Ezra Klein went beyond opposing political violence to extol Charlie Kirk for doing politics "exactly the right way," making up a fictional version of Kirk to praise. That distortion, with its indulgence of bad faith, is a perfect illustration of the larger media failure that helps Trump. My latest

From @coreykeller.bsky.social's amazing team, led by @chrisclineneuro.bsky.social: x.com/DrCoreyKelle...

Would love some insight into what has happened to @nytimes.com. Is a president embroiled in a child sex trafficking scandal with underwater poll numbers on a "winning streak"? Is Trump usually cool, calm, and collected, only now "displaying his volatile side"?

Even if you think these deals are worth the tarnished academic integrity and freedom (they're not), paying an extortion fee to get your grants back doesn't make much sense when the rest of the government is working hard to gut NIH/NSF/etc on a larger scale anyway.

Calling these outcomes 'deals' or 'agreements' is in the interest of both university administrators (who do not want to appear passive) and the White House (which does not want to appear authoritarian). They are extortions—displays of power & dominance designed to coerce all universities watching.

“No Kings” demonstration, Ocean Beach, San Francisco

Excited to announce award of my K99/R00 "Theta burst modulation of hippocampal-cortical rhythms in schizophrenia," under amazing mentors at Stanford including @coreykeller.bsky.social! We will ask whether hippocampal oscillations can be systematically influenced by stimulation in schizophrenia.

New paper showcasing the incredible effort from the amazing Human Neural Circuitry (HNC) team! Beyond the great science, one can appreciate the poetic story told about human emotions. Looking forward to what's coming next! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Keller lab is an awesome place to work! Great science, great mentorship, amazing group of people at a world-class institution.

🚨 This MUST READ essay and call to action spells out, in very clear terms, how the Trump administration could get away with slashing the NIH budget. NIH scientists and Dems in congress need to read and understand it. This is where we win or lose the battle to save the NIH and US science. 🧪 🧠 🧬 🔊

Why is Stanford not a signatory? President Levin has already publicly supported Harvard's stance against the administration -- strange he would do that yet find this objectionable. www.aacu.org/newsroom/a-c...

Plainly unconstitutional.

Wherein the NYT parrots Trump talking points, leaves claims of "campus antisemitism" entirely devoid of correction/context, and *not once* mentions that the unilateral cancellation of grants is *illegal*, instead framing it as an "aggressive stance." Unreal stuff from our paper of record.

🧠 NEW PAPER: How do we capture excitability noninvasively in mood and emotion networks in the human brain? Here, we used real-time optimization to improve these measures! @saraparmi @KellerStanfordU @ClinicalNeuroph doi.org/10.1016/j.clinph.2025.02.261 1/7

NEW: After cancelling nearly all projects on trans health, the Trump admin has now directed the NIH to study the negative consequences of transitioning. This will create “a distorted research ecosystem where only politically favorable findings are permitted to exist”, researcher Harry Barbee says.

When we use TMS to treat depression, we think it alters neural activity in a deep brain structure known as the subgenual anterior cingulate (sgACC). But this is hard to test directly, until our preprint with @coreykeller.bsky.social, @neuro-engineer.bsky.social, Nick Trapp, and Aaron Boes (UIowa) 1/

Science is under threat in the US. @elife.bsky.social have commissioned a series of articles discussing the implications and what we can do. The first three articles are now live. More to follow: elifesciences.org/articles/106... elifesciences.org/articles/106... elifesciences.org/articles/106...

What will university leadership do to allow early career scientists to thrive? What resources can be marshaled to support young scientists even as the NIH retreats? www.wired.com/story/the-ch...

Now that the first Advisory Council meeting will be announced in the Federal Register tomorrow (National Institute for Complementary and Integrative Health) tomorrow, I want to clarify something that has been happening for at least the past 30 days. 1/n

We are excited to announce that nominations are open for our “Rising stars in neuroscience” 2025 report. We seek to feature early-career researchers who have made outstanding scientific contributions and demonstrated a commitment to community-building. Submit a nominee here: bit.ly/4bsoBXD

""Many of us didn’t think all of this would be so drastic, or happen so fast. But here we are. The short-termism of university administrators, the instinct to ride it out, isn’t going to work. The Trump administration is going to run through us like a pack of wolves on a flock of sheep.""

Thought-provoking piece on how scientists may need to pivot to survive and thrive in a new world. Even if you think the status quo will stay more or less intact, this is worth a read.

#standupforscience in San Francisco! Amazing turnout and great speakers from UCSF, Stanford, Berkeley, and more!

Compelling pushback from @jmgrohneuro.bsky.social and the Board of Scientific Counselors at the National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH) regarding termination of tenure-track investigators driven by DOGE. 1/2

Francis Collins, longtime NIH director with bipartisan bona fides*, retires as of yesterday. He returned to NIH in 2023 to focus on research in his own lab, in the NIH in-house intramural research campus. His letter seems to imply he wasn’t ready to leave. NIH is being torn down. 1/🧪 #academicsky

Ted Cruz said he’d found $2 billion in “woke” science grants, but his team used keyword searches that flagged things out of context, like a grant to develop a device to treat severe bleeding that mentioned “victims” and “trauma.” www.propublica.org/article/ted-...

