The Trump administration is taking steps to restore a specialized option on the 988 crisis intervention hotline that serves LGBT youth. The hotline already provides tailored options for groups including veterans and Spanish speakers. About a year ago, the administration eliminated the so-called “press 3” option for LGBT youth, citing a lack of funding. Now, officials are working to bring that option back before the end of the year, after Congress directed that 33 million dollars be set aside specifically for LGBT-focused youth interventions. Democratic lawmakers were the driving force behind that funding directive.
The newly elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention is sounding the alarm over what he sees as a push to steer America’s largest Protestant denomination in a more progressive direction. Willy Rice, who serves as senior pastor of Calvary Church in Clearwater, Florida, has spoken out against SBC leadership shifting left on issues such as race, gender, and immigration. On his website, Rice has called on Southern Baptists to stand firm in their core beliefs rather than settling for what he described as a “mushy evangelical middle ground.” Last year, Rice led a successful effort to dismantle the denomination’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission amid allegations that the body had received money from liberal organizations.
The Trump administration has opened an anti-Semitism investigation into the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers union. Jewish members of the NEA say they were harassed and physically intimidated by fellow union members during the organization’s annual convention last year. Some Jewish teachers allege that other NEA members cheered when a 2025 attack on Jews in Colorado was mentioned. Additional complaints involve a union handbook for Indigenous People’s Day that featured a Middle East map labeling Israel as “Palestine,” as well as another handbook that referenced the Holocaust without identifying Jews as its primary victims.
Planned Parenthood and two smaller regional abortion providers have resumed billing Medicaid for non-abortion services after being shut out for most of the past year. A defunding measure included in President Trump’s 2025 tax policy had blocked that billing, but the provision has since expired and Congress has not renewed it. The return of funding does not signal an end to the broader fight over federal abortion policy, however, as not all previously cut services will be restored. Advocates on the pro-life side are urging lawmakers to reinstate the defunding measure. Kelsey Pritchard of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America stated, “they should do everything in their power to do it again.”
