Hundreds of Minnesota researchers and scientists protest Trump cuts

Hundreds of University of Minnesota researchers, scientists and other supporters protested Friday against President Donald Trump’s proposed scientific research funding cuts, which they say will jeopardize life-saving projects.

“Let us be clear: Science-driven policy saves lives,” said Rep. Alex Falconer, DFL-Eden Prairie. “The next pandemic isn’t an ‘if’, it’s a ‘when’.”

The protest at the State Capitol in St. Paul was one of dozens of “Stand Up for Science” protests held nationwide Friday in more than 30 cities to denounce the Trump administration’s cuts to research in health, climate, science and other government agencies, including proposed cuts to National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant funding.

In St. Paul, speakers shared their own stories of working in science-related fields, led the crowd in chants supporting science and told everyone to contact elected officials to protest the cuts.

“Science is the most human endeavor,” said Matt Wilkins, an evolutionary biologist and former middle school teacher.

Wilkins said he never imagined NIH funds would be frozen, adding that K-12 classrooms were key to changing popular opinions about science’s value to society.

In Minnesota, U researchers have decried the cuts, which have been put on hold for now by a federal judge. U officials have estimated they will lose up to $130 million in funding. The cuts to research facilities receiving National Institutes of Health money, announced in February, would limit “indirect” support by the federal agency to academic institutions as well as direct funding of research.

U President Rebecca Cunningham, who has called the move “a direct attack” on the university’s public service mission, told lawmakers last month that the drop in indirect cost reimbursements would “dramatically impact” research.

In a letter written this week about “recent federal communications and executive orders”, Cunningham said that the U’s mission remains the same and that “we will not overreact to what remains a very fluid situation.”

The U is developing contingency plans for how to respond if the government follows through with proposed cuts and mandates, partnering with higher education associations to address the legality of federal directives and exploring how to support staff affected by “stop-work orders” on federal grants, she said.

Trump’s actions would cap indirect costs to no more than 15% on top of the grants NIH issues to research institutions such as the U. Indirect costs are similar to overhead expenses that pay for everything from a lab’s research staff to computer equipment; the U is normally reimbursed at a rate of 54%, but that number varies by university.

On Friday, Katie Loth, a clinical dietitian and public health researcher, told the crowd at the Capitol that “research is important because it provides unbiased information to guide our decisions.”

Every week she talks with people newly diagnosed with diabetes, she said, and urges some of them to use resources such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps. Programs like SNAP exist because of public health research, she said.

Alison Barkhymer, a doctoral student studying microbiology and immunology at the U, knelt on the pavement to make a sign that read: “Stop censoring science!” It featured an illustration of the influenza virus.

Natalie Haberman, a Minneapolis resident who works in public health, said she came to the rally because she’s frustrated by the administration’s actions, from plans for heavier logging in national forests to the layoff of federal employees by the National Forest Service and the National Park Service.

Other cuts to higher education are affecting Minnesota universities. The University of St. Thomas lost a $6.8 million grant to prepare future elementary and special education teachers and a similar $2.8 million grant due to a perception that it was related to DEI efforts. In February, Trump wrote a letter to universities and K-12 schools, warning them they had two weeks to cut all DEI-related initiatives or risk losing funding.

Across the country, academic officials have shared how the NIH cuts — along with others — are affecting their institutions. Some have mentioned hiring freezes, layoffs, salary cuts, terminating leases or plans to admit fewer graduate students in the coming year.

Officials in Minnesota have been reluctant to point to specific ways Trump’s threats of federal cuts are affecting them so far, perhaps partly because so much is still uncertain.

A Minnesota State spokesperson said that for their seven universities, federal grants currently amount to about 3% of the system’s total budget, but none are from the NIH. Minnesota State isn’t anticipating placing limits on the number of graduate students admitted, she said.

A U spokesman said he wasn’t aware of any hiring freezes or other impacts. Individual academic programs “may be proceeding carefully and thoughtfully” with plans for graduate student enrollment but there’s no university-wide guidance, he said.

Rachel Widome, a professor of epidemiology and community health at the U’s School of Public Health, said she serves on a NIH panel that reviews research proposals.

The group was unable to meet last week because the Trump administration barred the NIH from publishing official meeting notices, a requirement to proceed, she said.

Forcing that panel, along with many others, to halt its review process effectively froze the pipeline for starting new research, she said. The missed meetings caused the review of 16,000 research proposals to be delayed, according to one estimate.

William Jones, a professor and associate chair of the U’s history department, said in an email that “much of the impact has come from people having applications frozen, so they can’t point to money actually lost yet.”

Jones, also president of the U’s American Association of University Professors chapter, said others have seen their access to data interrupted by staffing shortages at federal offices that approve data use.