WASHINGTON, D.C. — On a sunny afternoon steps from the Lincoln Memorial, crowds of protesters gathered to stand up for science. 

Wispy clouds streaked across blue skies as people chanted, cheered and waved hand-made signs featuring scientific puns and heartfelt pleas. An hour into the event, Francis Collins, the former head of the National Institutes of Health, grabbed an acoustic guitar and started a science-themed singalong.

Literally called Stand Up for Science, the March 7 rally brought together researchers, doctors, teachers and more to promote science and protest federal employee firings and proposed funding cuts by the Trump administration. Protesters from different fields and career stages convened on the National Mall, holding signs calling for federal support for research and celebrating science’s power for good. 

Meghan French, a high school teacher from Virginia, held a poster that read “this biology teacher’s life was saved by science.”

She’s a breast cancer survivor who credits science for her recovery. “I relied very heavily on scientific research and what it did for me and millions of people who are struggling with a cancer diagnosis.” She worries that science funding is at risk.

It was a message echoed by other protesters, including Isabel Wilder, a graduate student at the University of Maryland in College Park who studies developmental neuroscience and used to work at NIH. Government supported science “allows me to do what I do,” she said. “It supports my lab, it supports my research and what I want to do in the future. It’s kind of central to who I am.”

The rally on the National Mall was one of 32 official Stand Up for Science events around the country. From San Francisco to Denver to Boston, protesters converged at parks, city halls, state capitols and more to defend science. Walkouts and other local events were also planned in dozens of additional locations. 

The rallies come in response to recent actions by the Trump administration; just six weeks into his new term, the U.S. scientific community is roiling in fear and uncertainty. Executive orders and actions have led to plans to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization, upended federally funded research, fired or put into job limbo thousands of federal employees and erased or rewritten many federal websites and datasets.

Scientists across the country have expressed concern that these and other moves may threaten scientific progress in the United States. 

“Stop the regression” read a sign held by Teresa McGee, a graduate student and computational scientist who works on statistical genetics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Funding uncertainties have led to reductions in the amount of students accepted into graduate programs, she noted.

“It’s pretty grim,” McGee said. “Everyone’s very nervous, everyone is anxious.”

Even so, there was a festive air to the gathering in Washington, D.C., where speakers like Collins, surgeon and public health researcher Atul Gawande and science communicator Bill Nye, as well as a lineup of other scientists, clinical trial participants and patient advocates, rallied the crowd with speeches, music and chants. 

Collins, who worked at the NIH for 32 years and announced his retirement March 1, spoke of the good that science has done for medicine, including advances in cystic fibrosis, sickle cell disease and cancer. American science is “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” Collins said, alluding to the Gettysburg Address. “It’s been one of our nation’s greatest achievements.”

The rally organizers’ policy goals include securing and expanding federal research funding, depoliticizing science and defending diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. And the March 7 rallies are just the beginning, says Colette Delawalla, a clinical psychology Ph.D. candidate at Emory University in Atlanta, and the lead organizer of Stand Up For Science. “It’s the Big Bang kickoff of us saving American science as an institution,” she says.

Delawalla, who studies addiction, has felt the effects of the Trump administration’s policies firsthand. She had planned to submit a grant in February to fund her dissertation work, but put that on hold when federal agencies began flagging grants that included key words like “women,” “diversity,” “female” and “gender.” Some of those words describe the people she is looking at for her research on an extreme form of substance use disorder.

That challenge was part of what inspired her to start the Stand Up for Science protest. That, and the fact that no one else seemed to be doing it. After not finding any events planned, “I had this moment of ‘be the change you want to see in the world,’” she says. “I know that’s so cheesy, but that’s really where I landed.”

So she announced a rally of her own on the social media site Bluesky. It took off almost immediately. Soon, she had a team of organizers and was planning events across the country. “I think everybody was just waiting for somebody to say the word,” Delawalla says.

The rally follows in the footsteps of a massive pro-science event that took place in Washington, D.C., and around the world nearly eight years ago. The 2017 March for Science was the first time in American history people banded together in this way to support science and humanize the people who do it. Organizers estimated that sister marches took place in more than 600 cities globally. The events happened shortly after Trump took office for the first time, amid concern that the federal government was undermining and stifling science. 

For Candice Lowther, a science instructor at local parks in Virginia, the current climate of science seems even more dire today. Like French, who she came with, she is a breast cancer survivor. “I feel like access to vaccines and health care are in danger of being cut,” she said. “That makes it personal.”

While protesters may be fighting for policy changes today, Delawalla also hopes that the rally gave people a chance to celebrate science — and fuel their curiosity. She envisions protesters striking up interesting conversations, perhaps even leading to research collaborations.

Even a single day’s outpouring of support for science felt hopeful for Randy Kimble, a retired astrophysicist who also attended the March for Science in 2017. “There are people who still care, clearly,” he says. “I’m never worried that scientists aren’t passionate about the work they’re doing and having it matter, to make people’s lives better.”