WASHINGTON (States Newsroom) — Hundreds rallied in support of former and current federal scientists and health workers Wednesday in Washington, D.C., as President Donald Trump’s administration slashes the workforce across federal agencies.
Mass firings mostly targeting probationary employees began last week at the Department of Education, General Services Administration, Office of Personnel Management, the Small Business Administration, the U.S. Forest Service, Veterans Affairs, National Nuclear Security Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other agencies, with several major news outlets reporting roughly 10,000 terminations.
Probationary employees total roughly 220,000 of the federal workforce. While they are generally early career workers, some employees who have recently been promoted to a new position are also considered probationary.
The dismissals come as Trump’s U.S. DOGE Service continues to access agencies’ internal systems, one by one, and as White House adviser and billionaire campaign donor Elon Musk pushes to purge the federal workforce.
A noon rally outside the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services largely focused on cuts at the nation’s research and health regulatory agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Food and Drug Administration. The HHS headquarters building is on Independence Avenue SW near the Capitol.
A late-night email
Alexander Jordan Lara told the crowd of his shock when he received a late-night email on Feb. 11 from his boss, Dr. Lawrence Tabak, who said he was immediately retiring. Tabak, the No. 2 official at NIH, did not provide a reason for his sudden departure, but Lara said the incident set off “a week that aged me a year.”
“In between experiments, on Friday, I ran around my institute collecting people’s testimonies, contact information, while trying to provide resources, guidance and reassurance. The most productive and accomplished fellows in my institute were facing the prospect of losing their jobs, careers and visa status, all because of the whims of some oligarchs,” said Lara, who told the crowd he was speaking in a personal capacity.
Lara, a research fellow in what was Tabak’s lab at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, said those still employed were “expected to continue as if it was business as usual.”
“How can we expect people to discover cures and treatments when they’re occupied discovering if they still have a job?” said Lara, who specializes in glycoproteomics, a field that analyzes sugars attached to proteins and can be applied to diagnostics of cancer, Alzheimer’s and microbiome issues.
‘Hands off the FDA’
Democratic members of Congress spoke alongside the former and current government workers, and unionized scientists and researchers.
U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, who represents Maryland’s 8th Congressional District, led the crowd in a chant of “Hey, hey, RFK, hands off the FDA,” referencing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent confirmation as secretary of Health and Human Services.
Despite his well-recorded history of spreading falsehoods about vaccine safety, the U.S. Senate confirmed Kennedy to head the massive health agency in a 52-48 vote. Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell was the only one in his party to join Democrats in opposition.
Raskin, whose district includes several federal agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, said the Trump administration is “waging war on the health care workers in America” and that he’s heard from government health researchers who were recently promoted but who got swept up in the firings of probationary employees.
“That’s stupid, that’s cruel,” Raskin said.
“I’ve got constituents who are doing the critical research America needs into AIDS and HIV, into autism, into breast cancer, into colon cancer, into leukemia, into cystic fibrosis, into multiple sclerosis, into malignant narcissistic personality disorder,” Raskin said to cheers.
The majority of federal workers live outside of the Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., region.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about the rally.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Rep. Glenn Ivey, both of Maryland, also spoke at the rally.
Ivey told the crowd that he wants to see continued protests. “We need every mini-march on Washington, day after day, to push this forward. We got to fight to take the Congress back. We got to wait two years to do it, but we’re going to take it back and make Hakeem Jeffries, the speaker of the House, in two years, right?”
Republicans hold majorities in both the Senate and House and have offered no recourse to Democrats in pushing back on Trump and Musk’s dismantling of federal agencies.
Young scientists worry
Several aspiring scientists at the rally worried aloud about their employment prospects. PhD students and post-doctoral researchers are largely dependent on grants to fund their jobs.
Sydney Woods is in the fourth year of a PhD program in neuroscience at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Woods said she’s nervous about job prospects for young scientists.
“I’m watching people that I know from the NIH and other agencies lose their jobs, and it’s a tough time to be a PhD student that’s looking to make their next career step,” Woods, 27, said.
Connor Phillips, 25, told the crowd he’s losing his research training position at the National Institutes of Health.
Phillips, a post-baccalaureate fellow who previously benefited from treatment to manage his cerebral palsy, said he signed on as an unpaid researcher for an NIH program developing therapies for children with cerebral palsy.
“When I hear people say these cuts are making our government more efficient, I am at a loss. How can that be true when I’m prevented from working for free as someone who hopes to be a great scientist one day?” Phillips told the crowd. “I’m questioning whether that will still be possible in the United States. If this story speaks to you, call your senators and tell them to fund our science.”
Samriddhi Patankar, an undergrad at George Washington University, held a sign bearing the message “Truth = Power.”
“My parents are researchers, and their jobs, I feel like under threat, as everyone is in the research field,” said Patankar, 19. “And I just want to make sure that when I’m out in the field, I have a space to believe in science, and it sounds crazy, but where facts are facts.”
