As stressful as it is to run a laboratory in the US right now, my thoughts are often with the NIH staff living in the awful chaos trying to preserve the whole enterprise. I’m grateful for every moment they choose not to give up. These people are the only thing keeping it from entirely collapsing.

Happy to share our latest preprint. We show that juxtaposing amnion cells with human pluripotent cells is enough to trigger gastrulation-like events. Great work by former student Xiangyu Kong now a postdoc in the Theunissen lab @washumedicine.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The "Big Beautiful Bill" isn’t the federal budget—it’s a reconciliation bill focused on tax cuts. The real FY26 funding decisions for NIH, NSF, and more are happening now in Congress. www.ascb.org/science-poli...

If one of these people is your senator, it is incredibly important that you call them today. Urge them to vote NO on the Senate budget bill that would make most Americans poorer to give billionaires a tax cut they don't even need.

We're tired of the false information and wrote this letter to the NIH director Jay Bhattacharya. FACT: clinical trials have been halted. With real ethical impacts. Is this what Americans want to be known for? Let's see what the director says.

Today, my NIH colleagues and I did something scary but really important. We spoke up about egregious harms we are seeing happen to research participants and public health through thoughtless and politicized policies at NIH. 🧵1/3 apnews.com/article/nih-...

NEW: The Trump administration cut research funding that sought cures for future pandemics, examined the causes of dementia and tried to prevent HIV transmission. ProPublica heard from more than 150 researchers to understand the work that’s been lost.

Happy to share our latest on a system to study anterior-posterior patterning of the nervous system. We show Wnt signaling pattern is not a simple low to high gradient and timing of activation is crucial to setting the pattern. From outstanding grad student Siqi Du. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A Path Forward to Save American Bio-Medical Research talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-pat...

Our work on mesoderm development in 2D gastruloids is now published in nature methods www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Many people are asking - what on earth is the point of killing biomedical research? Read this from @joshtpm.bsky.social who has covered this very well. Admin is using funding to exert control over universities, they don't care about resulting damage to science. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/why-d...

ACTION ITEM-----ACTION ITEM Implementation of Schedule F This is what a lot of us have been worried about. This allows for many civil service positions to replaced with political appointees. This could include NIH institute directors and even POs. BUT THERE IS A COMMENT PERIOD... 1/n

I received this letter, sent to 11 Republican members of Congress this weekend from anonymous NIHers. 1/n .

As someone directly affected by this, let me be clear: I'd rather lose my job because Harvard chose to fight than keep my job and see a generation of white supremacists parade its corpse around like a war trophy.

This is a big deal. Spread the word. But it’s tiny compared to the totality of what’s happening at NIH. Cure Research for all cancers, Alzheimer’s, everything is being gutted. Intentionally. It’s all getting burned to the ground but the news isn’t getting out. The new cures won’t be there for you.

From a source at NIH: “Right now NIH’s ability to buy things is dead. Nearly all people with the power to make an order — purchasing people — have been removed. The NIH hospital can’t buy medicines, the labs can’t buy petri dishes. X-Ray machine breaks? Too bad. Everything is stopped”

It’s stunning to me that the New York Times did not put the story on the bloodbath at the NIH, CDC, and FDA on its front page this morning.

Trump has cut the NIH budget by more than half in defiance of Congressionally mandated appropriations for the agency. No comparison historically, not even the Great Recession. This is clearly not legal and Congress needs to address it.

"The consolidation/RIF plan pulls power away from scientists and puts it in the hands of political employees. It sets up Trump and Musk to kill NIH as an evidence-based science funder. We must stop this plan." New contributed post on our blog: Please read. It describes Orban and authoritarianism. 🧪

Just before bedtime last night I got a message from inside NIH which read: “It’s so, so bad and no one cares (who has any influence)” I asked “What, in particular?” My friend responded “Everything”

The @standupforscience.bsky.social DC rally is on. What we are hearing from around the country: "this is big!" "biggest rally I have seen around here in years and years" The public cares about medical research--and students, GenZ, and other people too are ready to stand up.

Good crowd to #StandUpForScience on Rice campus. Some powerful speeches from trainees about having opportunities suddenly taken from them and the personal impacts of the administration's targeting of minorities. Very real damage has already been done.

Richest guy in the world telling us we can’t afford to have our government fund cancer research.

A story from one of the fired 18F employees: www.linkedin.com/posts/zachar...

We talk about Bezos, or Citi, or Big Tech, but cancer's brand is seriously in the toilet. Everyone hates it. And yet, day one hit from Trump/Musk was to shut down all federal funding for cancer cure research. And it's still mostly shut down. Have you ever known anyone with cancer?

