NIH Dumps New Dog and Cat Lab Funding – RedState

We’ve been tracking ongoing efforts to forgo federal funding for questionable work involving research using, among other creatures, dogs and cats as subjects. This is a question that affects many people, as dogs and cats are our most popular pets; People naturally don’t want to see them used as test subjects.

Thursday on X, investigative journalist, podcaster and activist Laura Loomer reported that the FY 2026 federal budget contains no new funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to conduct research on dogs and cats.

🚨SCOOP: @NIH Reduce funding for future lab tests for dogs and cats following white coat waste campaign and revelations🚨

A new white coat waste @WhiteCoatWaste review of federal grants reveals that @NIH has apparently decided not to fund any new experiments with dogs and cats during the financial year… pic.twitter.com/yHZDJ57Ug1

-Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) January 30, 2026

The post is long, but here are the highlights.

A new white coat waste @WhiteCoatWaste review of federal grants reveals that @NIH has apparently decided not to fund any new experiments with dogs and cats in fiscal year 2026. Sources tell me an official announcement from @NIH on testing in dogs and cats will be available soon, during the second week of February. If this new discovery by White Coat Waste is confirmed by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. @SecKennedy, this would be another big victory against unnecessary and abusive animal testing for WCW and the Trump administration.

Note that this seems to only affect new grants, not existing ones, unless there is something about existing grants in the expected official announcement.

White Coat Waste was the only group to call the NIH and demand that NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya @NIHDirector_Jay and Dr. Nicole Kleinstreuer, certified Trump hater and Fauci lover, immediately ends all funding of new and existing experiments that abuse dogs and cats. In the meantime, @PETA and other anti-Trump left-wing groups let Nicole and Jay off the hook. As I have reported with White Coat Waste since Tax Day last year, Jay Bhattacharya and Nicole Kleinstreuer have continued to defend, support and fund Dr. Anthony Fauci’s laboratories and abusive testing of dogs, cats and other animals in laboratories in the United States and in foreign countries like China, at the expense of American taxpayers.

Note that Loomer criticizes PETA for not opposing this work; despite PETA’s online propaganda, going into details like this isn’t really their business. PETA’s activism stretches, like the Platte River in Nebraska, a mile wide and an inch deep. The organization exists primarily to fund Ingrid Newkirk’s school trips to appear in front of the cameras and occasionally to attend posh Hollywood parties.

This effort to pressure Congress to defund these projects has been going on for some time, led by both members of Congress and activists. Today it seems to be paying off.

Learn more: Bat virus, torment of the Beagle: the new airing of Rand Paul’s grievances

White coat waste reveals dangerous new incident at NIH biolab

There are cases in which biomedical research requires animal subjects, and it should be noted that approximately 95% of animal subjects used in the United States are rats and mice, not dogs and cats. There are good reasons for this; the type of whole-organism systemic modeling that is done can be done with as much precision on mice and rats as it can on cats and dogs. Mice are cheaper, easier to host, cheaper to maintain, and easier to use.

However, with each passing year our need for animal models diminishes. There are still some areas where animal work may be unavoidable, if only because the best computer and AI models we can come up with are ridiculously rudimentary compared to a biological system. But the NIH is notoriously unclear about what precisely it does, and in any case, there is no constitutional justification for Washington to fund this kind of work.

This makes it good news for everyone.

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