Ben Saunders

The US is broadly a country that likes to invest in science. Even among Republicans this is true. But we are governed by an administration that is opposed to science, and is using procedural tools to limit spending and increase political control over the process.

White House stalls release of approved US science budgets The US Congress rejected sweeping cuts to science agencies. But the NIH, the NSF and NASA have had their spending slowed.

Congress rejected massive cuts to US science budgets for 2026, but much of the money still isn’t flowing to researchers.

The culprit? The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is quietly slow-walking the release of funds. 🧵👇

Netflix Backs Out of Bid for Warner Bros., Paving Way for an Ellison Takeover

The richest man owns X.

The second and third richest men control Google.

The fourth richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

The fifth richest man owns The Washington Post.

And now the sixth richest could soon take over both Paramount and Warner Bros.

See the problem here?

Great paper congrats y'all!

Dopamine Supports Reward Prediction to Shape Reward-Pursuit Strategy Reward predictions not only promote reward pursuit, they also shape how reward is pursed. Such predictions are supported by environmental cues that signal reward availability and probability. Such cue...

🚨📃New Wassum Lab Paper 📃🚨

Out today, Melissa Malvaez, Nick Griffin, Andrea Suarez & team discovered that dopamine can enable reward predictions to shape how we pursue reward.

Surprisingly, we find that dopamine can constrain instrumental reward seeking.

www.jneurosci.org/content/46/8...

🧵👇🏻

America needs a Surgeon General who follows the science, not trending conspiracies and pseudoscience. Tell your Senator to vote against Casey Means as our nation’s doctor!

Frontiers | Regional heterogeneity of striatal cholinergic interneurons: setting the stage for diverse behavioral repertoires Cholinergic interneurons (ChIs) constitute only a small fraction of striatal neurons, yet their dense axonal arborizations and widespread acetylcholine relea...

As promised at the #GRC Basal Ganglia, here is our recent review on striatal cholinergic heterogeneity. I hope people find it useful and inspiring.

www.frontiersin.org/journals/cel...

Legendary

One of the greatest bollard walks in history.
#WorldBollardAssociation

This is more than 10.5 NIH budgets.

Absolutely outrageous when they gutted NSF and destroyed USAID.

For what?

How much more of all this are we supposed to take, genuinely?

Awesome additions!!!

I have, just over a month out

New Special Issue out in #AddictionNeuroscience edited by @talialerner.bsky.social on dopamine circuitry and heterogeneity in addiction with articles by @daylab.bsky.social, Tom Hnasko, @mtorregrossa1.bsky.social, and Awatramani Rajeshwar check it out! www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...

@niallw.bsky.social pointed out an error in a preprint of ours that contained a fabricated citation. The cause: we used Claude to fix an arxiv upload / compile error. It decided the best way to do that was to remove an actual citation and replace it with a fabricated one.

bsky.app/profile/ben....

Congrats to BART rider and Oakland legend Alysa Liu on winning a gold medal at the Olympics and making the Bay Area proud!

Super exciting!!

Woo congratulations!!!!!

I am so proud to share @forrestdrogers.bsky.social’s postdoctoral magnum opus, now out in @nature.com! Forrest discovered a novel role for Agouti in the MPOA of the hypothalamus to integrate socio-environmental information to flexibly tune paternal behavior
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Thread! 👇🏻

Very excited to get to share culmination of this large-scale project to understand spatial gene expression in schizophrenia. Really proud of the amazing team work here working out lots of roadblocks to deploy these spatial strategies and analysis methods at scale!

"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." –Justice Louis Brandeis

Words spoken many years ago that are just as relevant today.

We must continue the fight to get big money out of politics.

The SAVE Act and the Election Power Grab The revived bill is a serious threat to voting rights.

The SAVE Act would be the most restrictive voting legislation ever passed by Congress. bit.ly/4qrNeJO

National Institutes of Health faces leadership vacuum as director positions sit open More than half of the NIH's institutes and centers don’t have permanent directors, giving the Trump administration an unusual opportunity to reshape the agency. The latest departure came on Friday.

NBC story on NIH Institute Director vacancies...

www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

It is bad enough that national news networks (well, not CBS) are covering this story,,,

ICE operations in Pa. surge under the radar, destroying communities and lives In recent weeks, scores of immigrant communities have been targeted by ICE, resulting in arrests and even swift deportations. They are mostly happening under the radar but they are upending communitie...

"ICE operations in Pa. surge under the radar, destroying communities and lives"

Harrisburg, Scranton, Erie, Norristown. Even if ICE leaves Minnesota, they still need to be stopped

www.pennlive.com/news/2026/02...

We continue to see no drawdown today with ICE activity in the Phillips neighborhood, Columbia Heights, and Shakopee.

Our pressure is working as the Senate bill to fund DHS did not pass last night. Keep up the pressure by reaching out to your federal representatives.

How pediatricians found themselves at war with RFK Jr. The AAP has become a leading opponent of MAHA and RFK Jr.'s vaccine agenda.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has become a leader in the effort to reverse RFK Jr.'s vaccine policies.

The success — or failure — of the group's approach will have consequences for kids' health nationwide.

Inside the AAP's plan for the MAHA age:

www.statnews.com/2026/02/13/a...

Already seeing people not from around here saying "Minnesota won" and I just— It's not over yet. We don't know if they'll actually withdraw. And the damage is overwhelming. We need a lot of fucking help here. And there are still people in concentration camps.

Abolish ICE, shut down DHS, prosecute.

Ending this operation is not enough.

We need justice and accountability. That starts with independent investigations into the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, economic restitution for businesses impacted, abolishing ICE, and the impeachment of Kristi Noem.

ICE Is Expanding Across the US at Breakneck Speed. Here’s Where It’s Going Next ICE plans to lease offices throughout the US as part of a secret, months-long expansion campaign. WIRED is publishing dozens of these locations.

NEW: ICE is leasing offices throughout the US as part of a secret, months-long expansion campaign. WIRED is publishing dozens of these locations.

This looks rad, congrats!