Across America, Protesters Stand Up for Science, Oppose Trump and DOGE Cuts
- The Xylom
- Mar 12
- 11 min read
As President Trump signs executive orders cutting millions of dollars in funding to universities and federal agencies, scientists worry about what this means for the future of research and scientific progress in the United States.
In protest, thousands of scientists and allies gathered for organized demonstrations in 32 cities across the United States, rallies they termed as “Stand Up For Science.” The goal, organizers wrote, is to stand up for science “because science is for everyone,” even as the government terms scientific spending as “waste.”
“If we stop funding science, and allowing for inclusion in these scientific experiments, we’re not going to have a full scope of science to back our health in this country… There’s so many dominoes that will fall if scientific research does not continue to be funded,” said Rayna Birnbaum, a biomedical researcher at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and one of the organizers for the rally in New York City.
The Xylom’s reporters covered events from Atlanta, New York City, and Seattle — three of the most important yet distinct research clusters across the United States, each facing its unique challenges. The following dispatches are arranged by local time.
Liberty Plaza, Atlanta | 12:15 pm
“Out of the lab, into the streets! Out of the lab, into the streets!”
Around 500 Atlantans descend upon Liberty Plaza, which stands right across a mostly empty Georgia State Capitol, with two demands on their minds: an immediate reversal on federal research funding cuts, and for local elected officials to step up their support for science in a crucial Southern state.
But the absence of key stakeholders hardly dampens the participants’ enthusiasm and urgency towards protecting the livelihoods of Atlanta-area federal workers and research scientists.
Seattle Center | 12:30 pm
In Seattle, the greenspace in front of the Space Needle is packed with an estimated 3,000 protestors. Chants of “Stand up! Fight Back!” and “What do we want? Peer review! When do we want it? Now!” ring out over the plaza. More protestors trickle in on foot and by monorail to make a tight standing-room-only crowd.
Unlike in Atlanta, recently elected statewide officials have made a concerted effort to show up to Seattle. The crowd listens to Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson speak about cutting science funding “for no good reason” under an administration “hell bent on whatever the next insanity is.”
Public Lands Commissioner Dave Upthegrove, also a Democrat and the state’s first openly LGBTQ+ executive, would speak to a cheering crowd later in the day that the state of Washington would welcome scientists fleeing red states.
Washington Square Park, New York City | 12:35 pm
Wind whips through the heart of New York University’s West Village campus as a menagerie of colorful signs begin to descend on the Washington Square Arch. An early arrival, bundled in a puffy winter jacket over her white lab coat, carries a neon green poster that says: “NOW I’m a mad scientist.”
Stand Up For Science organizer Rayna Birnbaum was one of the first speakers to remark on how the new administration is slowing down the grant approval process for a novel wound-healing treatment that she is working on in her lab.
“We have a therapy that manipulates your cells to basically move faster … which will allow your body to heal wounds twice as fast as it normally would,” she says. “But since the new administration came into office, we’ve heard nothing from the program officer.”
Birnbaum and her team relied on injury data collected from different races and ethnicities, but the Trump administration has since made diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) “dirty” words.
Liberty Plaza, Atlanta | 12:48 pm
“You know what’s crazy and also really disheartening is that almost eight years ago, I was doing this exact same thing … for something as simple as evidence-based policy making,” says biology professor Jasmine Clark to the protesters. She parlayed her previous role as organizer of the 8,000-person Atlanta March for Science in 2017 into a successful run at the Georgia State House. ; However, the State Legislature was out of session for the weekend; despite annexing the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) and Emory University in 2018, none of Atlanta’s city officials participated at the rally this time.
Although Georgia has become a key swing state in recent federal elections, the Governor’s mansion and the State Legislature have long been controlled by Republicans. Decades after the CDC headquarters opened doors to provide critical malaria eradication support, Georgia still has some of the worst healthcare and maternal mortality rates in the nation, disproportionately affecting Black women like Clark.