Sam Gershman writes beautifully about how theory-free neuroscience prevents the field from reaching its promise. Beautiful and true. Most folks do not test hypotheses. Running a NHST does not a hypothesis make. www.thetransmitter.org/theoretical-...

Have you signed up 2 lead a march for @standupforscience.bsky.social yet? Picketed at a Tesla dealer yet? Bought & distributed any @liberalrocks.bsky.social lately? Used 5calls.org to make your voice heard? #StrongerTogether #YesWeCan #NobodyElectedElon #ScienceNotSilence #Hoosiers #Michiganders

First Democrat with a national profile to get arrested resisting Trump/Musk --> instant contender for 2028 nomination. Maybe even frontrunner.

This breaks my heart 💔 Some of my most incredible trainees were Pitt PhDs, and I helped run the neuro grad program (CNUP) for a few years - one of the best and largest in the country I know this is the fiscally responsible thing to do but still, it is infuriating

Excellent piece by @samwang.bsky.social with actionable recommendations for how scientists can push back. Highly recommend for anybody in academia.

A large portion of grants awarded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health cannot be funded for the foreseeable future because of an indefinite hold on submissions to the Federal Register, according to an email reviewed by The Transmitter. By @avaskham.bsky.social bit.ly/3X8ngz8

1/10 🧠 We need better ways to measure brain excitability in psychiatric disorders. The prefrontal cortex—key target for brain stimulation treatments—is particularly hard to assess. Our new studies tackle this with systematic mapping! bit.ly/4cjHknX & bit.ly/3PW8RCx

Great piece: Firsthand testimonies of how the flux in diversity-based funding is impacting trainees. Gratitude to @thetransmitter.bsky.social for amplifying these voices. Gratitude to all the trainees who bravely spoke up with these diverse perspectives so we can all better understand.

"10 minutes of resistance a day": The changes over the past 3 weeks have been so distressing that many just tune it out, for the sake of their wellbeing. It's OK to feel this way. But we also have obligations to help those who have already been hurt, and to protect the world we want to live in. 1/

JUST IN: A federal judge in Massachusetts has blocked the Trump administration's rate change to NIH grants. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

The whole "$1 NIH dollar generates $2.50 in output" sells science wildly short. Scientific discovery and technological development is the foundation on which our entire society is built -- and that includes all the businesses that operate within it. The throughlines are shorter than you think: 1/n

Having funded teams/contracts that required six figure+ funds a few times now, these numbers SOUND really huge in isolation to normal folks but they're not! Don't make floating numbers! I like to say things like this: "A cancer lab is basically a small business, with many jobs created by each grant"

LANCET: American chaos: standing up for health and medicine www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

University leaders need to hear a truth of where we are: The very existence of academia is threat to Trump's regime. There is no amount of caution, or silence, or appeasement that will "shield" you. They are coming for the endowments next. The only option left is to fight.

1. Today the NIH director issued a new directive slashing overhead rates to 15%. I want to provide some context on what that means and why it matters. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

I admire this tremendously! THIS is the next generation we need to protect. It's one that is both genius AND steps up.

Jasmine Crockett: "The problem is that Americans thought it was okay to take a full fledged criminal and make him the President of the US and then they want to act aghast when he does criminal things. Let me tell you, we have a thug in charge of the US and if we don't wake up we may not have a US"

If you're in science or medicine and you haven't yet called/messaged your representatives, now is the time. Taking action is no longer optional. Science is under direct assault by authoritarian forces, and your professional and personal futures are both on the line. Do something to protect them.

I must not be wording this right. Lemme try again. There is only one (1) office (not even an institute) at the NIH dedicated to women’s health research. That office is now being dismantled, with only a bland landing page remaining on their website. This is a five-alarm fire! orwh.od.nih.gov

Universities should stand strong against government bullying by saying “we won’t do XYZ that you demand and you can cut off our funding all you want.” Otherwise, the demands get crazier each day (eg, “ban all Muslims, or else…”). It’s just like how paying ransom to a criminal is logically futile.

The Democrats need to understand that they need to become the opposition party, and pull out all the stops to flip the House and Senate in the 2026 midterm elections. Throw their bodies on the gears. Slow everything down. Mire all these EOs up in court. Get Musk the hell out of there.

The universities that claimed diversity/equity were "bedrock" and "core" principles are now rolling over to comply with Trump's EOs, nominally because they take federal funds and are "subject" to new rules. Are any of them willing to stand up for their "core" principles and challenge this in court?

Stop despairing and do something! Here is a very good list of 29 things you can do: protectdemocracy.org/how-to-prote...

To the folks arguing that biomedical research remains an area of bipartisan support -- I sincerely hope you're right. But I'd ask you to consider whether an administration bent on consolidating power and stifling dissent is otherwise perfectly content to let academia continue on its merry way.