Scientists Are Rising Up to Resist Trump Policies

Thousands of scientists from scores of countries around the world are joining together in solidarity to oppose attempts by the Trump administration to enact what they see as anti-scientific measures that threaten public health and the environment around the world. 

The first show of unified global resistance is planned for March 7, with Stand Up For Science marches and demonstrations planned in Washington, D.C., and at least 32 more cities around the United States, as well as in several other cities around the world. 

“There’s never been a more important time to stand up for science,” said climate scientist Michael Mann, director of the Center for Science, Sustainability & the Media at the University of Pennsylvania, who will speak at the March 7 rally in Washington.

On Tuesday, Donald Trump threatened to cut off federal funding for schools and universities that allow what he called illegal protests, and threatened “agitators” with arrest.

“This is classic fascist tactics, labeling anything you don’t like as ‘illegal,’” Mann said in an email. “Anti-science and authoritarianism have a dark history as two sides of the same fascist coin. Think Hitler and his dismissal of ‘jewish science’ or Stalin and Soviet ‘Lysenkoism.’ History will look back at Trump and his accomplice Musk in the very same way.”

Recognizing the growing threat, a group of international scientists last week held the first of a planned series of online workshops aimed at developing ways to protect science from what they called a rising tide of authoritarianism, including with new, secure communications networks and safe repositories for data and research.

The Trump administration did not respond to questions about the science protests or its goals for science policy. Other administration officials have said that firing people, cutting departments and budgets, targeting diversity and other major changes to government agencies are aimed at aligning them with the administration’s overall goals and cutting the budget. 

At least one key science agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was specifically targeted for dismantling by Project 2025, a policy agenda prepared by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Trump disavowed the document during his campaign, but his administration is already carrying out many of its recommendations.

The coming weeks may be “the greatest test that the US scientific community has ever faced,” wrote Holden Thorpe, editor in chief of the Science journals, in a Feb. 24 editorial in Science. “The chaos, conflicting information, firings, and hurtful rhetoric of the Trump administration’s approach to science over the past month are causing anxiety, grief, and concern for the scientific community.”

Thorpe urged those in the scientific community who enjoy the protections of academic and other freedoms afforded by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment to “do and say more,” a message that rang true with Emma Courtney and JP Flores, co-organizers of the March 7 protests and walkouts.

“I almost felt overwhelmed and paralyzed about what this means societally, but also, what does this mean to my science?”

— JP Flores, Stand Up For Science co-organizer

Flores, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in bioinformatics and in computational biology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, said he was devastated by the Trump administration’s initial attempts to slash federal science programs and funding. Even though some of the actions have already been blocked in court and others also appear to be illegal, he said the onslaught was debilitating.

“I’m somebody who’s very interested in rare disease, genetics and genomics, and also diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility,” he said. “I almost felt overwhelmed and paralyzed about what this means societally, but also, what does this mean to my science?”

Rather than letting numbness set in, he said he recalled the huge turnout for the 2017 March For Science, when tens of thousands of people around the world marched to protest similar threats early in the first Trump term.

“I took to social media, and was like, ‘Where are those people now?’” he said. “I didn’t really see any rumblings. I just saw people posting questions and saying, ‘We need this so bad right now.’” 

In an online meeting in early February, Jonathan Berman, one of the original March for Science organizers, gave Flores a list of things he wishes he had done differently, and the things he thought he did right. At the end of the call, Flores took a deep breath and decided to start organizing a widespread protest. 

He contacted Colette Delawalla, a graduate student in clinical psychology at Emory University, and they were soon joined by Courtney, a Ph.D. candidate with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. Within a few weeks, events started being announced around the country and connected under the Stand Up For Science banner, quickly gaining more than 48,000 followers on Bluesky along the way.

Malevolent Agenda

Attacks on science in the U.S. can ripple around the world, said Austrian environmental historian Verena Winiwarter, dean of the faculty for interdisciplinary studies at the Alpen-Adria-Universität in Klagenfurt, Austria.

“Science is a global undertaking,” she said, speaking as a member of Scientists For Future. “Think about Antarctica. The research is international, and the results benefit the global community, never a single country.”

Ice cores from glaciers are a good example, she said. The ice is dated in one lab, another lab measures the oxygen traces to reconstruct the climate signal, another lab traces pollutants or pollen or micro-meteorites.

“Only if one puts all these together does the full picture of the past emerge,” she said.

Global involvement also helps ensure scientific integrity, she said, as reviewers for national grants in one country are always reviewed by peer experts in another country. 

In all these team efforts, she said, “All suffer if one country drops out all of a sudden.”

The current attacks on scientists, funding, research and institutions can also be seen as part of the growing problem of misinformation in a rapidly evolving media landscape, and Winiwarter said there’s a malevolent agenda behind the attacks.

“Autocratic oligarchs and large companies’ interest in profit maximization have long sown seeds of doubt,” she said, “like the tobacco industry or the chemical industry.” 

That leaves the average citizen unsure of which of the voices shouting at them to trust, particularly on social media platforms, she said. “Right-wing populists want to dominate the agenda with their topics, so facts are not in their interest,” she said. “Reality and scientists are honest brokers of facts and foes of extreme leftwing and rightwing populists.”

She cautioned that some of the disillusionment is real, because along with science’s contributions to progress and prosperity, it has also been part of a pattern of growing inequality that is the basic fuel for many modern societal ills. Addressing such disparities could be a way to increase faith in science, she said.

“Working against inequality would be my best guess to make people believe more strongly in science,” she said. “The fruits of science have to be accessible, be it health care, clean environments or any other part of life.”

Eyes on the Prize

The March 7 demonstrations, organizers said, have clear policy goals: Ending censorship and political interference in science, securing and expanding scientific funding and defending diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in science.

Courtney, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory student, advocates for creating a sustained movement of people “going into communities and talking about these goals and talking about their science and making connections on a human level that explains why it’s important.” And the organizers have discussed carefully how ambitious their goals should be.

“Should they just go right back to where we were a month ago? Or should we be advocating for more?” she said. “We all think science is really important, and there’s a lot of evidence to back that, that it’s a really good investment. It protects a country. The United States has benefited so much from having such a strong science enterprise.”

The organizers are also advocating for a lot of campus walkouts at universities that are distant from capital cities and have lots of people that don’t have cars, Courtney said, because many students are being directly affected by DEI cuts and research caps. 

Courtney, who specializes in cancer biology and breast cancer metastasis, but studied social sciences and climate as an undergraduate, said she was “totally shocked” by the administration’s executive orders and other directives that are stifling research.

“I felt it was really clear that they’re going to impact both science and have much broader impacts on American society and global society as a whole,” she said.

“[Science] protects a country. The United States has benefited so much from having such a strong science enterprise.”

— Emma Courtney, Stand Up For Science co-organizer

And she also remembers being traumatized eight years ago, when she was a tenth grader, and Trump was elected the first time. 

She’s even more worried now, with the second Trump administration having had time to strategize and bring on people who are more capable of working the levers of government than the president has been.

Flores is particularly disturbed by the administration’s attempts to crush all programs related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.

“I’m very passionate about those,” he said. “It is a heart-wrenching feeling for me that I can’t mentor another student who aspires to be a scientist.”

Regardless of exactly how many people turn out, Courtney said there is a broader lesson about the power of collective action. If people see something that they’re not happy with, they should speak up, she said.

“I think the biggest thing we need right now is just broad support, whether that’s showing up to the D.C. event or your local event, or donating or organizing one yourself,” she said.