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war on science
Facing Trump Attack, People 'Stand Up for Science' at Rallies Across US and Beyond
"When research stops, people suffer and people die," said one campaigner.
Mar 07, 2025
Scientists and their supporters in dozens of U.S. cities—as well as across Europe—rallied on Friday to demand the Trump administration end its assault on federal agencies, including those that research health, the climate, and other life-or-death issues.
The main "Stand Up for Science" rally was held Friday afternoon at the Lincoln Memorial, with advocates responding to a call made by Emory University doctoral candidate Colette Delawalla last month—as federal employees were learning of President Donald Trump's efforts to limit research grants at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the administration's order for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to purge any articles that mention gender identity or LGBTQ+ issues, and as Lee Zeldin, who has opposed clean air and water protections, took the helm of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
"I'm planning a Stand Up for Science protest in D.C.," wrote Delawalla in frustration on the social media platform Bluesky on February 8.
Since Delawalla and other organizers, including University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill doctoral student J.P. Flores and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory biologist Emma Courtney, began planning the event in Washington, the science community's alarm over the actions of the Trump administration has only grown.
In late February, reporting showed that the Trump administration had circumvented court rulings in order to block tens of billions of dollars in NIH grants that fund crucial research on numerous diseases.
At the rally on Friday, former NIH Director Francis Collins said the science research that takes place at the agency is "for the people."
With numerous global public health threats currently evolving—the spread of avian flu and several measles outbreaks in the U.S. and a new variant of mpox discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo—Collins said that "this would be a terrible time to dismantle our infectious disease research and our global public health efforts."
"The success of the American public science enterprise, which is the envy of the rest of the world over the past decades, it is of the people, by the people, and for the people," said Collins. "It's one of our nation's greatest achievements, enabling stunning discoveries about how life works, extending life expectancy, reducing disease burden, and, by the way, science is responsible for more than 50% of the economic growth of the United States since World War II."
Other recent anti-science actions by the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress include: the passage of a bill to end the Methane Emissions Reduction Program; right-wing billionaire Elon Musk's continued efforts via the so-called Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE) to cut science and research spending at federal agencies, and the last week's firing of hundreds of staffers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Trump and Musk's actions have led universities to begin reducing admissions and even rescinding placement offers to post-graduate programs, threatening the future of biomedical research.
"When research stops, people suffer and people die," said Samantha Jade Durán, a disability justice advocate, at the Stand Up for Science rally in Washington, D.C. on Friday. "We cannot let that happen. We have seen what's possible when we invest in science. Polio was eradicated. HIV was transformed from a death sentence to a manageable and undetectable condition. Cancer treatments are getting better every year, and these breakthroughs didn't happen by accident. They happened because we chose to fund science."
On social media, organizers on Friday posted images of large rallies in Atlanta, Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City.
Solidarity marches also took place in Paris and Montpelier, France.
The rallies on Friday, said U.S. organizers, are "just the beginning."
"Our policy goals include a restoration of federal scientific funding, the reinstatement of wrongfully terminated employees at federal agencies, an end to governmental interference and censorship in science, and a renewed commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in science," said organizers in the U.S. "We are also committed to empowering scientists—and anyone who has benefited from scientific advancements—to engage in sustained advocacy in the years to come."
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Biden’s Imploding Scientific Integrity Initiative
It is difficult to see what about this administration's policy would prevent a return to the reign of “alternative facts” should Trump be reelected.
Oct 06, 2023
Following the tumultuous Trump years when scientific fact and fiction often clashed, President Joe Biden resolved to strengthen federal protections against suppression or alteration of government science. Just days after his inauguration, he issued an all-agency directive to bolster the scientific integrity policies that had proven so useless in stemming the abuses of Trump and his appointees.
This effort was launched under the hopeful banner of “Restoring Trust in Government Through Scientific Integrity.” Now, months behind schedule, the first revamped scientific integrity policy crafted under this initiative is rolling out. Unfortunately, it leaves a lot to be desired.
If finalized, this revised policy would cover thousands of scientists and technical analysts working within the behemoth $1.7 trillion Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), which spans a dozen divisions and includes nine separate public health agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, and Food & Drug Administration.
It will also likely serve as the template for new policies that are supposed to be adopted in all other federal agencies doing scientific work. Distressingly, among other shortcomings, this draft policy:
- Fails to prevent political interference with no provision for independent investigation of allegations of misconduct or sanctions for meddling by political appointees;
- Lacks any meaningful legal protections for scientists doing controversial work that may conflict with an agency’s political agenda;
- Contains few safeguards against scientific work being altered or suppressed, such as defined clearance procedures for approving technical publications or presentations;
- Does not apply to grantees and, in agencies such as the NIH, much of the scientific work is done under grants; and
- Does not allow public scrutiny of conflict of interest waivers granted to industry members of federal advisory committees, allowing these key scientific bodies to be stacked with little outside scrutiny. First Biden Scientific Integrity Policy Falls Well Short (peer.org)
Under this proposed policy, every aspect of enforcing scientific integrity principles would remain a captive of the political process inside the agencies. Thus, it is difficult to see what about this policy would prevent a return to the reign of “alternative facts” should Trump be reelected. Moreover, in the unlikely event that it did prove restrictive, a reelected Trump could simply rescind it, just as he did so many other Obama-era policies.
