AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

Stand Up for Science. That was the rallying call at nationwide protests Friday to oppose the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to scientific research and mass layoffs impacting numerous agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and National Weather Service. Protests were held in Washington, D.C., in San Francisco, in Denver, in Boston, in over two dozen other cities.

In D.C., thousands gathered at the Lincoln Memorial. In a moment, we’ll speak to one of the rally organizers, but first we turn to some of the speakers. This is Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland.

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: Are we all here to defend science?

CROWD: Yes!

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: Because we know that when you defend science, you are defending the health and welfare of the American people. Isn’t that right?

CROWD: Yes!

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: Now, I am just thrilled to be here with so many mad scientists. And you should be mad, and you should be angry, and everybody in America should be mad and angry about what we are witnessing right now in our country, including the illegal and reckless attacks on science by Elon Musk and the Trump administration, because those, those illegal attacks, are literally putting people’s lives at risk around the country. Are we going to let that happen?

CROWD: No!

JP FLORES: It is my great honor to introduce our next speaker. Dr. Atul Gawande is the former assistant — is the former assistant administrator for global health at USAID.

DR. ATUL GAWANDE: Are you scientists?

CROWD: Yes!

DR. ATUL GAWANDE: Are you health professionals?

CROWD: Yes!

DR. ATUL GAWANDE: Are you nerds?

CROWD: Yes!

DR. ATUL GAWANDE: We have a job to do. Are you with me on this job?

CROWD: Yes!

DR. ATUL GAWANDE: This job is that we must bear witness. We must bear witness to the harm, to the dangerous game that they are playing, and to the truth. Here’s the game that they are playing. They take a spreadsheet with the work of thousands of scientists and professionals. They scan for examples they can distort and ridicule. They ask no one what their work actually is. They ignore obvious information about it. They’ll call hormone and transgenic research in mice “making transgender mice.” They’ll ridicule male circumcision programs in Mozambique, which cuts HIV transmission two-thirds and has saved thousands of people from HIV. They will call programs to prevent HIV in transgender populations, in men who have sex with men, in IV drug users. They will call that ”DEI.”

CROWD: Boo!

DR. ATUL GAWANDE: When they will cause deaths from this occurring. Then they make absurd claims that this indicates rampant waste and fraud.

PROTESTER: Lies.

CROWD: Boo!

DR. ATUL GAWANDE: Boo.

PROTESTER: Lies.

DR. ATUL GAWANDE: They’ll demand that there is loyalty to repeat these lies. And then they use the lies to gleefully stop serious, important funding and work.

CROWD: Boo!

DR. ATUL GAWANDE: They will use these lies to take down entire agencies, like USAID.

CROWD: Boo!

DR. ATUL GAWANDE: They destroy thousands of careers. I watched people walk out the door with their boxes containing their entire careers, fired and purged by the thousands.

CROWD: Boo!

DR. ATUL GAWANDE: Then they deny the harm to millions of lives. They’ve done it at USAID. They are now doing it at NIH, at CDC, at FDA. and beyond.

CROWD: Boo!

DR. ATUL GAWANDE: Shame. Shame.

CROWD: Shame!

DR. ATUL GAWANDE: It is shame.

PROTESTER: Shame.

DR. ATUL GAWANDE: They are denying the harm in order to destroy an engine that made the U.S. the greatest driver of science, of health and of prosperity in the world.

EMILY WHITEHEAD: Hi, everyone. My name is Emily Whitehead, and I am here today because almost 15 years ago, I was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at the age of 5. The doctors told my parents that if you have a kid with cancer, ALL is the most curable. However, that wasn’t the case for me. After undergoing 22 months of failed chemotherapy, they were ready to send me home on hospice and told my parents to enjoy the days that they have left with me.

But miraculously, a phase one clinical trial at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia had just opened and was ready to try it on their first pediatric patient. In April of 2012, I became the first child in the world to receive CAR T-cell therapy, which trained my immune system to beat my cancer.

Today, I am almost 13 years cancer-free. I am a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, studying English and photography. I am a patient advocate who spreads awareness of less toxic cancer treatments that exist today because of science. Without funding research that went into developing the treatment that saved my life, I wouldn’t be here today.

I stand up for science for all of the other children all over the world who are fighting cancer so they can give back to their childhood outside of the hospital. I stand up for science so kids can grow up to be the next generation of scientists. I stand up for science for underrepresented groups whose voices are not as heard as mine. Every child deserves equal and equitable access to lifesaving treatments, no matter their background, identities or where they come from. I stand up for science because science saved my life, and that is a fact. Thank you.

