arm of the agency, led by the general counsel, vets discrimination complaints filed by workers and can broker settlements and bring lawsuits against employers accused of violating those laws.
EEOC guidance is not legally binding, but lays out a blueprint for how the commission will enforce anti-discrimination laws and is often cited by judges deciding novel legal issues.
Since President Donald Trump took office last year, his appointees at the EEOC have stopped pursuing most cases involving transgender workers and have launched probes into workplace diversity policies and alleged antisemitism on college campuses.
The repeal of the 2024 guidance was expected and comes less than three months after the U.S. Senate confirmed Trump nominee Brittany Panuccio to the commission, restoring a quorum of three members and giving Republicans a 2-1 majority.
The commission in the 2024 guidance had adopted a broad view of the type of conduct that amounts to unlawful workplace harassment, saying it included discriminating against employees because they have abortions or use contraception and refusing to use transgender workers’ preferred names and pronouns.
EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, a Trump appointee, ahead of Thursday’s vote said the EEOC had overstepped its authority by issuing guidance that imposed new obligations on employers rather than interpreting existing law.
But critics of the move said it could discourage employers from preventing harassment and leave workers without recourse when they face it.
“This action is likely to increase the amount of harassment that occurs in workplaces across the country,” a dozen former EEOC and U.S. Department of Labor officials said in a joint statement before the vote. Most of the officials were appointed by Democratic presidents.
The 2024 guidance covered an array of topics, including a landmark 2020 Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County that said workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is a form of unlawful sex discrimination. The commission had said that while Bostock involved a gay worker’s termination and not harassment claims, the Supreme Court’s reasoning in the decision extended to cases alleging harassment of LGBTQ workers.
A federal judge in Texas last year had blocked that portion of the guidance, saying that finding was novel and was beyond the scope of the EEOC’s powers in issuing guidance. Two other judges separately barred the agency from enforcing the guidance against religious organizations that sued.
For Julia Hewitt, the removal of LGBTQ+ services from the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and potential funding freezes and cuts are a personal and professional issue.
As a suicide prevention leader with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, a lived experience adviser with Vibrant Emotional Health, which oversees the crisis line in Texas, and a parent of an LGBTQ child raised in Texas, Hewitt, who as a child witnessed her mother struggle with suicidal ideation, has spent decades putting her energy into providing reliable crisis services for everyone who needs them.
But now, she’s watching the foundation she and others created crumble.
“It was a punch to the gut because if you work or volunteer in this space, you know the families who are impacted by this; it can be hard to reconcile when you know how much good this does,” Hewitt said. “When access narrows for those at highest risk, the system becomes less protective overall.”
The 988 Lifeline was created through bipartisan legislation signed into law by President Donald Trump during his first term. This nationwide network of locally based crisis centers offers one-on-one support for mental health, suicide, and substance use-related problems for anyone 24/7.
When someone called 988 in the past, they would hear a greeting message, followed by a menu of choices offering access to specially trained counselors for veterans, Spanish speakers, and LGBTQ+ youth, or sometimes a local crisis counselor.
But last summer, the Trump administration announced in a press release that it will no longer silo LGBTQ+ youth services, which had been the “Press 3 option” for 988 callers, to focus on serving “all help seekers,” saying that these specific LGBTQ+ services had become too expensive.
The Trump administration and theSubstance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the federal agency that provides the majority of the funding for the 988 Lifeline, said the specialized LGBTQ subnetwork’s initial pilot budget of $33 million had been exceeded and unifying services for all callers was a better option.
After the change, only veterans and Spanish speakers still received a tailored option through the 988 call line.
The call line had received nearly 1.3 million contacts nationally from LGBTQ+ people since its launch in 2022 — leaving a void that Texas crisis care centers, already operating at a $7 million funding deficit, are expected to fill.
In Texas, calls made to the line have increased over the years. In December 2025, the Texas 988 system received 25,511. A year prior, that figure was 18,916 and in December 2023, it was 14,961. It’s not clear from publicly available data how many calls are rerouted to LGBTQ+ subnetworks.
Texas Health and Human Services officials said the agency doesn’t have data on how many calls are rerouted to a subnetwork.
Veterans and LGBTQ+ youth have a higher risk of suicide compared to the general population, and canceling specialized services for only one group has mental health experts questioning the administration’s true intent.
“The program was created with overwhelming bipartisan support because, despite our political differences, we should all agree that every young person’s life is worth saving,” Jaymes Black, CEO of the Trevor Project, an organization that helped create option 3, said in a statement. “I am heartbroken that this administration has decided to say, loudly and clearly, that they believe some young people’s lives are not worth saving.”
