On May 3, 2025, a rally was organized and hosted by Tim Foley, in conjunction with the organizations Scarsdale Democrats and Indivisible Scarsdale, to speak out about the Donald Trump administration’s new policies at Chase Park. The event gathered around 200 people, who held different signs in rebellion against his policies and cheered for the many speakers. Scarsdale residents discussed their concerns, including two Scarsdale High School seniors: Jessica Katz ’25 and Arya Goyal ’25. Katz and Goyal specifically talked about policies affecting scientific research and immigration nationwide. 

Trump, sworn into office for a second term on January 20, 2025, has already created a seriously controversial legacy for himself. For instance, with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deporting hundreds of thousands of immigrants, one of his most forceful policies involved ramping up security to prevent their entry into the U.S. Another one of his policies severely impacted scientific research, terminating $1.81 billion in National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants. His striking and bold political decisions have clearly made headlines, gaining the attention, and criticism, of SHS students. 

With her involvement in the scientific research program at Scarsdale High School, Katz focused her attention on Trump’s budget cuts on research. When she was first notified that multiple scientific research institutes had lost significant portions of their funding, she explained, “people I knew personally were losing research opportunities, and I knew that I wanted to speak out…It scares me that the Trump administration is trying to take that away.” Her goal is to raise awareness in the community about how severe these cuts are and how they affect our country. She talked about how “cancer research, Alzheimer’s research, clean energy research, and so many more critical projects come from university research.” 

Goyal’s speech at the rally focused on the policy of significantly increasing immigration control in our country. Her first response to hearing about this issue made her think that it was “unconstitutional and just plain awful, and it frustrated me that nobody seemed to be standing up to him in the government.” Goyal thought that this situation was “atrocious” in how illegal, and even legal, immigrants were getting deported, and is now speaking out for justice. 

Goyal and Katz set an excellent example for the younger generation to not be afraid of speaking out and engaging in advocacy. Katz says that in the future, “there should be more [civic] advertising explicitly geared towards students because the issues discussed at the rally have a profound impact on our generation.”