State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-S.F., holds a microphone for Ryan Manriquez, a UC Berkeley graduate student with spinal muscular atrophy, during a rally in Sacramento for SB607 on Monday.
Nanette Asimov / San Francisco Chronicle
Shiv Harris of UC Berkeley holds up a sign at a rally in support of Senate Bill 895 to advance a 2026 ballot measure to restore funding to a broad range of life-saving scientific research cut under the Trump administration on May 4, 2026 in Sacramento.
Andri Tambunan/For the S.F. Chronicle
Scientists, doctors, students and patients from across California rallied in Sacramento Monday, calling on state lawmakers to support a $23 billion bond — the largest ever of its kind — to fund life-saving research facing insurmountable instability during the Trump administration.
The $23 billion general obligation bond introduced by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco has a long road to approval: It must be OK’d by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in order to appear on the ballot this November, where it would then need a majority of voters’ support.
Wiener’s measure would support researchers in the state university system who are desperate for stability, as labs studying how to slow the growth of cancerous tumors or treat HIV reel under President Donald Trump’s funding whims.
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“If these cuts were happening 20 years ago, I simply wouldn’t be here today,” said Ryan Manriquez, an El Cerrito resident who relies on a medication developed by federally funded researchers to stop the progression of his rare neuromuscular disease. “That’s the level of importance this funding is for so many community members, so many patients, across the state.”
Last year, Trump froze more than $600 million in funds to the University of California that a judge eventually restored months later. In 2025, the National Institutes of Health funded 3,900 new research grants compared with 5,000 the year before under President Joe Biden. Grants for Alzheimer’s disease research were cut in half and new cancer research grants dropped by 23%, federal data shows. This year, the NIH’s spending has fallen about $1 billion behind its usual pace, delaying research and keeping labs from hiring scientists across the country.
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“The University of California is facing the most significant disruption to our research enterprise in our history,” UC President James B. Milliken said to the bill’s supporters, who braved the rain Monday to march at the state Capitol. “It’s research that supports tens of thousands of good local jobs, propels our state’s global leadership and innovation, (and) delivers life-changing care.”
Manriquez, 25, who also spoke at Monday’s rally, was born without a vital gene that produces a needed protein for muscular development, resulting in a disease called spinal muscular atrophy. Before researchers developed treatments to replace the missing protein, the condition was the leading genetic cause of infant mortality. Manriquez started his treatment about a decade ago, which allowed him to maintain use of his arms and gain independence and life expectancy doctors didn’t think possible when he was born.
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The UC graduate has started making appearances with Wiener in support of the bill, which nearly a third of legislators signed on to as co-authors. He wants to put a face to the type of breakthrough research that saved his life, even though a multibillion-dollar price tag might be a lot for some voters to stomach — especially as California faces a budget deficit.
“You can’t put a price tag on what it means to add years to the lives of thousands of people across the state,” Manriquez said. “That’s what we owe each other, when we’re having this conversation, not scientists, advocates or politicians, but as fellow human beings.”
If approved by voters, Wiener’s bill would create the California Foundation for Science and Health Research to fund grants and loans. Wiener said the funding structure would protect scientific advancements encompassing wildfire prevention and climate change, and debilitating conditions that don’t yet have cures or treatments.
“In the state of California, we believe in science and we’re not going to let them take a wrecking ball to science,” Wiener told a rally crowd of more than 2,000 people. “But now we have this administration, this completely deranged regime, that for reasons just breaks your brain to think about it, wants to stop research for ALS, for Alzheimer’s and for cancer and diabetes.”
Last year, UCLA scientist Heather Christofk suddenly lost 70% of her cancer research lab’s budget when Trump froze the school’s funding over claims of anti-semitism on campus — allegations unrelated to any of the campus’ ongoing scientific research. Even though the funding was restored, Christofk and others are still feeling the impacts.
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“A lot of us feel like there’s so much uncertainty with the funding climate that it doesn’t feel safe to hire, because I’m not sure my funding might just disappear again one day,” Christofk said. “The future of my cancer research is, I guess, on thin ice.”
Christofk recently met a Stanford student who would normally be the perfect fit for her research lab of eight people, which focuses on how the body’s metabolism influences cancer and other diseases. But she, like others, feel like they’re in “hunker down” mode and need to be thoughtful with the dollars they have — even if it stymies their progress. They don’t want to risk taking on more trainees they suddenly won’t be able to pay.
The end result is fewer people coming through the research pipeline, she said, and that will mean fewer new breakthrough discoveries years into the future.
In addition to Trump’s administration efforts to cut “waste” and tighten science research budgets, the administration has also targeted research related to HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases that often have an outsize impact on people of color and the LGBTQ+ community. It’s part of the administration’s efforts to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the federal government.
“Almost every day there is something new that’s affected our ability to steadily do our good research, which is trying to improve people’s lives and trying to save lives,” said Dr. Monica Ghandi, director of the UCSF Center for AIDS research. “That degree of instability, which keeps on going, is exhausting.”
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NIH as a whole, Gandhi said, is no longer prioritizing HIV research or new drug discovery for the disease. She also said researchers have had to be careful in grant applications to avoid evening mentioning transgender people directly out of fear their project would automatically get tossed.
The NIH is currently vetting grants before approval using an AI analysis stool that scans for terms such as “racism,” “gender” and “vaccination refusal,” according to the New York Times. The screening process has slowed the grants being doled out, resulting in only 1,900 grants awarded from October to late March, less than half the number given out in the same time period over the years prior under Biden.
“We’re starting to have to lay off staff again, hold people’s salaries,” Gandhi said. “We’re still in trouble even this far into the administration.”
Researchers and UC employees say the instability underscores the need for the funding.
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Maxwell Parks, a Ph.D. student at UCLA studying planetary science on a NASA grant, said he’s already seeing a “brain drain” of fellow graduate students leaving the U.S. to pursue their research. One friend just moved to France, he said. He said he’s also seen undergraduate students begin to question what the political climate means for their own futures in research and whether they even want to apply to graduate programs.
“I want to tell them we’re still doing good science and everything is OK,” he said, “but it’s tougher to make that argument when funding can be pulled at the stroke of a pen.”