MICHAEL MANN: My name is Michael Mann. And let me warn you: I’m going to use the C-word. I’m a climate scientist. Thank you. Thank you. I’m also an educator and a science communicator. Thanks. I’ve known adversity, having been targeted by fossil fuel interest groups, attacked by right-wing news sites, news outlets, and singled out by climate change-denying politicians, all in — 

CROWD: Boo!

MICHAEL MANN: Yes, unfortunately, and it’s even worse today — all in an effort to discredit my research demonstrating the profound threat of human-caused climate change. But this is the most challenging moment I can recall for science itself. To gratuitously quote the title of my forthcoming book with vaccine scientist Peter Hotez, who some of you may know, science is under siege.

JP FLORES: Up next, I have the great pleasure to introduce one of my mentors and one of my role models and scientific heroes. Dr. Francis Collins is an American physician scientist who discovered the genes associated with a number of diseases and led the Human Genome Project. He served as director of the NIH, 2009 to 2021, serving under three presidents. Dr. Collins announced his retirement publicly from the NIH six days ago, on March 1st, 2025, after 32 years of service.

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: So, we’re gathered here in front of the Lincoln Memorial. It’s a sacred civic space. And we’re celebrating the achievements of science over decades in bettering the human condition, and advocating for strong public support at a time when serious threats of harm are happening.

I’m a physician scientist. You heard I spent 32 years at NIH, including — yeah, NIH, yeah, woo — including leading the Human Genome Project and serving presidents of both parties as the director. But I’m a patriot. I love my country, and I’m worried about my country right now.

Just behind me, if you go and visit the memorial, you’ll see etched on the wall the 271 unforgettable words of the Gettysburg Address. It occurs to me there might be a parallel there to what we’re talking about. Let me remind you of the last sentence of that Gettysburg Address: “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”

Are we still there? Well, science has been of the people, hasn’t it?

CROWD: Yes!

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: We’re studying ourselves sometimes, to help ourselves to flourish. The Human Genome Project, after all, this 13-year effort, revealed our own instruction book. This has transformed human biology and medicine. And please note this: That project only succeeded through the strong support of members of Congress and presidents of both parties back then.

A little fun fact: Estimates several years ago suggest that every dollar the government invested in the Human Genome Project led to $141 in economic returns — not a bad ROI. We should keep emphasizing that part for the people who are less swayed by arguments about saving lives. We are also saving money. Come on.

You know, that same visionary “of the people” perspective has birthed a number of other bold projects supported by the federal government. The BRAIN Initiative.

CROWD: [cheering]

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: Yeah? Figuring out how those 86 billion neurons between your ears do what they do, we’re on the path to do that. The All of Us initiative, that’s enrolled almost a million Americans to figure out genetics, environment, health behaviors, social — all those inputs to health that we don’t understand well enough. That is a big, bold effort. But I have to tell you, both of those groundbreaking projects, BRAIN and All of Us, are now at severe risk because of budget and workforce cuts.

AMY GOODMAN: Voices from the Stand Up for Science rally in Washington, D.C., Friday. That last voice was Dr. Francis Collins, the former director of the National Institutes of Health, a post he held from 2009 to 2021. He just retired from the NIH after 32 years. We also heard from climate scientist Michael Mann; cancer survivor, now UPenn student Emily Whitehead; Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen; and former USAID official and author Dr. Atul Gawande, whose books include Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End.

We’re joined right now by one of the core organizers of the Stand Up for Science rallies. Emma Courtney joins us here in New York, a biology Ph.D. candidate at Cold Spring Harbor, an independent lab in New York.

[Emma], I mean, this wasn’t just in Washington, D.C., where thousands turned out. Thousands rallied in San Francisco and over two dozen cities around the country. Scientists, well, they described themselves, many of them, as “mad scientists.” That’s scientists who are really mad. [Emma], talk about the organizing campaign and what’s at stake right now.

EMMA COURTNEY: Yeah. So, I’m coming at it from a graduate student perspective, where I’m currently looking at what my thesis is going to look like over the next three years, and realizing that a lot of the ways that I’ve originally kind of thought about my science are being impacted by these current executive orders and budget cuts and kind of the censorship of science that’s happening right now. And so, that, I think, is where a lot of people are coming at, is looking at what they’re doing and the impact it has on communities, and then looking at also how that’s being taken away right now.

AMY GOODMAN: Emma, you’re a cancer researcher?

EMMA COURTNEY: I am.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about the level of the cuts, whether we’re talking about NOAA, the climate scientists, people like Dr. Michael Mann, whether we’re talking about basic cancer research. And also, how is this affecting your colleagues, older and also students, whether they can trust staying in basic science?

