As many as 500 people — including scores of scientists and supporters of scientific research — descended upon the Rhode Island Statehouse this past Friday afternoon to protest ongoing cuts and funding freezes recently initiated by the federal government, one of dozens of similar demonstrations held across the nation the same day under the unified name, “Stand Up For Science”.

Enduring blustery gusts of wind and even spats of snow flurries — holding signs that stressed the link between the support of science and the strength of American society, as well as more visceral signs expressing anger at the Trump Administration for putting various scientific endeavors on the chopping block — protesters marched around downtown Providence chanting various cadences, such as “Science, not silence,” “Facts over fear,” and “Rhode Island Stands for Science.”

The goals of the protests, as stated on their website, include: ending censorship and political interference in science; securing and expanding scientific funding; and defending diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in science.

What exactly were they protesting?
The cuts and funding freezes that have been announced or proposed since late January have largely come as the result of widespread executive actions made by President Trump during his first days in office, and at the behest of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the weeks since.

These include a nearly $6 billion (18%) cut to the National Institute of Health (NIH), ending funding for nearly 90% of contracts of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and widespread layoffs of probationary federal employees that have hit places like the Veterans Affairs (VA) office and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) particularly hard.

Other less visible moves revolve around dictating which grant-funded research initiatives can receive funding — or perhaps more importantly, which do not get funding. According to reporting from “Nature”, NIH is set to terminate hundreds of active research grants based on them having any mention of phrases such as “LGBT+ health”, “gender identity”, and “DEI”.

Some of these proposals have been temporarily blocked by federal judges or are merely proposed budgetary moves for the moment, but scientists and protesters at the rally argued that this uncertainty was one of the reasons for their protests.

“The administration is cutting science funding and grants left and right and not always necessarily with a strategic aim, it feels like, but just cutting programs and people who are newly employed,” said Margaret Crane, a Bristol resident and Clinical Psychology Post-doctoral Fellow at Brown University (but who is speaking in this article on behalf of her own personal views and not as a representative of Brown University) who served as the chairperson of the Rhode Island organizers of the protest. “But that includes programs that I think are really beneficial for all Rhode Islanders.”

Sarah Gaines provided a cogent example of that local impact. Gaines was one of 11 grant-funded employees at URI’s Coastal Resources Center who were recently fired as a result of the aforementioned cuts to USAID. The Coastal Resources Center is the group who works with other state authorities to ensure that the state’s coastline and marine life is safeguarded from improper development and harm.

“I would really like to call out this Constitutional crisis. Congress should hold the purse strings, not the president. This was not his decision to make,” Gaines told the crowd. “And we’re not going to stand for it…This is only the beginning. But we cannot be afraid and we cannot be silent. We have to stand up. Do not succumb to silence and intimidation.”
Crane, herself, had a grant-funded research initiative stalled after it received a favorable first review from the National Institute of Mental Health, a branch of NIH.

“What's so sad is that a lot of these grants are really aiming to help not just mental health, but all types of health,” she said. “Whether that's researching a new cure to a disease or…increasing access to care. We're trying to help people with these kinds of things.”

Appeal to American scientific excellence
Among the many speakers who rallied the crowd during the four-hour event — including people who owed their lives to scientific breakthroughs in medicine, people who had lost their jobs due to the aforementioned staff freezes, and people who faced uncertain futures in their professions as researchers of topics now deemed inappropriate or unworthy of federal funding — Dr. Kenneth Miller, a professor of molecular biology at Brown University, made the case for why science should matter to any patriotic American.

“America has been the most innovative and creative nation on this planet, and it is due in no small measure to science,” he said. “What is at stake with the rejection of science, basically, is the closure of American imagination, and the death of the American soul.”

Miller said that, if there were a hypothetical “evil genius” who approached him looking to destroy American scientific greatness — the kind which has led to Americans winning 260 Nobel Prizes, more than the next four nations combined — he would offer them a five-step plan for doing so.

The first step would be to cut funding to universities doing scientific research. Next, they would stifle new grant-funded proposals to prevent innovation. Third, they would cut or fire probationary employees to make the industry look unattractive to talented young people looking to start a career. Fourth, they would muffle federal agencies associated with science, by telling groups like NIH and the CDC that they can’t communicate with the public about ongoing health crises. Lastly, they would cut scientific programs that help the world at large.

“Here’s the reality. The current administration is doing all five of these things right now,” Miller said. “They don’t need my advice. They already have people who, frankly, are the enemy of science.”

Miller said that a perfect example of the kind of erroneous move made by the current administration that helps nobody but harms millions could be seen in the cuts that threaten the funding for PEPFAR, a program started by George W. Bush that has saved around 25 million in Africa from dying of HIV/AIDS. Under currently proposed cuts, that program would cease and potentially result in 1 million preventable deaths per year.

“Now is no time to be silent,” Miller said. “Now is the time to speak out, and now is the time to fight for science and our future.”