Stand on for science rallies draw crowds who protest against Trump cutbacks

Washington DC. Boston, Massachusetts. Denver, Colorado. Seattle, Washington. Trenton, New Jersey

Thousands of researchers and supporters of science nowadays protested in more than 30 cities in the United States and Europe against actions taken by the administration of US President Donald Trump to lower the American scientific workforce and to lower the spending on research worldwide.

The mood was challenging with many of the rallies, where songs of “scientists are not silent”, “facts about fear” and “what do we want? Peer review! When do we want it? Now!” were heard.

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Rush Holt JR, former Chief Executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, quoted the crowd in Trenton, New Jersey, “stand Up, Stand Up”.

In the crowd in the Boston meeting, Ana-Maria Vranceanu, a psychologist at the Harvard Medical School, said whose work helps with dementia, chronic pain and other disorders,: “This is the time to actually stop this before things get really bad.”

In the past month: “I waited for someone to do something,” said Abraham Flaxman, a researcher of the Global-Health Metrics at the University of Washington who attended the Seattle Rally. But ‘it is stretching to me: nobody comes to save us. We will have to save ourselves. “

Marie Walde, a biophysicist at the Roscoff Biological Station in France, posted a rally that she attended at the social media platform Bluesky and said: “In solidarity with our colleagues in the US in the US today, protest today for science and knowledge as an audience.”

‘A five-alarm fire’

The stand -up for science rallies is a response to the siege of the Trump government of the American research company. Since he took office in January, Trump and his team have fired, and in some cases thousands of scientific authorities, whose jobs nuclear safety, bird flu surveillance, extreme weather forecast and more were involved. The administration has also tried to freeze research subsidies at science financing agencies, including the US National Science Foundation. And it has tried to beat ‘overhead costs’ assigned to biomedical research institutions by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) – although federal judges have blocked this action since then. This week, Nature It revealed that, under Trump, the NIH – the world’s largest public financier of biomedical research – has started with mass termination of active research subsidies for projects that study topics, including transgender health, which do not correspond to the political ideology of administration.

Forbidden by these movements and wondering why people are not visibly ‘standing up for science’, five American scientists decided to organize today’s meetings. “This is a fire of five alarms,” ​​says co-organizer Colette Delawalla, a psychologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. “If we do not set our work and focus on these matters”, and try to make policy changes, “there will be no science for us to come back,” she says.

But the organizers know from earlier protests, such as the International March for Science in 2017 – which was organized by researchers who are critical of the policy of the first presidency of Trump – that only rallies will have no influence on change. “It is not a one-and-do-thing,” says Samantha Goldstein, who studies women’s health at the University of Florida in GaineVille and is one of the stand-up for science organizers. She adds: the organizers will continue to “be nearby, ensuring that our policy goals and requirements are satisfied – that is what is important”.

A generation lost

During a number of today’s rallies, speakers and attendees are concerned about the hair -raising effect that the actions of the Trump administration will have on future science and scientists.

In Boston, Nancy Kanwisher, a cognitive neuroscientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, told the crowd: “You can’t just fire everyone and then rent it again when you need them. A generation of scientists will have been lost. “

Atul Gawande, a researcher of public health and former assistant administrator at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), told the crowd in Washington DC that he saw how scientists kept their career in boxes while leaving the dream jobs where they were dismissed. (The Trump Government has dismissed thousands of employees from the USAID, who finances health programs and disaster relief abroad, saying that it was run by “radical left -wing crazy” and party is for “huge fraud”.) Scientists are the target because “science does not always give the answers,” Gawande said.

Others expressed anger about the way scientists are treated. “I am a scientist and I am pissed off,” says Carolee Caffrey, a behavioral ecologist at Rider University in Lawrence Township, New Jersey, who welcomed people in the Trenton rally. “I am all ‘d’ words: relief, depressed, disgusting.”

Some saw the meetings as offering a safe outlet for scientists to express their feelings. Valerie H., who refused to give her full name for fear of reprisals, is a software engineer who works in crop science. Recent mass hires at the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies have had a huge impact on Valerie’s research. “I know hundreds of people on LinkedIn who are looking for work,” she said during the Denver Rally. “People are happy that they have a place to say something.”

Lessons from the past

It is unclear what kind of impact today’s meeting will have in the direction of American science. Jonathan Berman, a kidney physiologist at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, who helped in organizing the March for Science 2017, said that he was ultimately disappointed that the effort did not lead to concrete policy changes. He decided not to lead a meeting today, although he advised the stand -up for science organizers.

Policy changes are a difficult demand for peaceful, non -discupport rallies, says Eric Shuman, a social psychologist at New York University in New York City. Such meetings are good at increasing support for a movement, especially in people who are already sympathetic. But “big rallies such as those who do not generate a disturbance are easy for people who do not pay much attention to ignore.”

That does not mean that protests are not worth it: galvanizing a community can be important, says Schuman.

Stand on for science organizers are already discussing future plans. These include a possible subsidy program for people to enter their communities and talk about their science, says Emma Courtney, a biologist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and Core Organizer for Stand Up For Science. The team is also interested in supporting training programs to help scientists develop interest skills. “It is an important skill that people must have,” says Courtney.

In Washington DC, speaker Haley Chatelaine, a postdoctoral fellow at the NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and vice-president of the NIH Fellows Union, the crowd told that the Rally’s were uttered: “We feel excited and hopeful.”

JP Flores, a nuclear organizer for today’s meeting and a bioinformatics researcher at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, said Nature: “March 7 is the beginning – I don’t see it necessary as the end point.”

This article has been reproduced with permission and was First published On March 7, 2025.