On March 7 scientists and advocates are set to take to the streets in support of science—the nationwide demonstration will mark the second Stand Up for Science rally since U.S. president Donald Trump took office in 2025.
On Saturday Stand Up for Science is leading demonstrations in 25 locations, including Washington, D.C., New York City, Boston, Chicago, Nashville, Atlanta, Oklahoma City, Pittsburgh, Seattle and Albuquerque; smaller events will take place in about 25 additional cities. There will also be a virtual rally.
“Last year we were warning people,” says Colette Delawalla, founder and CEO of the eponymous nonprofit that has organized the rallies. “We were concerned about politicization of science, we were concerned about political interference and censorship, we were concerned about vaccines and public health,” says Delawalla, who is also a Ph.D. candidate in clinical psychology at Emory University. “Pretty much everything that we warned about has happened, which is extraordinarily unfortunate.”
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Since the first Stand Up for Science rally took place on March 7, 2025, the Trump administration has moved to slash government research funding and grants, downsize federal science agency staff, overhaul the nation’s public health policies, roll back regulations designed to fight climate change, and more. The effects of these and other science policy shifts have been consequential, Delawalla says, even changing the way researchers write their grant funding proposals to better “fit” with the Trump administration’s standpoint.
Critics of the administration such as Delawalla point to Trump officials such as U.S. secretary of health and human services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as emblematic of the problems eroding American science. A long-standing vaccine skeptic, Kennedy has led the government’s efforts to reduce the number of recommended childhood vaccines—a move that has abandoned established science.
(In response to these criticisms, White House spokesperson Kush Desai told Scientific American, “Under President Trump, the United States remains the largest funder of scientific research and home to the largest public-private ecosystem for innovation in the world.” Similarly, Department of Health and Human Services press secretary Emily Hilliard told Scientific American that “Secretary Kennedy’s longstanding advocacy has focused on ensuring that vaccines and all medical interventions meet the highest standards of safety for the American people.”)
“For the first time in modern history, the appointed officials who lead our federal health agencies do not see vaccines as a first line of defense to protect the health of the American people,” says Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota. “That’s remarkable.”
The rally comes amid an explosion in measles cases, with more than 1,000 confirmed infections reported in just the first two months of the year, despite the disease having been eliminated from the country in 2000. How the administration communicates to the public about vaccines—and about science in general—will have consequences years into the future, Osterholm says.
Delawalla agrees. “Our big concern this year is: we’re worried that science is going to be used as a weapon against the public,” she says. “We want to make sure that science is not only well funded but is also used appropriately for the good of the public and to better the human experience across the world. That’s what publicly funded science should do.”
