Figure showing number of competitive grants mentioning women from 2015-2025. The number was rising until recently, with a precipitous drop in the last year.

At the end of 2024, the National Academies put out a report concluding the NIH has woefully underfunded women’s health research, and they suggested $15 B should be invested over the next 5 years.

Here’s what’s happened instead. Hard to study women’s health if you can’t say “women.”

wapo.st/4euUt1c

Where U.S. science has been hit hardest after Trump’s first year The Trump administration has slashed the number of grants from the National Institutes of Health, with far fewer focused on women, cancer and mental health.

Those of us doing research related to women’s health have been hit particularly hard by the govt’s sabotage of the NIH. I spoke to WaPo for this piece, as painful as it was to discuss the reality my lab is facing. www.washingtonpost.com/science/2026...

Federal judge unloads on ‘unserious’ RFK Jr., says anti-trans policy showed his ‘cruelty’ Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai vacated the “Kennedy Declaration,” finding it unlawfully attempted to override medical standards and restrict care for transgender youth.

Breaking: HHS’s ban on gender-affirming care is struck down. Rarely have I read a ruling this sharply worded.

“This case is one of a long list of examples of how a leader’s wanton disregard for the rule of law causes very real harm to very real people.”

www.advocate.com/politics/nat...

Iris Long, Scientific Mentor to AIDS Activists, Dies at 92

"She tutored the activists on immunology and virology and schooled them in the intricacies of the Food and Drug Administration’s approval process and pharmaceutical research protocols."

[Gift article]

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/17/h...

ZOHRAN: “TBH, I don’t think too much about how Republicans portray me. The power of an ideology is judged in the worth of its delivery— to be told a city-run grocery store is implausible but $500 MILLION/day to kill ppl in Iran & Lebanon is necessary speaks to a broken politics.”

French Widow Detained by ICE in Alabama Is Released After 16 Days

is that a lot of days to detain a widow

what should we compare ourselves to

The American gestapo abducted an 85 year-old widow.

Was she one of the worst of the worst? No, her step-son, a retired Alabama state trooper, got ICE to put her in a detention center to deport her because he wanted all of his father's inheritance.

Sounds like the son is the worst of the worst.

Video ‘They didn’t even know what we did’: Former official on DOGE cuts that gutted USAID | Whistleblower Aid Congratulations to our client Nicholas Enrich on the publication of his new book, "Into the Wood Chipper"! In this interview with ABC News, Enrich, a former USAID Acting Assistant Administrator of Global Health, describes finally getting a chance to explain the 60-year-old agency's health work the day *after* his team was let go. “I just gave a high-level overview,” Enrich says. The top brass, he discovered, didn’t know what USAID did. “‘These are the infectious diseases we work on. Here's what we do in maternal and child health…’" he says he explained. "And the chief of staff looks at...

"I had no idea that USAID did this kind of work," USAID's chief of staff told our client, former USAID Global Health chief Nicholas Enrich, as he described the agency's life-saving programs. "I just assumed it was just abortions." Which USAID never funded. More:
https://ow.ly/PPyh50YITax

Who Gets Guggenheims? - Public Books Unfortunately, 100 years of data show that those whom such fellowships might represent the greatest departure from their everyday experience—that is, those not at elite institutions—are least likely t...

Woohoo, here's my essay with my fav co-author on 30,000 fellowship wins across the Guggenheim, Stanford CASBS, NAEd, National Humanities Center, RSF visiting scholar, and Harvard Radcliffe.

Spoiler: it's the people working at prestigious universities

www.publicbooks.org/who-gets-gug...

This is why Russ Vought defunded USAID, attacked NEA and NIH, caused CPB to commit suicide, is defund the Dep’t of Eduction, is trying to kill the CFPB, has attacked NIH and NSF, tried to kill the IMLS, closed the Kennedy Center and just yesterday took over the Presidio to turn it back to a prison.

Does Gender-Affirming Care Make Mental Health Worse? The case of a rather poorly-done paper.

“It would be absurd to argue that having more psychiatric appointments 2+ years after *referral to a psychiatrist* was an indicator of issues with mental health.”

Opposition leader Péter Magyar at a rally.

Orbán's electoral crushing is a far greater achievement than most people outside Hungary realise.

He systemically consolidated power for 16 years, fixed the electoral map, abused govt power for political purposes & censored media.