One core problem was the White House “framework” for this policy, issued earlier this year. Ths framework was composed largely by the same agency scientific integrity officers who presided over the Obama-era policies which had proven so ineffectual under Trump.
As a result, the organizing principle behind both the HHS draft and the White House framework appears to be bureaucratic self-protection. That explains the lack of transparency pervasive throughout the draft HHS policy which, tellingly, stipulates that “all descriptions of investigations and appeals will be anonymized.”
How is public trust in the credibility of government science supposed to be enhanced by closed-door investigations overseen by officials named by political appointees and reported to the public only in “anonymized” versions?
Perhaps one reason for these disappointing results is that it was overseen by the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy. Before the work had barely begun, the OSTP Director was forced to resign for bullying his staff. That left the reins for this project of an OSTP Deputy Director who last year was sanctioned by the National Academy of Sciences for misconduct and barred from participating in its publications and activities for five years.
Consequently, agencies were allowed to write scientific integrity rules in the most self-serving fashion possible. This, in turn, means that agencies will invoke scientific integrity principles only when it is politically convenient—an arrangement that defeats the entire purpose of this elaborate scientific integrity policy formulation effort.
Preventing this unfolding implosion propelled by institutional self-interest will require that the Biden brain trust radically change course. Rather than pursuing this murky agency-by-agency approach, the White House should impose government-wide rules that would:
- Create uniform interagency review and appeal processes for scientific misconduct allegations, such that individual agencies can no longer control investigations and sequester the results.
- Set uniform penalties for scientific integrity violations and require that political appointees found responsible for violations be publicly identified.
- Establish uniform clearance policies so that scientific material cannot be withheld from publication for other than technical reasons with enforceable appeal procedures to prevent research papers from being held in extended limbo.
There is no plausible reason why scientists in different agencies should be treated differently or have different rights. These government-wide rules would not only drive significant change but would also surmount the bureaucratic strategies where ground-breaking science is often strangled. Further, it may encourage Congress to codify these safeguards so that they may not be wiped summarily wiped out by a succeeding president.
Simply put, restoring trust in government science requires the ability of the public to verify that its trust is merited.
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Iowa Meteorologist Resigns After Receiving Death Threats for Climate Coverage
"I take immense pride in having educated the public about the impacts of climate change during my career," said Chris Gloninger of KCCI in Des Moines.
Jun 22, 2023
The chief meteorologist for a Des Moines news station announced Wednesday he is stepping down after receiving violent threats for his frank coverage of the climate emergency and how it could affect his viewers' lives—something he considered a mission as he regularly delivered news about the weather to Iowa residents.
Chris Gloninger joinedCBS affiliate station KCCI in 2021 after receiving recognition for his coverage of the climate crisis and the environment at NBC10 in Boston.
He immediately set to work connecting the warming planet with rising sea levels, intense hurricanes, and other extreme weather events in his work on air. In recent reports he has told his audience that the wildfire smoke that enveloped parts of the U.S. this month was the result of the climate crisis.
"A lot of these fires are gaining steam and seeing explosive growth because of the warming planet," Gloninger told viewers earlier this week.
Gloninger was accustomed to angry feedback from viewers who denied climate change or opposed the solutions that scientists have demanded for decades, but messages he began receiving in June 2022 left him fearing for his family's safety.
The first message read, "Getting sick and tired of your liberal conspiracy on the weather" and was followed by one demanding to know his home address so the sender could "give [him] an Iowan welcome [he] will never forget." That email referenced an armed man who had been charged with attempted murder after making threats against U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and approaching his home.
The emails piled up in Gloninger's inbox for several weeks, accusing him of being a "worthless Biden puppet" and a "conspiracy theorist" and telling him to return to the East Coast and "drown from the ice cap melting."
Gloninger shared some of the messages on social media last July as police investigated, ultimately arresting a 63-year-old man named Danny H. Hancock in Lenox, Iowa. Hancock admitted to sending the emails and was fined $105 for harassment.
The threatening messages were "mentally exhausting and at times I have NOT been okay," wrote Gloninger on Twitter last summer. "If you're facing this and need someone to talk to, I'm here."
Climate scientists have for years reported receiving violent threats and other hate mail for talking about how planetary heating is driven by fossil fuel extraction and is connected to flooding, drought, crop failures, and other events.
Gloninger told The Washington Post Wednesday that he sought therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder following the threats and said in a statement that the experience, compounded by some health issues among his family members, has pushed him to step down from his position.
"Eighteen years. Seven stations. Five states. I am bidding farewell to TV to embark on a new journey dedicated to helping solve the climate crisis," Gloninger said. "After a death threat stemming from my climate coverage last year and resulting PTSD, in addition to family health issues, I've decided to begin this journey now."
Supporters of Gloninger, including other meteorologists who have centered the climate crisis in their weather coverage, called him a "hero" for working to educate viewers about the emergency and expressed anger that he was pushed out of his job.
"Thank you for doing your job in a professional, evidence-based manner," the Environmental Voter Project said to Gloninger on social media. "We support you and we're so sorry you had to put up with such cruel and cowardly behavior."
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