Lauren Laifer

Accepting Clinical or Counselling Psychology Grad Student?

Are you applying to a PhD in Clinical or Counseling Psychology? Here is a list of mentors who are taking students. Please circulate widely (and on X) so all applicants can benefit 😀. If you are mentoring please do add your name!
#clinicalpsychology @abctnow.bsky.social

Are you accepting PhD applications in Clinical Psychology for Fall 2026 (U.S.)?
If so, please consider adding your name to the document linked in the comments. Our hope is to help reduce the load on applicants.

Please share widely and on X! #clinicalpsychology @abctnow.bsky.social

A Quiet Policy Shift That Could Devastate American Science Why NIH’s sudden move to multi-year grant funding should alarm every principal investigator and university

This is a VERY important read about the status of NIH funding & how funding works. Labs all over the country are feeling the effects of this policy change. Last year, 10% of grants got funded.

The number will be reduced this year & beyond. 🧵

🧪 scienceandfreedomalliance.substack.com/p/a-quiet-po...

Supreme Court allows NIH to stop making nearly $800M in research grants for now But the court, in its emergency docket order, also left in place by a 5-4 order a lower court ruling that threw out NIH memos that enforced the administration's policies.

The ideological cancellation of $800 million of scientific research grants because they supposedly focused on DEI was just backed by the Supreme Court. This is horrific on so many levels.

Yes it's actually good that we have fMRI to know this, because men's parental bond has been understudied & essentialist narratives continue to insist that only women have "maternal instinct." Showing how the male brain responds to infant stimuli helps us appreciate human adaptations to fatherhood!

And just like that, a mere 7 years later, I officially earned my PhD and had the privilege of being hooded by my dad, the OG Dr. Laifer. I cannot thank my wonderful mentors, labmates, family, and friends enough for their guidance and never ending support ❤️

Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and to improve the process of Federal

THIS IS VERY BAD.

Trump just signed an EO giving political appointees the job of approving all federal grants.

There is a lot to unpack in this, so sit tight. But it’s decidedly very bad.

www.whitehouse.gov/presidential... Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking – The White House

American Psychological Foundation released a call for applications for crisis funding to support early career researchers who had grants terminated. Looks like a great opportunity!

ampsychfdn.org/funding/dacf/

Our paper with guidance for mental health researchers, clinicians, and advocates in the current era of abortion restrictions is officially published online. This paper is for everyone, including folks who don’t actively study or treat reproductive mental health. journals.sagepub.com/eprint/NZWIK...

🚨 Postdoc Opportunity!!!
The Toronto Early Cognition Lab (@UofT) is hiring a postdoc to study early optimism in infants & young children.
Work w/ multi-method approach, amazing undergrads & grads.
Start: Fall 2025 or later.
Details: jessica.sommerville@utoronto.ca
RTs appreciated 💫

What? Some good news on a Friday?

Parent Fellowship Notices of Funding Opportunities are up!

F30, F31, F32, F33

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

Shattered Science: The Research Lost as Trump Targets NIH Funding The Trump administration cut research funding that sought cures for future pandemics, examined the causes of dementia and tried to prevent HIV transmission. More than 150 researchers shared with ProPu...

NEW: The Trump administration said their research did not "enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness."

Thousands of scientists disagreed.

We heard from +150 researchers impacted by the NIH grant terminations on what is being lost in the cuts. 🧵👇
projects.propublica.org/nih-cuts-res...

NIH scientists call on director to protect biomedical research In a public letter, hundreds of scientists expressed their dissent to the Trump administration's policies affecting the National Institutes of Health and called on its director to support the agency.

"It's a horror show. We're under attack in every way all the time," says Sarah Kobrin, who has worked at the National Cancer Institute for more than 21 years. "We're told we're worthless. We're told we're cheats.… They're breaking things that won't be repairable."

www.npr.org/sections/sho...

I’m thrilled to share this preprint with a brilliant co-author team.

We describe several crises mental health science faces in the current sociopolitical context, as well as new and previously-overlooked opportunities to make non-incremental progress.

https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/nz42x_v1

🙋‍♀️ 👋🚨 Two of my grad students had their NIH Diversity Supplements abruptly cancelled. We plan to appeal. We'd love to coordinate with other folks w/ cancelled grants. Does this already exist? If not, could we start a Slack, email or text thread, or shared Google Drive to share appeals & strategize?

Here Are the Nearly 2,500 Medical Research Grants Canceled or Delayed by Trump (Gift Article) Some cuts have been starkly visible, but the country’s medical grant-making machinery has also radically transformed outside the public eye.

