The Trump administration is once again spearheading efforts to eliminate cruel, costly, and unnecessary animal testing across federal agencies, while prioritizing the retirement of lab animals to sanctuaries and homes.
This push builds on years of advocacy by the taxpayer watchdog group White Coat Waste Project (WCW), which has been instrumental in exposing and halting wasteful government experiments that harm animals and burden taxpayers.
In a significant victory, the Trump CDC has announced it will end all primate testing, following WCW investigations that prompted HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to commit to phasing out such experiments and collaborate with WCW.
As Gateway Pundit previously reported, sources at WCW indicate that HHS is exploring options to retire the surviving monkeys from CDC facilities to sanctuaries, a cause WCW has championed since 2018.
Another PETA Lie: ‘Trump Did Nothing to Stop Animal Experimentation’
Effective October 1, 2025, Trump’s NIH has shifted policies to prioritize human-based research, no longer soliciting new funding opportunities focused exclusively on animal models, which indirectly supports retirement efforts by reducing animal use. This aligns with broader initiatives to allow grant funds for lab animal retirement, which was previously prohibited.
Earlier this year, the EPA revived the first Trump administration’s plan to phase out animal testing by 2035, including a 30% reduction by 2025 – a goal the Trump team has reportedly now met or exceeded, according to Breitbart.
The agency has introduced a program enabling EPA staff to adopt rats and fish from government labs and has released several rabbits into private homes.
These actions reverse the Biden administration’s cancellation of the 2019 plan by former Trump EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler.
WCW and conservative journalist Laura Loomer have been engaging lawmakers and officials to transform Fauci’s infamous “Monkey Island” in South Carolina into a sanctuary, allowing the 3,700 primates there to live undisturbed rather than being shipped to labs for experimentation, according to a report from The New Yorker.
This week, WCW renewed its push for the U.S. Navy to terminate its 60-year-old, $40 million annual “Marine Mammal Program,” which involves experimenting on and training dolphins and sea lions for tasks like detecting objects in harbors.
WCW investigations revealed some animals were captured from the wild or sourced from SeaWorld.
For over a decade, the Navy has sought to replace the program with drones and AI, but Congress previously mandated its continuation. With that prohibition lifted, WCW urges retirement of the animals.
WCW president and founder Anthony Bellotti, a former Republican political strategist who started WCW after working in a taxpayer-funded animal lab, told Gateway, “Taxpayers bought these animals, and we want Uncle Sam to give them back. Dogs, cats, primates, and other animals abused in wasteful government experiments deserve a second chance and we’re grateful to President Trump and his team for continuing to work with WCW and prioritize efforts to shut down labs and save the survivors.”
These advancements echo the groundbreaking collaborations of the first Trump administration with WCW.
A WCW probe forced the FDA to end nicotine addiction experiments on baby squirrel monkeys and retire survivors to a sanctuary – a federal first.
In 2019, Trump’s USDA shuttered its largest cat laboratory after WCW exposed a $22 million boondoggle involving purchasing dog and cat meat from Chinese wet markets, shipping it back, and force-feeding it to kittens in a Maryland lab – dubbed the “Kitten Slaughterhouse,” where over 5,000 animals perished.
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WCW’s Bellotti adopted two cats liberated from this decades-old program.
WCW also led successful efforts to enact agency-wide lab animal retirement policies at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Department of Defense (DOD). Because of these wins, many dogs, cats, and primates have been rescued from government laboratories.
Despite the historic progress made under the first Trump admin, PETA said in a now-deleted 2021 social media post that, “Unfortunately, Trump did nothing to stop animal experimentation.”
Another PETA Lie: ‘Trump Did Nothing to Stop Animal Experimentation’
More recently, as Gateway reported, PETA is publicly bashing WCW for its criticism of NIH official Nicole Kleinstreuer, a Democrat donor and Dr. Anthony Fauci fangirl, saying, “Have they lost their f-cking minds?” and saying, “White Coat Waste has young-male-testosterone energy.”
As Trump restores America First policies, these reforms prove that cutting government waste and ending animal cruelty go hand in hand – delivering wins for taxpayers, animals, and common sense alike, while leaving liberal critics like PETA in the dust.
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