Hundreds of protestors advocated at the Texas Capitol Friday as part of a nationwide movement against the Trump administration’s recent actions towards scientific funding.
Stand Up For Science 2025 was a rally held in 32 cities across the country in protest of the Trump administration cutting funds from the National Institute of Health and the dismissal of scientists in federal agencies, among other actions. However, Benjamin Riley, the lead organizer for Texas, said the movement also aims to show how these cuts impact everyone, regardless of their party affiliation.
“Science is about more than just a procedure with beakers and lab coats,” Riley said. “It is a fundamentally democratic, small-d democratic, enterprise of shared knowledge and curiosity about the world.”
Rep. Lloyd Doggett spoke at the event and criticized Trump’s actions, such as firing Environment Protection Agency advisors, blocking funding of scientific research and possibly restricting funds for research at UT.
“These policies will cost the lives of people here and abroad and will weaken our economic competitiveness in the future,” Doggett said. “The only way we will change these things is if we get more people, more students, involved in order to push back on the Trump administration.”
Astronomy graduate student Ansh Gupta said he previously participated in the Research Experiences for Undergraduates summer program, provided by the National Science Foundation, but the program underwent severe cuts for the upcoming summer. Although the NSF hasn’t commented on the cause of the cuts, universities like University of California Merced have attributed it to the uncertainty from the Trump administration’s cuts.
“Everything scientists do that’s federally funded is ultimately for the people,” Gupta said. “I’m here today because it is absolutely crazy to make science political, to cut its funding and to act like science has an agenda because, ultimately, science is for everyone.”
The rally had over 20 speakers, including UT professors and researchers who spoke out about how these policies could hold back scientific research throughout the country. They said the research Trump’s administration is cutting has economical benefits and makes the U.S. a research hub on the global scale.
“The United States of America is an experiment,” Riley said in a speech. “The United States of America is the oldest constitutional democracy in the world. We have been running this experiment for almost 250 years, and it is in grave danger right now.”
