On Tuesday, July 8, over 20 scientists from research institutions across the nation — whose grants have been canceled by the Trump administration — showed up to the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill with one mission in mind: Remind the public why funding scientific research matters.
The researchers gathered, alongside the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, to present posters in a good, old-fashioned science fair, titled “The Things We’ll Never Know: A Science Fair of Canceled Grants.”
“These individuals come from across the country and their work ranges across disciplines, from neuroscience to astrophysics,” U.S. Representative Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, said in a statement.
“They represent discoveries that won’t be made, diseases that won’t be cured, disasters that won’t be easy to recover from, and more. These are the things we’ll never know. Our hope [is] that our message is clear: science must not be silenced, and when it is, everyone loses.”
More than $1.5 billion in federal grant money has been terminated by the Trump administration since April of this year, with cuts impacting the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health in particular.
But the researchers who presented on Capitol Hill came from agencies including the NSF and NIH, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, USAID, and the Department of Defense.
One researcher, Michael Reichert, who traveled from Stillwater, Oklahoma, lost his 3-year, $2.7 million project funded by the NSF, which aimed to build STEM careers among college graduates. His grant was canceled weeks before the third and final cohort of nine students was due to arrive at work.
“Most people still don’t know about these cuts,” he told Science. “So, I thought it was important to come here and speak about the opportunities being lost.”
About two dozen other researchers presented their work, much of which was halted months, or even years, into their efforts.
There’s Peter Goldsmith, whose research on soybean innovation, funded by USAID, was designed to advance agricultural development in Africa.
Sumit Chanda, a professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research, lost his NIH grant studying pandemic response, citing an email he received saying, “now that the pandemic is over, these funds are no longer needed,” he told NPR.
His work was designed to develop broad-spectrum antiviral drugs targeting pathogens that could cause future pandemics and have them globally available the moment a dangerous outbreak is detected, NPR reported.
Kimiko Kreiger, an assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Bloomberg School for Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, was studying prostate tumors in African American men, who are twice as likely to be diagnosed with the disease compared to other demographics.
Julie Cidell, a professor and department head of the University of Illinois Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science, also lost funding for her research into sustainable urban development as it relates to electric vehicles.
These are only a handful of examples of the research lost to these funding cuts, with others including hyperlocal weather forecasting, treating childhood deafness, curriculum development for quantum physics, and more.
Democratic members of Congress, along with other advocates and researchers, delivered remarks and offered a Q&A at the event.
“Research fuels innovation, saves lives, and deepens our understanding of the world,” Rep. April McClain Delaney, a Democratic House Representative from Maryland, shared on social media site X.
“We must protect scientific minds — not target them under the guise of ‘efficiency,’” she added. “A strong research community is vital to our nation’s future and global leadership … I stand with these scientists and will continue to fight for our nation’s institutions.”
The event was open to members of the public, with a handful of activist organizations joining in. Moms Clean Air Force, an affiliate of the Environmental Defense Fund fighting for clean air for their children, shared on X that they attended the event “to learn from scientists about what we stand to lose when science is cast aside.”
Adam Riess, who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2011, was also in attendance and expressed his frustration to NPR.
“These discoveries may not just save our own lives, but the lives of people we love,” he said. “Nearly every innovation that defines our era, every breakthrough from my field and from those of my colleagues, traces back to basic science research.”
Although Democrats remain stuck in a Republican-controlled Congress and likely will not be able to politically reverse the Trump administration’s funding cuts to research grants any time soon, they say they haven’t given up on “the things we’ll never know.”
“Thank you to all the scientists who came out to show their critical research,” Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, a Democratic Congressional Representative from Virginia, shared on Bluesky.
“I’ll continue to fight for science in Congress.”
Header images courtesy of Moms Clean Air Force and University of Illinois Government Relations Team/X
