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Justin Goodman, playing off of a popular slogan with the same acronym, called<\/a> it the \u201cMaking America Greater for Animals\u201d movement.\u00a0<\/p>\n Goodman is the senior vice president for advocacy and public policy at the White Coat Waste Project, which opposes the use of animals in scientific research. He previously worked<\/a> as director of laboratory investigations at PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). Goodman was commenting in an article<\/a> about the May 27 announcement<\/a> by John Phelan, President Donald Trump\u2019s Secretary of the U.S. Navy.<\/p>\n \u201cToday, it gives me great pleasure to terminate all Department of the Navy\u2019s testing on cats and dogs, saving taxpayer dollars and ending these inhumane studies,\u201d said Phelan, a major donor to Trump\u2019s campaign who landed<\/a> the job despite an absence of military experience. \u201cIn addition to this termination, I\u2019m directing the Surgeon General of the Navy to conduct a comprehensive review of all medical research programs to ensure they align with ethical guidelines, scientific necessity, and our core values of integrity and readiness.\u201d<\/p>\n In a post on X<\/a> which included a short video of him making these remarks and signing a document that made it official, Phelan wrote: \u201cI commend @POTUS, @SecDef and @DOGE for bringing this to light.\u201d<\/p>\n Actually, as the folks at White Coat Waste make clear, a lot of people put their shoulder to the wheel to make this happen. \u201c[We] built a \u2018strange bedfellows\u2019 coalition for cats and dogs abused by the Navy,\u201d the group declared<\/a> in a blog post. \u201cWe united these MAGA leaders, Rand Paul libertarians, and liberal icons such as Ben Cohen<\/a>, the legendary Ben & Jerry\u2019s co-founder.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, Cohen teamed up with Goodman to pen a February opinion piece<\/a> for Newsweek<\/em> identifying some government-funded research projects involving animals that might legitimately count as waste, fraud, and abuse.<\/p>\n Exhibit A, they said, is the more than $10 million spent on constipation experiments on cats at the University of Pittsburgh which the White Coat Waste Project exposed<\/a> in 2024. These involved sticking marbles up the rear ends of the felines and then electroshocking them into pooping the marbles out. Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, in flagging these studies in his annual report<\/a> on wasteful government spending, cited one permutation in which the university\u2019s researchers \u201csliced open the backs of male cats to expose their spinal cords then inserted electrodes which fired off electric shocks while the incision was still open to make cats have an erection.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The Newsweek<\/em> piece argued that these and other studies involving animals were legitimate targets for Trump\u2019s newly created Department of Government Efficiency. And in fact, DOGE guru Elon did play a critical role<\/a> in recent efforts to put the kibosh on government-funded research involving animals that groups like the White Coat Waste Project and PETA have long decried as cruel and unnecessary.\u00a0<\/p>\n Another key player in the decision was influencer Laura Loomer, one of the far right\u2019s shrillest voices. In a May 2 article<\/a> on her website, Loomer wrote that Trump Administration officials, in a \u201cdisturbing betrayal,\u201d had renewed funding<\/a> for the University of Pittsburgh\u2019s cat experiments, which had been set to end that month. In a post<\/a> on X that same day, Loomer urged \u201c\u2066@elonmusk\u2069 \u2066@PeteHegseth\u2069 and \u2066@realDonaldTrump\u2069 to investigate this animal abuse and to END ALL FUNDING ASAP.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Musk promptly responded<\/a>: \u201cWill ask @DOGE to put an end to animal cruelty.\u201d On May 17, the DOD Rapid Response<\/a>, an official account within the Department of Defense, issued this reply<\/a> to Loomer\u2019s post: \u201cThis is canceled. All waste at DOD is being removed.\u201d<\/p>\n Ten days later, Phelan issued his ban on the research use of cats and dogs. Loomer posted<\/a> that his office contacted her to say that it was her advocacy\u2014and White Coat Waste Project\u2019s investigation\u2014that prompted this move.<\/p>\n But it is hardly an isolated case. Across the board, the Trump Administration has been cracking down<\/a> on federal funding for research involving the use of animals, much to the satisfaction of animal rights activists.\u00a0<\/p>\n On April 10, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a part of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced via a press release<\/a> that it \u201cis taking a groundbreaking step to advance public health by replacing animal testing in the development of monoclonal-antibody therapies and other drugs with more effective, human-relevant methods.\u201d It said the agency\u2019s current animal testing requirements \u201cwill be reduced, refined, or potentially replaced using a range of approaches.\u201d<\/p>\n On April 29, another HHS agency, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), put out a news release<\/a> stating that it is \u201cadopting a new initiative to expand innovative, human-based science while reducing animal use in research.\u201d The release quotes NIH director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, as saying: \u201cFor decades, our biomedical research system has relied heavily on animal models. With this initiative, NIH is ushering in a new era of innovation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cChampagne corks are popping at PETA,\u201d declared<\/a> the group\u2019s senior vice president, Kathy Guillermo, in response to the NIH announcement. \u201cThis long-overdue reset for U.S. research will open doors to cutting-edge methods that have languished due to a lack of funding. We look forward to ending the caging and tormenting of animals in experiments, which failed to deliver cures for human disease.