PETA first at Mar-a-Lago to urge DOGE stop NIH animal tests

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PETA isn’t waiting around for President-elect Donald Trump and his government waste czars to take their posts in Washington next month.

Jumping the gun, the animal rights group drove its advocacy van to the Trump winter White House at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, to urge the incoming president and his Department of Government Efficiency to focus first on ending costly animal testing at the National Institutes of Health when they take over from the Biden administration.

“President Trump: NIH Doesn’t Give a Rat’s A** About Waste. Cut $23 Billion,” said panels on an advertising truck the group drove around the president’s resort on South Ocean Boulevard. It also showed the image of a cute white rat.

“Ending the waste at NIH starts with slamming the brakes on the runaway gravy train that funnels billions of taxpayer dollars each year into cruel, worthless experiments on animals,” said PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA urges President-elect Trump to redirect taxpayer funds to modern research that will both spare animals and speed up treatments and cures for humans.”

While it’s likely far down the list of cuts DOGE leaders Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are considering, PETA hopes its simple effort will push animal testing up their list.

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The group claims that NIH “squanders” nearly half its annual budget on projects involving animal experiments. It has urged the agency to switch to more animal-friendly testing and science.

In addition to fighting against rat tests, PETA has made a federal case out of testing on monkeys at NIH. It describes those tests as “pointless studies funded by NIH include forcing monkeys to stare at photos of candidates to see if they can predict winners, ripping infant monkeys from their mothers and forcing them to wear strobe-effect goggles for 12 hours a day, and relentlessly shocking the feet of mice, supposedly to cause panic attacks.”



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