WASHINGTON – Hundreds of current and former federal employees rallied Wednesday outside the Department of Health and Human Services headquarters, protesting recent firings and their effect on public health, and directing much of their ire at Elon Musk and his agency's efforts to cut spending.
“We are here today to fight for the future of science, to fight for your family’s future, to give the American people hope,” said Ian Fucci, a cancer researcher at the National Institutes of Health. “Consider the medications you rely on for diabetes, heart disease or cancer. These were developed in large part due to NIH and NIH-funded researchers. Is destroying years of progress into research really serving the American people? No."
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Amid frigid temperatures and light snow, attendees chanted slogans such as “Funding, not freezes” and “Stand up, fight back.” They carried signs proclaiming, “Protect civil servants because they protect you!” and “In science we trust.”
Many said they were there to fight the work of Musk's Department of Government Efficiency and the confusion its workforce reductions have sowed. One sign altered the DOGE acronym to read “Department of Grifting Everything.”
“Are we going to shut down the illegal Elon Musk takeover of the government? Yeah, you bet we are," Democratic Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen told the crowd of about 300. "We’re going to fight this in the courts. We’re going to fight this in the Congress. And there can be no business as usual in the Congress. And we’re going to fight this in gatherings like this all over the country.”
Ellen Bak, a former NIH scientist, said she was terminated over the weekend and that her research into stem cells and blood cancer had essentially been lost.
“The sheer amount of money and time and testing and care and effort," she said. "Is it all just gone?”
Jenna McGrew, an 18-year-old student from Florida, said she attended because her older brother, Ethan, suffers from a rare autoimmune disease and is in intensive care at NIH with a serious bacterial infection. She called the “level of uncertainty” inside the NIH “a risk to his life."
Speaking of President Donald Trump, McGrew said, “What he is doing is not only affecting my family, it is affecting every citizen in America, and everyone outside of America. The NIH is one of the best hospitals in the world. And they research everything. And so the funding cut for them is not only affecting America, but it’s affecting the rest of the world.”
The rally took place within sight of the Capitol, and multiple lawmakers pledged to continue their outnumbered fight against Trump's policies from inside the Congress. Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin drew an extended analogy between the scientists' medical research and this moment in American history.
“These are the people who are fighting the viruses that threaten the American people," Raskin told the crowd. “But fascism is a virus, too."
"The people who are out here fighting in subfreezing temperatures, they are the antibodies. We are the antibodies.”
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Associated Press journalist Serkan Gurbuz contributed to this report.