However, Gov. Brian Kemp has resisted Medicaid expansion in favor of the Georgia Pathway to Coverage program, which despite its original intent has failed to enroll people in health care and get them to work, according to a recent investigation by The Current and ProPublica. Clark criticizes Republican elected officials in her speech for failing to do their homework and applauding billionaire Elon Musk’s efforts to “right-size” the federal government.
“They are not considering the real consequences of the decisions that they are making and they are effectively harming or cutting short lives because of willful ignorance,” Clark says as she gestures towards the Gold Dome. “There are people in that building over there, and they tell me this all the time … they failed pretty much all of their science classes. But somehow they seem to know more about research and what research needs to be done and doesn’t need to be done.”
In an interview with The Xylom, Clark described how the Trump administration is treating people of color and immigrants as scapegoats.
“They’ll blame immigrants for why we’re having an outbreak,” she says. “Rarely does this administration refer to the advances and the intellect and the research that many of the immigrant community bring to the United States.”
Clark’s current priority is to ensure that Georgia, one of three states that currently does not have state-level comprehensive antidiscrimination laws, extends legal protections to those experiencing illegal environmental and health disparities, so they could take action without going through a circuitous federal legal process.
“Science research should not be political. I think that in this current moment, however, it has no choice but to be political in order to save its own life,” she adds.
Washington Square Park, New York City | 1:03 pm
Protestors Noon Elsaeyed and Hanan Y. depend upon funding from the National Institute of Health for their research. (Hanan’s last name is withheld due to privacy concerns.)
Elsaeyed graduated with a biology degree from Brooklyn College last May and studied the effects of the gut microbiome on the brain at the State University of New York’s Downstate medical center as a student with partial government funding.
“I'm actually on a job hunt right now,” she says. “It's been kind of discouraging because a lot of positions are being removed. I get emails that are saying, ‘this position doesn’t exist anymore,’ even at the lowest level.”
Hanan develops minimally-invasive nano sensors for dopamine detection as a master’s student at The City College of New York. Due to rescinded grants, Hanan’s lab is currently experiencing a total hiring freeze for new technicians, though several are needed.
As an undergrad, Hanan participated in an NIH-funded program called BP-ENDURE, which gives training and lab opportunities to promising students from underrepresented communities. She recently learned that the program was frozen this year, pending further funding.
“ If we don’t fight back for those programs, I’m worried that they will no longer exist,” she says.
Both Hanan and Elsaeyed have their sights set on Ph.D. programs. Hanan notes a lot of delays regarding letters of acceptance or rejection for advanced scientific degree hopefuls like her. “I actually have a lot of worries about applying in the next cycle… Maybe I should wait, or maybe it’s not gonna work out at all. I’m trying to get a lot of advice from mentors and other people who are more experienced.”
“It feels like everybody is just waiting to see what happens,” Elsaeyed says, “today, we don’t want to wait.”
Seattle Center | 1:42 pm
One theme seems to be common across all rallies: Cheeky signs that directly critique President Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was recently confirmed as the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Elon Musk, the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency, colloquially known as “DOGE.”
Chantelle Prat, a professor at the University of Washington, holds up a sign that alludes to Trump’s “grab ’em by the pussy” remark that became viral in 2016.
Prat and her husband are both neuroscientists and their daughter works for NOAA. While her funding has not yet been cut, both Prat and her husband had been applying for grants that have now disappeared. They constantly worry about their daughter’s job security. Prat says she came out to remember they were not alone, but also couldn’t believe things have gone this far.
“It’s shocking to me that we are having this conversation in 2025,” Prat says. “How could we possibly be here?”
Washington Square Park, New York City | 1:49 pm
One of the last speakers to take the mic was Michelle Ng Gong, secretary of the American Thoracic Society.
“Whether we believe in science or not, we all breathe, and we all breathe the same air,” Gong says. “I am an immigrant. I came to New York as a child, and I decided to go into medicine because I thought it was the best way to give back. It was because of grants and loans for the disadvantaged that I was able to go to medical school.”
