Stand Up for Science protests spread to more than 50 cities

Stand Up for Science protests spread to more than 50 cities

By Dan Vergano edited by Claire Cameron

WASHINGTON, DC – Scientists, advocates and lawmakers gathered in front of the US Capitol on Saturday for the second annual Stand Up for Science rally. Addressing the crowd, government researchers spoke out against the Trump administration’s move to cut or censor their work.

“Science needs integrity,” said Jenna Norton, a researcher at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, who was one of the speakers at the Washington DC rally. Scientific American. “It is important that we speak out about how we are affected, and the future of our country.”

Norton, who filed a whistleblower complaint after the National Institutes of Health put her on administrative leave in November, told protesters on Saturday that the Trump administration is “against science itself. Eventually they will come for their science too”.

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More than 2,000 people turned out for the protest on the National Mall; similar rallies took place in more than 50 cities around the country, according to organizers — up from about a dozen a year ago. There were almost as many signs in the crowd as there were people, as well as a large inflatable duck that stood next to the stage as a visual protest against “quack” medicine, a nod to how federal vaccine and nutrition recommendations have changed under the Trump administration’s vaccine-skeptic health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Since the new Trump administration took office in 2025, US science agencies have lost more staff than during the previous two decades. Another 10,000 or so Ph.D. experts in technical fields employed by the US federal government have been lost to retirements, layoffs, or acquisitions, Science reported.

Speakers at the DC protest included Steve Volz, former head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s satellite division, who said the Trump administration had sidelined him for privatizing federal weather forecasts. (The agency did not respond to a request for comment.) Also addressing the protest were young researchers at the National Institutes of Health, whose union in March received a letter from the agency saying the government would no longer recognize it. Lawmakers and political figures, including Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and conservative-lawyer-turned-Trump-critic George Conway, also filled the speakers’ lineup.

Congress’ decision to swing away from making the catastrophic cuts in science funding that the Trump administration had proposed in 2025 is a “ray of sunshine,” Van Hollen said, speaking backstage to Scientific American. But he added that an upcoming presidential budget request focused on defense spending will almost certainly again require those cuts. “The setback has made a difference,” Van Hollen said, adding that Congress has written into law requirements that scientific funds be used for the research purpose for which they are earmarked. The administration could ignore those laws, he said, triggering lawsuits and ultimately putting science on hold. “That’s why I say a sunbeam, not that the sun has come out,” he said.

In the past year, “we’ve seen scientists mobilize for various days of action in defense of science, (which) have become a rallying cry for the broader resistance movement,” says sociologist Dana Fisher of American University, who studies and maps protests. Researchers perfectly fit the demographics of expected Trump administration protesters: white, highly educated and middle-aged or older, she says.

“I expect that we will continue to see science as a focus and mobilization of action,” she adds.

Editor’s note: This story is in development and may be updated.

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