Dogs & cat use in labs is up under Trump/Kennedy, says White Coat Waste

Former Trump ally details new use of beagles & kittens in report MAHA Betrayed

WASHINGTON D.C.––Apologists for the abysmal record of the second Donald Trump administration on animal issues have thus far tended to offset harm to wildlife,  farmed animals,  and horses,  both wild and domestic,  by citing purported huge reductions in animal use for biomedical research since Trump appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health & Human Services.

That myth came to an abrupt end with the September 10,  2026 publication of MAHA Betrayed,  a detailed,  downloadable 29-page report from White Coat Waste,  an anti-vivisection organization with strong Republican ties which until now has mostly praised Donald Trump and Trump appointees.

MAHA Betrayed “exposes more than $225 million in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding supporting dog and cat experiments,” since Kennedy’s appointment,  a White Coat Waste media release summarizes.

Line item details

The report itself includes the National Institutes of Health line item details:  grant numbers,  titles,  institutional names,  grant starting and ending dates,  species involved,  and the amount of money for each grant.

“The $225 million includes brand-new grants and contracts,  additional discretionary funding for preexisting awards,  and project extensions for taxpayer-funded dog and cat laboratories — new spending that began during the current Trump administration,”  White Coat Waste said.

“Approximately 44% of the total identified since Secretary Kennedy took office — more than $98 million — consists of new NIH spending on dog testing at pharmaceutical companies,”  White Coat Waste noted.

White Coat Waste “identified over $225 million in new taxpayer dollars for lethal heart-harvesting experiments on dogs,  force-feeding experimental drugs to beagles,  breeding puppies to become blind,  and more — including new discretionary funding for a laboratory,”  at the University of Missouri-Columbia,  “where beagles are fed to ticks,”  the media release alleged,  and MAHA Betrayed confirms.

Invasive cat experiments

“White Coat Waste also identified $11.7 million in new NIH spending on invasive cat experiments:  brain and eye tests on kittens,  severing cats’ spinal cords and then forcing them to walk on treadmills,  forcing felines to cough and hyperventilate through carbon dioxide-pumped ventilators,  and electro-shocking their voice boxes,”  the media release continued.

Further,  White Coat Waste pointed out,  “NIH’s $225 million in new spending on dog and cat experiments exceeds the agency’s highly publicized $150 million ‘investment’ in non-animal methods — also known as new approach methodologies (NAMs) — by more than $75 million.

“Alarmingly,  following the release of beagles from Ridglan Farms,”  in June 2026,  for which Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Lara Trump,  Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law,  questionably claimed credit,  “NIH’s cumulative new spending on dog and cat experiments under Secretary Kennedy spiked by approximately 50%,”  White Coat Waste said,  “from $150 million in June 2026 to more than $225 million by September 2026.”

(See Under-the-table backroom deal frees the last of the Ridglan Farms beagles.)

White Coat Waste founder formerly lauded Kennedy

Anthony Bellotti,  the former Republican campaign strategist who founded and directs the right-leaning White Coat Waste Project,  as recently as November 2025 praised Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for having “delivered on his promise to work with White Coat Waste by completely shutting down the Centers for Disease Control’s primate labs,  where hundreds of victims were infected with smallpox,  hemorrhagic fevers, hepatitis,  and HIV-like viruses at taxpayer expense.”

Bellotti also praised the Donald Trump administration, naming Trump specifically,  in May and June 2025,  after the Department of Defense announced that it had cut funding for what Bellotti called “wasteful and cruel experiments on cats.”

(See Enlisting Trump “blogosphere,” White Coat Waste kills cruel cat experiments and When the cats are away, will vivisectors play more hell with rats & mice?)

With publication of MAHA Betrayed,  however,  White Coat Waste moves from being the most nakedly pro-Trump administration organization in the animal advocacy sector to being among the most explicitly critical.

Pre-election giveaways of wildlife & habitat

The Donald Trump administration has meanwhile continued a blatant series of pre-November 3,  2026 midterm election giveaways of wildlife and habitat protections of unprecedented scope that began on August 13,  2026,  when Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced “the largest expansion of hunting and sport fishing opportunities in the history of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

“With this action,”  the Department of the Interior crowed in a media release,  “more than 92 million acres,  or over 95% of National Wildlife Refuge System lands,  are available for hunting.”

  (See Trump admin opens 95% of National Wildlife Refuges to hunting & fishing.)

Roadless rule rescinded

Five days later,  on August 18,  2026,  Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced that the U.S. Forest Service had proposed to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule,  a federal regulation that prohibits building new roads through designated wilderness,  where old roads do not exist.

Rollins argued that rescinding the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule would improve the ability of the Forest Service to respond to wildfires,  but as Spokane Spokesman Review writer Michael Wright promptly pointed out,  “A study published in the journal Fire Ecology in January 2026 found that wildfire ignitions were more likely to happen near roads,  and that building roads into formerly roadless areas could result in an increase in fire starts.”

The fire threat to formerly roadless areas may have increased exponentially when soon afterward the Forest Service also announced that it would reverse the existing rule governing where off-road motorized vehicles are allowed to go.