I talked to NIH officials, current and former, about what's been happening inside the agency since the Trump administration shut down their grantmaking pipeline in January. Their stories showed just how willing our new leaders are to break the law: www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

This is horrifying and should be read by anyone who thinks we can just wait and things at NIH will go back to normal. NIH leadership currently breaking the law in defiance of judges orders and their own lawyers' advice. Cranks like Memoli and Bhattacharya are only going to make the situation worse.

This is what you call robbing the future.

🚨 WANT TO HELP US STAND UP FOR SCIENCE? 🚨 Here's a little update on where we're currently at with the planning process! Is your state red or grey & you want to see an event happen? Fill out our volunteer form or share with a friend! airtable.com/app4h5wUssMG... #standupforscience2025

New York Times article now up on Federal Register stuff. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/21/s... 1/n

As you see NIH restrictions and bans lifted now, it’s not a coincidence that happened after a big rally that got coverage all over TikTok and on Maddow. Trump is susceptible to public pressure! They want to do their coup in the dark. As we’ve been saying, science must speak to the public now. 🧪

Dear scientists at US universities: Trump/Musk continue to freeze your grants. NIH is not reviewing grants nor funding them in council. This is a backhanded, legal method to effectively stop NIH grants. See thread and linked article. Are we going to “keep our heads down” about this?

My senator's voice mailbox is full, so I wrote a letter about the administration's underhanded use of the Federal Register to block NIH funding. Putting it here in case it useful to anyone else contacting their representatives about this outrageous abuse of power.

The court ordered that NIH grant funding be unfrozen, so The Regime found a way around it. For NIH grants to be funded, a review panel must rank them. In order for a review panel to meet, they must post it on the Federal Register. Submissions to the Federal Register are now on hold “indefinitely”.

Upon learning that yesterday would be my last day as a program officer at the National Science Foundation, I shared this parting message with my colleagues. The next few months will be frenetic and stressful for them. Here are some things that you can do to help them with the mission ahead. (1)

I just covered this for @thetransmitter.bsky.social — will keep following! www.thetransmitter.org/funding/fede...

I escaped poverty because I am a scientist. And I am a scientist because of the National Science Foundation. A 🧵:

I think anyone who's been paying attention knows this. But it's worth stating clearly. The idea that any of Elon's wilding spree is being done in the name of efficiency is absurd on its face because the terminations are virtually all being done based on duration of service because that creates ...

Special shout out this AM to NIH 🧪 grant mgmt specialists, POs, and SROs during this chaotic time - THANK YOU for caring for our grants and uploading scores/summary statements despite the unprecedented challenges you may be facing. You are science warriors and we APPRECIATE & SUPPORT YOU 🫶

The federal civilian worker payroll totaled $271 billion in 2022. The annual cost of permanently extending Trump's tax cuts that primarily benefited rich individuals? $400 billion. Keep this in mind as Trump and DOGE lay off thousands of federal workers.

Yes. Important for all NIH people and scientists: The executive orders are not law. The President *cannot* make laws. And in fact, executive orders may violate the law. As a federal employee, you are obligated not to follow illegal orders. That includes illegal EOs.

Petition to Reverse the NIH Indirect Cost Cap initiated by Tom Maniatis. Please amplify Sign the Petition: chng.it/kK2HMP5pGk "Share with Leadership & Faculty. Reach out to professional societies, biotech and pharma leaders, and philanthropic organizations to raise awareness and mobilize support."

8 years ago @asbmb.bsky.social gave me +18 more trainees a crash course in advocacy for their DC Hill Day. With NIH slashing indirect costs effective immediately, university Govt Affairs teams will be swamped. Here's 10 tips for scientists contacting lawmakers +pics from Denver's 2017 Science March.

1/8. This week I had a few different conversations with scholars who, in the face of the attacks on science and institutions of learning in the U.S., are wondering what to do. One suggestion I have is: keep doing your work. It matters in and of itself. Why do I say that? A few reasons.

Gene editing technology began by people studying salt marshes. Ozempic began by folks studying the venom of Gila Monsters. Support for basic science has empowered us to understand our world. Tethering it to applications health has transformed and saved countless lives.

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...

Thrilled to share our new preprint from Ye Zhu in the lab. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... . We look at the cell fate potential and degree of cadherin switching of human ES cells differentiated to different primitive streak coordinates.

Aryeh will be handling papers on stem cells, signalling dynamics, patterning, morphogens, self-organisation, and modelling. Check out our interview to learn more about Aryeh’s research and the papers he would like to see in JCS: journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

JCS Editor-in-Chief @drmichaelway.bsky.social introduces our new Associate Editors. We are delighted to welcome Sophie Acton @actonlab.bsky.social, Pedro Carvalho, @guijacquemet.bsky.social, @ckirchhelle.bsky.social and Aryeh Warmflash to the JCS team. journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...