Gong, who also serves as the chief of Critical Care Medicine and Pulmonary Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center, was working with patients with respiratory failure on the frontlines during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We did research looking at treatments for COVID and vaccines and other things to protect the patients and improve the outcomes in the patients we treated at their bedside but also to protect patients in the future. That research was funded by the NIH, ” she says. “Look where we are today — we’re dealing with measles outbreaks; something of the past!”
“But that’s not what science is!” she adds. “It’s investing in the possibilities of what we can be in the future. It’s investing in the future of my patients. Good science and good care means that ensuring the benefits of science and medicine applies to all of our patients.”
Seattle Center | 2:00 pm
While most of the Atlanta and New York speakers live or work in the city they are protesting in, Ira Hyman made the two-hour long drive from Bellingham, Washington, home to the northernmost university in the contiguous United States, to attend the Seattle rally.
Hyman, whose academic journey after being a first-generation college student took him from Atlanta’s Emory University to the Pacific Northwest, criticizes attacks to science through disinformation and misinformation campaigns, which are, according to him, “the foundation of the anti-science and anti-education attacks that are going on at this moment.”
“If you just peel back some of these cuts and attacks just a little bit…you’re gonna see the bullshit that’s at the foundation,” he says.
Capitol Avenue SW, Atlanta | 2:28 pm
As the Atlanta program enters its final hour, protestors begin fanning out of Liberty Plaza and into Capitol Avenue. They hold signs, chant, and cheer as drivers and even an ambulance honk in solidarity.
Trevor Adams, who studies how the human immunodeficiency virus affects the immune system at Emory University, says that funding cuts for programs such as USAID risks the mutation and spread of the virus and other diseases in the Global South, eventually affecting Americans.
“It’s like they think infectious diseases are DEI or something, rather than something that affects all of us, all around the world, regardless of whether we’re white, Black, Asian, Hispanic, American, non American,” he tells The Xylom. “It’s just so crazy to me that we have to be out here to support our livelihood, when our livelihood is trying to help everyone.”
“What we’re losing right now, we can’t just get it back,” he says. “So please just stop the cuts now! Slow it down.”
Liberty Plaza, Atlanta | 2:36 pm
John Harris is a volunteer organizer for Stand Up for Science. With experience in the semiconductor industry, he now studies next-generation rechargeable battery systems and materials.
Despite Gov. Kemp’s eschewing of federal healthcare resources, the Peach State has embraced federal support to develop battery and electric vehicle technology. Georgia has welcomed Korean manufacturers Hyundai and Kia, who could potentially qualify for Inflation Reduction Act tax credits; however, a $6.6 billion EV plant loan offered by the Biden administration to American manufacturer Rivian in November is now reportedly in jeopardy. Harris tells The Xylom that even his immediate principal investigator has begun to feel the uncertainty.
“I’m particularly concerned because there are so many companies that are coming into Georgia that are planning to benefit the economy,” he says. “It’s because of research at Georgia institutions that those companies have been able to start and to get to the point where they’re at, but they are also funded by [the] Inflation Reduction Act as well.”
Harris has led efforts to unionize college campuses and fight for collective bargaining rights, which may afford colleagues more protections in case cash-strapped institutions are forced to make cuts or target immigrant workers.
“In my lab, folks that are international students and workers, there’s some concern about whether or not, if they leave for international travel to go home or to go to a conference, they’ll be allowed back into the country,” Harris says. “I know for a fact that there’s already been some Chinese students that have had their visas revoked when they simply are going home for a routine visit.”
Harris sees himself at the intersection of multiple fronts in the fight for a just transition.
“Union members who do science need to start thinking about the power that they have to keep our institutions running that provide the funding for these institutions, and start to use that power,” he explains. “When we come together as a community of care … then we can make change happen.”
Immediately after the rally, Harris is heading back to the Georgia Tech campus to speak with prospective students. He believes that the fight to save their jobs is just beginning.
“I’m very, very happy with what we were able to accomplish today, and I hope that it continues to roll the momentum forward to Stand Up for Science,” he says.