Switch flipped

“By default, off-road vehicles are banned unless there is a special exception,”  explained Michael Booth for the Colorado Sun.

“The Trump administration Forest Service now wants to flip that default switch the other direction:  Federal roads and trails would be open to Jeeps,  crawlers,  dirt bikes and other all-terrain vehicles,  unless specific protections are carved out after extensive negotiations and legal action.

“The switch was flipped to ‘protected unless you hear otherwise’ in 2005,”  recalled Booth,  “under the George W. Bush administration.  Environmental groups and clubs for nonmotorized recreation backed the protections to carve out space for endangered species and migrating animals to thrive,  reduce conflicts with hikers,  bikers and horses,  and to wall off quieter backcountry spaces.

“Long-term drought and climate change in the West,  environmental groups responded [to the policy reversal] make the reopening of roads and trails even more dangerous.”

Said Center for Western Priorities communications director Kate Groetzinger,  to Booth,  “Putting hot engines deeper into dry forests during longer and hotter fire seasons will increase wildfire risk.  Western communities will pay for it.”

“Accidentally” killing endangered animals is no longer illegal

In July 2026 the Trump administration rewrote the 53-year-old definition of “harm” to endangered species that underpins the U.S. Endangered Species Act,  and in September 2026 codified the rewrite in a memo from U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service director Brian Nesvik to all personnel who might be involved in enforcing the Endangered Species Act.

“Killing endangered animals while logging a forest or building a dam would not be considered illegal unless the animals were specifically targeted,”  explained Matthew Brown of Associated Press.

“A directive sent to U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service employees,”  Brown detailed,  “says imperiled animals or plants must be intentionally targeted for their killing to be considered illegal.

Running over a manatee “by accident” is now okay

“That is a sharp turnaround from past practice at the wildlife service, which historically held people liable even for accidentally harming protected species such as grizzly bears, manatees,  and spotted owls.”

Wrote Nesvik,  “Felling a tree is not a take of the bats roosting in it unless the tree is felled for the purpose of killing or capturing them,”  since supposedly the bats would only be impacted “indirectly and accidentally.”

The Nesvik memo appears to remove from loggers any and all responsibility for ensuring that endangered wildlife are not roosting in a tree before cutting the tree down.

Losing side of Supreme Court case becomes the law

Added Brown,  “The directive leans heavily on a dissenting opinion from former Justice Antonin Scalia in a 1995 Supreme Court case,”  in other words making the losing side of the court case the new law of the land.

Also in September 2026,  reported Jake Bolster and Peter Aldhous for Inside Climate News,  Donald Trump personally ordered Interior Secretary Burgum “to begin the process of removing gray and Mexican wolves from the endangered species list,  and directed the Agriculture secretary [Brooke Rollins] to encourage states to make it easier for ranchers to shoot wolves.”

“There’s a pattern here”

“There’s a pattern here,”  blogged Humane World for Animals president Kitty Block and Humane World Action Fund president Sara Amundson,  “and it’s about who stands to benefit from these continued assaults on one of America’s most popular laws for animals.

“In November 2025,”  Block and Amundson recounted,  “the Trump administration effectively issued a declaration of war on the Endangered Species Act and other wildlife protection laws,  outlining several lines of attack that could be expected in the months ahead.”

Among the ensuing Trump administration actions,  Block and Amundson noted,  “In late March 2026,  the Trump administration convened the federal Endangered Species Committee,  known as the ‘God Squad,’  for only the fourth time ever.

“The committee took less than 15 minutes to grant sweeping exemptions relieving oil and gas companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico from any further burdens of worrying about the protection of whales,  turtles or other wildlife.

Threatened to sue

“In July 2026,”  Block and Amundson continued,  “the Trump administration eliminated the blanket 4(d) rule,  a regulation instrumental in protecting threatened species.

“As a result,  newly listed threatened species will no longer automatically receive protections from killing, harassment,  or other harms under federal law.”

Humane World for Animals and the subsidiary Humane World Action Fund are among the co-plaintiffs,  Block and Amundson mentioned,  in “a coalition of conservation organizations, represented by Earthjustice,”  that have threatened to sue the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service if the blanket 4(d) rule is not reinstated.

Block and Amundson also mentioned that the Trump administration,  specifically the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service under Nesvik,  in July 2026 “proposed to change Endangered Species Act protections for grizzly bears in the Lower 48 states.

Putting grizzly bears at risk

“The change,”  Block and Amundson explained,  “would establish a tiered system of state-run grizzly bear management,  with seemingly little federal oversight or public participation, that puts grizzly bears into danger from traps,  snares set for wolves and other species,  bait stations, springtime black bear hunts,  and packs of hunting hounds used to hunt black bears and mountain lions.”

Who stands to benefit most from what Block and Amundson called “these continued assaults” on wildlife and habitat is of course the Donald Trump administration.

Trump administration political survival,  requiring holding the majorities in both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives,  hinges on a high November 3,  2026 turnout among mostly white rural male “low information voters.”

These are the demographic most likely to value the opportunity to roar into formerly protected roadless areas and National Wildlife Refuges on off-road vehicles,  guns blazing,  over any other election issues except possibly the soaring prices of beef and gasoline.

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