EMMA COURTNEY: Yeah, definitely. I think we’re seeing right now kind of a — orders saying, like, which words you can and can’t use in your grant proposals. And so, I am coming from a breast cancer perspective. I study breast cancer. I study women’s health. And right now you’re not able to really put into proposals that you are studying women or females or looking at barriers or looking even at how race can influence cancer outcomes.

AMY GOODMAN: You mean you can’t say words like “barrier” —

EMMA COURTNEY: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — “race,” “women” in the grant proposals?

EMMA COURTNEY: No. That’s the current advice, is grants are getting flagged for having language that is containing those words.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, it’s really interesting. One of the beneficiaries of the National Institutes of Health may have an interesting father. Mother Jones is reporting that the Vought family, as in Russell Vought, the head of the OMB, but more significantly the — considered the architect of Project 2025, his daughter had cystic fibrosis. They credit a cystic fibrosis drug, Trifakta [sic], for helping their daughter’s treatment. That research for [Trikafta] was funded by the National Institutes of Health. Talk about the significance of basic research when it comes to — I even think about the child who President Trump honored in his congressional address, a young man, child, who has cancer, pediatric cancer.

EMMA COURTNEY: Yeah. So, the National Institutes of Health fund a lot of basic research that’s really critical in providing kind of the scaffold for these treatments later on. And so, when we’re looking at cuts to the NIH, we’re looking both at cuts to the workforce and the opportunities available to scientists, but we’re also looking at kind of the impact long term of losing these basic science projects that really have the opportunity to drive cures for people like individuals with cystic fibrosis and cancer. And a lot of these, they’re not — it’s incremental steps over time, is how science works. And so, the basic research, it might not seem immediately impactful all the time, but as you compound these findings over years and you have scientists continually working to find cures, things do happen, and we get to these treatments that are very transformative for the people with these diseases.

AMY GOODMAN: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently announced that HHS would no longer allow public comments in the rulemaking process, ending a policy of a half a century to involve public opinion in HHS decisions. Your response?

EMMA COURTNEY: I think it’s very important to have the input of scientists and people who have personal interest in these topics. I think their comments are really useful in making sure that our policies are informed by science and rooted in evidence and have the ability to really drive progress. I think when we have kind of a unilateral decision-making power, we’re maybe losing out on perspectives that are really critical and just making sure that science is able to help the people that need it most.

AMY GOODMAN: Emma, I also wanted to ask you about scientists around the world and warnings your institutions, whether we’re talking about universities or independent labs — in our next segment, we’re going to talk about a young former graduate student who has a green card, has just been taken by ICE. We’re not sure where he is. But the warning that was put out to people on visas around the world who work at — in your world, at scientific establishment in this country?

EMMA COURTNEY: Yes. So, we had a lot of discussions leading up to the event on March 7th about how we could best include international scientists and not put a target on their back, because we know that there’s currently this order where visas can be canceled, and you can kind of face repercussions that you would not face as a citizen if you’re on a visa. And so, we wanted to make sure that there’s a way to productively engage. But I think it became even more severe when we did have that post put out, where President Trump did allege that you, if you partook in an illegal protest, you could face significant repercussions to your visa.

And so, I think that is harmful right now, because science is such an international endeavor. America is such a land of opportunity for young scientists. It brings so many scientists over from other countries for training, that then go on and make significant impacts, both in the U.S. and in their home communities and worldwide. And so, we really want to make sure, as well, within Stand Up for Science, that we are speaking to the perspectives of international students and those who might not currently have a voice because of these orders.

AMY GOODMAN: Where do you go next? Where is this rally that attracted thousands across the country?

EMMA COURTNEY: That’s what we’re currently trying to figure out. And so, we are a group of early-career scientists. None of us have done significant political organizing in the past. And so, we’re kind of taking a step back and looking at what matters to people right now, what are the best places. We want to make sure that we’re taking into account all perspectives, because we are right now — this was something that was put together very quickly. It had impact. It has momentum. And now how do we use that to really drive change is what we’re looking to answer.

AMY GOODMAN: Emma Courtney, a biology Ph.D. candidate at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, core organizer for Friday’s Stand Up for Science rally. And a correction on that cystic fibrosis drug: It’s called Trikafta.

This is Democracy Now! Coming up, ICE agents in New York have detained Mahmoud Khalil — he’s a former Columbia University graduate student, leader of the Gaza solidarity encampment — even though he has a green card and is a lawful permanent resident of the United States. We’ll talk about his case, where is he, and also that the Trump administration has now said they are cutting $400 million from Columbia’s budget. Stay with us.