This comes at a time when some federal funding for the hotline is set to expire, and budget freezes and cuts are wreaking havoc on the network of local crisis centers that the entire 988 infrastructure depends on.
“Currently, Texas’s 988 system faces a convergence of challenges,” said Christine Busse, a peer policy fellow for the Texas branch of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, a nonprofit mental health organization that provides education and peer-to-peer support. “Without additional investment, meeting current demand — let alone absorbing the additional contacts previously handled by specialized services — will remain difficult.”
The removal of option 3
For many LGBTQ+ youth, the hotline was a safe space to be themselves, where they could be transferred to specialists within the LGBTQ+ Youth Subnetwork who usually had the lived experience to relate to them and help them talk through problems like drug and alcohol abuse, bullying, relationship troubles and suicidal thoughts.
Busse said the hotline handled up to 70,000 contacts per month nationwide, and her organization is troubled by its sudden removal because those young people are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide as their peers.
Specialized services are still offered by the Trevor Project and other organizations, but advocates say including them in 988 made it easy for people in crisis to get help by remembering just three numbers.
Now that options have been removed, LGBTQ+ youth are left with 988 dispatchers who are trained to handle a crisis, but might not have the lived experience or training needed to make someone feel safe during an emergency.
“While all callers can still reach trained counselors through 988, the loss of Option 3 eliminates a service designed to address the specific needs of a higher-risk population,” Busse said.
Some states like California have decided to address this issue by having experts from the Trevor Project train their operators. However, Texas lawmakers have not committed any additional resources to this effort.
“LGBTQ+ young people need more resources to end suicide, not fewer,” said Mark Henson, vice president of advocacy and government affairs at The Trevor Project.
Hewitt said she is confident that local operators will receive the specialized LGBTQ+ training to provide the needed care, but the issue is why they need to do it at all.
“There was an entire network that was created just for this, and that is the difference,” she said. “But this means additional training, and that equates to time, experience, people, and hours.”
Busse said another advantage of option 3 was that it routed calls from LGBTQ youth out of the 988 system to other organizations, and its cancellation means a heavier workload for everyone in the system.
The month-to-month data on the crisis hotline shows a steady increase in calls to Texas crisis centers that were already overburdened before the removal of the LGBTQ+ subnetworks.
“Texas’s 988 system was already strained before the removal of Option 3,” Busse said. “Without additional investment, meeting current demand — let alone absorbing the additional contacts previously handled by specialized services — will remain difficult.”
The cost of saving a life
The Texas 988 system currently receives $19 million in funding from two federal grants: the Mental Health Block Grant and the 988 State and Territory Improvement Award. The latter is set to expire in September, and it’s unclear whether Congress will extend it or whether the Trump administration will establish new funding streams.
This comes at a time when local crisis care centers, where many of the 988 call centers operate out of or partner with for their resources, are seeing investment in their services disappear and reappear at the whims of the federal government.
In a span of 24 hours earlier this month, the Trump administration announced wide-ranging budget cuts that many in health care warned would cripple mental health and crisis services across the nation. Amid a national outcry, the administration reversed its decision before the end of the day.
“People got letters, and everyone was panicking, and then it got reversed,” Hewitt said. “A great outcome, but this terminal uncertainty is creating a really poor experience for not only the client but also the person answering the calls.”
The 988 system wasn’t meant to be supported by the federal government forever, and Texas lawmakers like state Sen. José Menéndez have attempted to create a safety net for it.
Last year, lawmakers established the 988 Trust Fund through House Bill 5342 and required a study on sustainable funding mechanisms, including a potential state telecommunications fee, due by December. However, no state dollars have been appropriated to the trust.
Menéndez, who authored the bill that created the trust fund, said the idea of using a telecommunications fee, similar to the fee that supports 911, was quickly shot down at the Capitol.
“I’m concerned that if we don’t have any state funds, 988 is going to have to get reliant on philanthropy, fundraising, and other methods, and we have already started reaching out about how people can make contributions because this year some funds run out,” he said.
As federal funds continue to dwindle and the state shows little interest in propping up the service, the future of 988 in Texas might depend on donations from Texans.
“That uncertainty is precisely why legislative action is imperative,” Busse said. “The infrastructure exists; what is needed now is the commitment to fund it. Without dedicated funding mechanisms, such as a telecommunications fee, Texans risk facing a mental health crisis without the community support network that took years to build.”
For mental health support for LGBTQ youth, call the Trevor Project’s 24/7 toll-free support line at 866-488-7386. For trans peer support, call the Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860. You can also reach a trained crisis counselor through the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988.
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