New powerful article up in the New York Times on cancelled and delayed grants

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

My student's funding just got axed How the administration's attacks on science are hurting trainees

Important read from @darbysaxbe.bsky.social about her clinical psychology PhD student’s NIH grant getting cancelled:
darbysaxbe.substack.com/p/my-student...
@uscpsychology.bsky.social

Scientists,

I am asking us to do something that goes against our nature:

Step away from fine-grained, nuanced arguments. Zoom WAY out. Share the big picture. Don’t soften the seriousness of this moment with “xxx may be ok in xxx circumstances” talk.

It’s uncomfortable AND necessary.

NSF, NASA and NIH budgets per year, inflation adjusted from 2000-2025 along with the proposed cuts. NSF includes research component only. Massive cuts across all sectors, well below support spanning 25 years.

How bad will it be? Catastrophic.

Proposed cuts to #NSF, #NIH, and #NASA will set the US R&D landscape back 25 yrs+, cause economic and job loss now, and undermine innovations to come.

But, this is the WH's *proposed* budget.

Speak up now before it is too late.

(inflation adjusted $-s below)

‘Men are not expected to be interested in babies’: how society lets new fathers – and their families – down Around one in 10 fathers experience serious mental health issues in the period before and after their child is born. What can be done?

www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

ASSIGNMENT: COMMENT ON SCHEDULE F

1 week left to comment about Schedule F, potentially making NIH institute and center director essentially political appointees.

www.regulations.gov/commenton/OP...

1/n

To put these top-line budget numbers in context, cuts of this magnitude would effectively mean no new grants in FY2026. The entire extramural budget would go to existing, continuing grants.

An abject failure of American ambition. And a betrayal of our global leadership in health science innovation.

Grant Cancellation Web Form WAS YOUR GRANT CANCELED BY PRESIDENT TRUMP? The Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Democratic Staff, is surveying the impact of the Trump Administration’s cancelation of federal research awards. If your award was terminated since January 20, 2025, please fill out this brief survey. If you had multiple awards terminated, please fill out a separate form for each award. While anonymous submissions will be helpful to the Committee’s efforts, we encourage you to leave your contact information if you are open to having a confidential conversation with Committee staff. Please find our confidentiality policies at the following link – any information you share will be treated with these protections, regardless of your current affiliation with any current or former funding agency: https://democrats-science.house.gov/contact/whistleblower

Are you a PI of a federal grant cancelled by the Trump administration?

Please share your info with the Democratic Staff of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, who launched this portal yesterday to track funding cancellations 🔭🧪

forms.office.com/pages/respon...

🚨ATTENTION MOMS🚨

Friday, May 30th at 3pm

Meet me outside of the CDC with your pregnant bellies, your babies, your toddlers, your strollers, your signs, and your baby gear.

We are standing up for science and vaccines!
@standupforscience.bsky.social

RSVP: actionnetwork.org/events/moms-...

Trump’s new ‘gold standard’ rule will destroy American science as we know it | Colette Delawalla The new executive order allows political appointees to undermine research they oppose, paving the way to state-controlled science

Delighted to see this piece with Victor Ambros, @carlbergstrom.com, Carol Greider, @michaelemann.bsky.social, and @briannosek.bsky.social in the wild.

Trump’s new ‘gold standard’ rule will destroy American science as we know it

@standupforscience.bsky.social

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Coronavirus can destroy the placenta and lead to stillbirths New research suggests the coronavirus can invade and destroy the placenta and lead to stillbirths in infected women.

“A CDC report found that among pregnant U.S. women infected with COVID-19, about 1 in 80 deliveries was a stillbirth — the loss of a fetus anytime after 20 weeks. That’s compared with 1 in 155 among uninfected women”

Pregnant women need access to Covid boosters.

TW for photos of Covid placenta:

Sign The Open Letter to Stand Up For Science Now! Science is under siege. Trump’s latest Executive Order calls for politically appointed science commissars to evaluate research. Join us in adding your name to our open letter condemning Trump’s escala...

🚨 URGENT RESPONSE CALL 🚨

Trump’s Fool’s Gold Science EO is a dangerous sham.
It gives his appointees the power to dismiss entire bodies of research and punish researchers who fail to fall in line with his agenda.

We’ve launched an open letter.

SIGN & SHARE NOW: actionnetwork.org/petitions/op...

If this becomes the new budget, we really are in trouble. From a friend who spoke with an NICHD PO: "with the new budget, NICHD will be able to support 5-6 R21s."

Really proud of this paper and so grateful for the amazing team that wrote it! We discuss principles and guidelines for navigating clinical practice, research, and advocacy in the post-Dobbs sexual and reproductive health landscape for behavioral health disciplines.

osf.io/preprints/ps...

Federal grants: it's SO much worse than you know. The idea that only ideologically radical grants were cut is a profound lie. Funds were cut, stalled, AND HHS is not paying bills even if awards were NOT cancelled. The $ stopped, illegally and without explanation
grant-watch.us/posts/700-ne...