Thousands of scientists rallied across the US today in response to layoffs and funding cuts in the field ordered by the Trump administration.

The stand up for science protest is drawing attention to what critics see as a threat to research and medical progress.

A crowd of lab workers, professors and other scientists turned out in Trenton for the demonstration, calling on elected leaders to use their position and power to challenge the moves by the White House.

Ted Goldberg was there.

Great.

Hundreds of people came to Trenton to protest proposed cuts to research professors, students and scientists.

These mad scientists study all sorts of organisms and animals.

I use fruit flies as a model organism to understand daily timing of behavior.

We work on yeast.

I study human diseases in a tiny worm.

And they're afraid that if the White House has its way, science will suffer.

Fruit flies are critically important to basic or fundamental science.

Being able to do discoveries screen hundreds of genes and cell types to understand how we work.

We're working on very fundamental mechanisms.

And I know that cancer research these days definitely uses discoveries that were pioneered in yeast in the 1980s.

Michael Zahra has studied yeast for over a decade, and.

That's not as popular as working directly on cancer.

So I expect that it will be first in the chopping block by people who don't understand what we do.

He studied in Spain, but came over to this country because of things like the national Institutes of Health, which faces severe cuts from the Trump administration.

Being a scientist in Spain is like being a bullfighter in Sweden, and I wanted to come to the United States because in this country science is or was respected.

Rutgers estimates that it could lose $57 million from next year's budget if these cuts go through.

And the folks here say that if research suffers, so will people.

The genes in humans that cause polycystic kidney disease exist in a worm.

And we can study the function of those genes in this tiny world.

When we can't have that basic research from fundamental studies in cells, in flies and worms all the way up to human clinical trials.

We're not moving forward and we are less healthy.

We decimate the infrastructure.

Then what happens is it puts the development of drugs at risk, which is going to mean that we're going to take a much longer time to get to a cure.

Rita Muse Sante works at the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey and says it's important to continue funding for clinical trials for cancer drugs.

We are able to test potential treatments that cure people, that help them to deal with the symptoms that they have related to their cancers and to move the science forward so that we can continue to do that work and cure cancer eventually.

That's the hope.

Stand up for science rallies popped up nationwide today with more than 30 of them bringing together people in the science world to defend their work.

Because of people studying how small green.

Algae swim.

We now have multiple trials for blindness.

Focal for medicines.

Materials.

Munitions as promised, but something much more valuable and much more powerful.

Drones.

Our future depends on investing in science education.

Every major breakthrough, whether in medicine, clean energy, or artificial intelligence, begins with students.

As we reported earlier, Attorney General Matt Platkin is one of 22 AGs suing the Trump administration over these cuts.

While the lawsuit plays out in court, there could be more protests like this one in the future.

In Trenton, I'm Ted Goldberg.

NJ Spotlight News.