‘No kings, just vaccines!’: demonstrators gather at NIH headquarters to protest against cuts to medical research

Protesters decried Trump administration healthcare policies and direction of HHS under leadership of RFK Jr As tens of thousands of people assembled across the US and around the world for No Kings protests, about a thousand people gathered outside the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, on Saturday morning to protest cuts to medical research and the Trump’s administration’s policies on health. The rally follows a tumultuous year for the research agency, with devastating cuts to multi-year funding and outright terminations of grants, especially to research related to gender and race. The White House is now poised to cut the NIH’s budget by 20%, according to reporting by Roll Call on Friday, nearly one year after mass layoffs at health agencies. A year ago, Bill Bien woke up sick, with a sore throat and shortness of breath. He was soon diagnosed with a rare form of lymphoma. “It was like trying to climb a mountain, and I couldn’t breathe,” he told the crowd. “But I made it, and so will you.” Ten years ago, his diagnosis would’ve been a “death sentence,” he said. That was before breakthroughs in research to treat lymphoma, after 25 years of