TRUMP 3/7 After Donald Trump’s first federal funding cuts on universities and science, “Hands Off” protests have appeared across the country. The LILA Gazette spoke with concerned citizens in Los Angeles. 

By Amandine Galama & Thomas Cayetanot – 12th grade.

Hundreds of people walk through the streets of Downtown LA, holding up signs like “Hands off our Democracy” and “Stop Trump. Stop Musk”. As people make their way from Pershing Square to City Hall, police cars block traffic, and speakers take to the steps to voice their opinions. Everything from immigration policies to the president’s actions against science. 

Since coming into office, Trump has cancelled or frozen billions of dollars in federal grants offered to a wide variety of scientific institutions, taking aim at universities across the country. The administration has been threatening to withhold federal funding from universities, unless they give in to demands, on claims of “antisemitism”, for how they handled pro-Palestinian protests in 2024, and for their DEI practices.

Columbia, the first major institution to be targeted, agreed to several of the Trump administration’s demands following $400m in funding being pulled. Most recently, Harvard lost over 2 billion dollars in funding after refusing to follow demands including screening international students considered “hostile to the American values”, a complete ban on masks, and appointing an outside overseer to ensure the academic departments are “viewpoint diverse”. Harvard is currently suing the administration for “the government’s overreach”, says Alan Garber, Harvard president.

There are currently 60 universities whose funding is being put into question. For most who are under investigation by the administration, 10-13% of their revenue comes from the government, but for others, such as Johns Hopkins University, this amounts to almost 40% of their revenue. Most of the federal funding goes to research in Defense and medicine. Employees are losing their jobs due to these cuts, with 2 200 laid off last month. 

Trump is not only going after university funding, but scientific research on a larger scale, specifically projects aimed at increasing diversity in science. The New York Times has compiled a list of hundreds of words, such as “female”, “diversify” and “trauma”, that are causing grants to be flagged and cancelled. The areas of science that have gotten the most grant terminations are projects related to HIV/AIDS, trans health, COVID-19 and research relating to climate, primarily within the National Institute of Health. The NIH is the main government agency that funds scientific research in a variety of different places, from hospitals to individual research labs, even doing research itself. It is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world.

With these many actions from the Trump administration, on April 5, people came out en masse during the nationwide “Hands Off” protest. In Downtown Los Angeles, protesters filled the streets, carrying signs denouncing a wide range of the current administration’s policies, as live music played throughout the square. Colorful pride flags dotted the crowd and unions, like IATSE, gathered. One protester, holding a sign that read “Hands of our universities”, agreed to speak with us, but chose to remain anonymous. As a faculty member of a state university, the Trump administration’s policies towards research funding and universities has personally affected them. “I have a lot of colleagues whose projects have just been pulled out from under them, and that’s so sad” she stated. She fears that the research funding cuts will lead to scientists moving abroad. “I think it’s a tragedy for this country, but these people want to continue to do their work; it’s important. So, if that’s the way it has to be, that’s the way it has to be.”

One protester named Todd decided to show up on April 5th “To support the effort to oust the corruption that’s going on in the white house.” He spoke of wanting “To show unity” despite being “extremely concern[ed]” about the Trump administration’s actions. “We need to organize, we need to do the research, find out the best way to remove the cancer”, he said, in reference to Trump. 

Overall, those present on April 5th spoke of the next 4 years as being “very chaotic” and 2025 as “dangerous”, said two protesters, T. and R. respectively. Speaking on the federal budget cuts made to places like the NIH and universities, T. called it “very illogical”, fearing it will result in “an inability to address critical health issues” and leave patients “very limited in their options of how they can cure their diseases.”  When asked about the US’ spot as a leader in science, R. said: “It’s very easy to very quickly break things, and when you try to rebuild them it becomes very difficult.” 

At UCLA, protests have been held, specifically against the Trump administration’s research cuts. On Tuesday April 8th, we went to a protest to speak with Sydney Campbell, a postdoctoral research student, who helps organize these protests. There, people chanted “kill the cuts”, as speakers, who’s research has been impacted due to the budget cuts, spoke about their work and experience. 

Ms. Campbell explained that over 50% of her lab is funded by the NIH. “If we don’t know what’s happening with the NIH, it’s uncertainty for the entire lab,” she said. Many of her own colleagues and labmates, who submitted fellowships to the NIH don’t know if their grants are going to get reviewed, with some having already been cancelled. 

What has mainly been threatened is a reduction of the indirect costs, which covers everything from the cost of maintaining the building to paying for electricity. In 2023, the NIH spent 35 billion dollars on research grants. 9 billion of those went to indirect costs. Now that the Trump administration has capped indirect costs at 15%, significantly lower than it was before, it leaves her lab to decide  “whether or not we’re going to have to dedicate lab resources to thing’s like renting our lab spaces, renting our electricity, paying for maintenance of common equipment”. This places her lab, and labs across the country, in “a lot of uncertainty.” 

And these cuts “will be widely felt” by ordinary Americans in sectors like health and medicine. Ms. Campbell explained that the covid-19 vaccine was created and distributed so quickly because scientists are working on issues like disease prevention at all times. A government controlling what is being researched can pose a challenge to projects like these, and often politicizes health issues. “True innovation will be vastly limited if these cuts continue”, stated Ms. Campbell, “and I think people maybe don’t realize how much those [cuts] can affect their lives.”

The Trump administrations’ cuts to scientific research leaves the future of science within universities, the NIH and the country as a whole with a lot of unknowns. And this has left many Americans voicing their frustrations in cities across the nation. For Sydney Campbell, “the consequence of doing nothing is so huge that this is really the least we can do to make our voices heard.”

LILA Gazette 7 part coverage of the Trump administration :

Worldwide: Trump as seen abroad

The Closure of the Department of Education impacts the most vulnerable students

Opposition to Trump’s cuts to research takes the streets of L.A.

Why Greenland? Trump’s strange colonialist attempt

Marcel Dirsus: “We are witnessing a frontal assault on the institutions”

Trump presidency rocks the nation

Admiral Stavridis: How the Evolving Trump Administration Policies Impact International Security