\u201d<\/p>\n Eric Sandgren, a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison\u2019s School of Veterinary Medicine who headed the university\u2019s animal research operations for a decade until 2016, downplays the significance of these developments. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing new there,\u201d he told me, noting that researchers have long been moving away from the use of animals as other models have become viable. \u201cThis just formalizes something that\u2019s happening already.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet Sandgren, a researcher who has used and defended the use of animals in research for decades (he still serves on the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine\u2019s animal care and use committee), nonetheless sees these \u201caspirational\u201d directives as a positive. \u201cFor the last ten years, I\u2019ve been hearing discussions about how [researchers] have to phase out animals,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I think that is the way to go. It\u2019s going to spur more people to say, \u2018Oh, yeah, we really have to take it seriously.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n In addition to Musk and Loomer, the efforts by White Coat Waste to end federal funding for research involving animals have been embraced<\/a> by other prominent right-wing voices, including Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, Representative Paul Gosar, Republican of Arizona, Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, and Trump adviser Roger Stone. But it is not just Republicans who support this cause. Last year, Mace and Representative Jared Moskowitz, Democrat of Florida, introduced<\/a> a bill in Congress calling an end to nearly all federal funding of research using cats and dogs. The bill<\/a>, known as the Preventing Animal Abuse and Waste (PAAW) Act, drew bipartisan support and was referred to committee, but did not ever come to a vote.<\/p>\n There is no reason to believe that Trump, who reportedly does not like<\/a> dogs or cats, cares about the suffering of animals\u2014although he has come out strongly<\/a> against their being eaten by Haitian immigrants. But cutting funding for experiments that a broad swath of the public and even many researchers see as wasteful does comport with his larger mission to advance his own reputation by saying no to certain kinds of federal spending.<\/p>\n Similarly, some of the opposition to animal research is tied to Republican antipathy to Anthony Fauci, a man they seem to regard<\/a> as history\u2019s greatest monster. Fauci, in his former role as director of the NIH\u2019s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, <\/a>oversaw<\/a> controversial experiments that involved the use of animals.<\/p>\n And no doubt some GOP opposition to animal research comes from the desire to oppose something, anything, that gets one in the news. Mace, for instance, is so starved for attention that she ordered<\/a> her staff to create fake social media accounts to monitor and respond to things said about her online, according to a recent article<\/a> in Wired<\/em>.<\/p>\n When I asked Anthony Bellotti, the founder and president of White Coat Waste, about the motivation of the rightwingers who oppose research involving animals, I expected him to say that, like lots of other people, they love their cats and dogs. His actual answer was different: \u201cI don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t care. I mean, animals don\u2019t care about motive. They care about victory.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Bellotti says he studied political opinion polls that showed there was a gap in support for ending animal testing, with more Democrats than Republicans being in favor, \u201cbut it was a closeable gap and a winnable gap.\u201d And so he and Goodman developed an \u201cexplicit strategy\u201d of reaching out to Republicans and others on the right. The goal was \u201cto end the culture of losing in the anti-vivisection movement\u201d by \u201cmeeting people where they are, not where you want them to be.\u201d<\/p>\n So White Coat Waste reframed the issue as being about wasteful spending, with a strong moral component. The core message: \u201cThe government is forcing you to spend money to pay for something you don\u2019t like, don\u2019t need, and don\u2019t want: this reprehensible, immoral animal testing.\u201d The issue, he says, is \u201cnot about partisanship. It\u2019s about post-partisanship. It\u2019s pets over partisanship.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a strategy that appears to be working.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Justin Goodman, playing off of a popular slogan with the same acronym, called it the \u201cMaking America Greater for Animals\u201d movement.\u00a0 Goodman is the senior vice president for advocacy and public policy at the White Coat Waste Project, which opposes the use of animals in scientific research. He previously worked as director of laboratory investigations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":278970,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12022],"tags":[1330,19093,36783,42436,16930,23788,13922,5640],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-278969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activist","tag-animal","tag-animal-welfare","tag-bedfellows","tag-bill-lueders","tag-dispatches","tag-politics-government","tag-rights","tag-strange"],"yoast_head":"\n