The hurdles that Hungarians overcame for this moment were immense.

Much love and appreciation for the words of support and encouragement.

3:30 am in Budapest, what a night.

It’s like we won the World Cup. ⚽️😳

Maybe tonight that’s what Hungary did. Fighting for and reclaiming a democracy in any corner of the world is cause for celebration. ✊🏻

April 4, 2026 President Jonathan Levin Office of the President 450 Jane Stanford Way, Building 10 Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305 president@stanford.edu Dean Lloyd Minor Stanford University School of Medicine 300 Pasteur Drive, Grant Building Stanford, CA 94305-5110 deansoffice_som@stanford.edu Dear President Levin and Dean Minor: I am writing to you as an alumnus, the parent of an alumnus, and someone, as the child of a faculty member, who was literally born (in the old Hoover Pavilion) and raised (in Pine Hill I) on the Stanford campus. I am deeply concerned about the conduct of one of your former faculty, currently in Emeritus status, Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya. He is currently serving as Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and in some acting capacity (the legal status of which is unclear) as Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

I am concerned about whether my alma mater will welcome back Jayanta Bhattacharya if he wanted to return from this federal service.

I wrote this a week ago and have received no response at this point.

1/6

@rikiwilchins.bsky.social 2026 Apr Advocate
When they reconvene, Reps are expected to continue moving forward H.R. 7661, which allegedly focuses on federal book ban of materials with sexual content from public libraries but defines it to include any content on “gender dysphoria or ‘transgenderism.”

I think this is really important, and I'm worried it's never going to filter into the mainstream: Finland is producing studies that their researchers claim cast doubt on gender affirming care for youth, but they hide the ways their idiosyncratic approach itself could be to blame.

uh...when were we "good"?

RIP. I will never forget the police brutalizing him — and then that one cop stopping the other cop from helping him

Japan is calling - submit your late breaking abstract for the ICN2026!

The ICN is the premier meeting in neuroendocrinology and only happens once every four years. Be there! 😎🧠🌟

@infneuroendo.bsky.social @paneuroendo.bsky.social @bsneuroendo.bsky.social @sneuroendo.bsky.social

College Students Losing Ability to Participate in Class Discussions Since They Offloaded Their Thinking to AI "Everyone now kind of sounds the same."

This isn’t a lamentable side effect of these products. It’s the actual reason they exist.

Sharif University in Tehran was just bombed

Founded in 1965, it is one the most elite science and engineering institutions in the world. Alumni include the mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, first woman to win the Fields Medal

Here is the list of other alumni

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...

The Price of Remission: This Cancer Drug Saves Lives — but Costs a Fortune. I Wanted to Know Why. When I was diagnosed with cancer, I set out to understand why a single pill of Revlimid cost the same as a new iPhone. I’ve covered high drug prices as a reporter for years. What I discovered shocked ...

Revlimid has its origin in a pill that cost patients $7.50 each.

Decades later, the cancer drug costs more than $18,000 for a month’s supply — even though it still only costs about 25 cents to manufacture.

(Published May 2025)

HR 7661, the Federal book banning bill, is unfortunately still alive. Please call your reps and say NO ON HR 7661! You can read the bill's full text here and see if your Congressperson is one of the 19 co-sponsors: www.congress.gov/bill/119th-c...

Demonstrators Arrested After Sit-In In Idaho Protesting Extreme Felony Trans Bathroom Ban 9 Idaho demonstrators were arrested after refusing to leave the Governor's office.

@rikiwilchins.bsky.social 2026 Apr EITM
In an extraordinary act of civil disobedience, 40 faith leaders LGBTQ+ advocates staged a 3-hr sit in at Gov. Brad Little's office to protest Idaho's super-harsh new bathroom law with 9 ages 34 to 84 arrested and later released.

Some science cuts in Trump's proposed FY27 budget

❌ NIH: -$5B, including all of NIEHS, NIMHD, FIC & NCCIH.
❌ EPA: -4.6B
❌ NSF: -3.8B
❌ NASA Science: -3.4 Billion
❌ NOAA: -1.8B, including the entire Oceanic and Atmospheric Research budget ($605M)
❌ AHRQ: All of it. -$296M, 100%

And there's more.

I shouldn’t type while eating: by = my and drop the a 😩

No. BNRS has been around in some form and name since I started in neuroscience