LOGAN – A well-organized protest drew a sparse crowd of science supporters to downtown Logan on Mar. 7.
The local event was a part of a Stand Up for Science (SUFS) National Day of Action that involved protests against Trump administration policies impacting science and healthcare across the nation.
In Washington D.C., science and health activists gathered on the National Mall to voice their concerns about the ongoing dismantling of science and health institutions since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in 2025.
Similar coordinated events took place in 47 other metropolitan areas across the county, while numerous, smaller so-called “pop-up protests” were organized by like-minded individuals and groups nationwide.
Here in Logan, the local event was jointly orchestrated by Cache County Democrats and the local protest group We the People Cache Valley.
Nancy Huntly, a professor and director of the Ecology Center at Utah State University, hosted the local protest from the steps of the Cache County Historic Courthouse. She introduced young speakers who voiced their concerns about climate change and its effect on the environment, urging that the U.S. government “needs to listen to science before it’s too late.”
Stand Up for Science was initially organized in spring of 2025 by unions representing fellows at the National Institutes of Health and several universities to protest what they termed as politically motivated cuts in federal spending that directly affected their livelihoods and ability to conduct research, according to SUFS founder and CEO Collette Delawalla.
In the past year, Delawalla says the group has focused much of its effort on resisting attempts by the Trump-appointed Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission to roll back advances made under the Obama and Biden administrations.
Since being narrowly confirmed by the Senate as secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has become the administration’s appointed MAHA leader.
A former environmental lawyer and author, his many science and health industry opponents charge that RFK, Jr. is unqualified for the HHS post and is more accurately known as a conspiracy theorist and critic of vaccine policies.
At the Mar. 7 demonstrations, SUFS leaders dismissed the so-called MAHA reforms by Trump administration as “authoritarian power grabs” that have dismantled the nation’s premier science institutions and threatened the health of Americans.