Animals could be unlikely winners in Trump 2.0

OPINION:

As readers most likely are aware, 43 primates vanished early last month from a notorious taxpayer-funded research compound near my home in South Carolina’s low country. As such bizarre events do, it attracted global fascination, and evening news broadcasts and late-night talk show hosts followed along. It is almost comedic how the primates essentially ran rampant in my backyard for weeks — four are still at large at the time of this writing — yet it is anything but.

Thankfully, the incident and the outrage it generated apparently caught the attention of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team, and it appears that unnecessary, costly and cruel government animal tests conducted worldwide are in the crosshairs of the informal Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

The White Coat Waste Project, a nonpartisan group considered a four-star Charity by Charity Navigator and perhaps the most effective nonprofit you’ve never heard of, can claim a lot of credit for the Trump team’s attention to the South Carolina incident and the broader problem.

You see, the people at the White Coat Waste Project, or the WCW — who first exposed Dr. Anthony Fauci’s funding of beagle abuse and gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China — uncovered that the shady South Carolina monkey lab’s top funder is the government. This includes a $23 million contract to manage Dr. Fauci’s “Monkey Island,” which holds 3,300 monkeys on a highly guarded private island off the South Carolina coast (where I live part time) for later use in dangerous virus research in government biolabs.

The WCW has been working with Republican lawmakers like my congresswoman, Nancy Mace, for years to expose and cut this spending, so when the story broke, it stepped up armed with the facts. The media ate it up. Citizens were disgusted. Mr. Trump took notice.

While many heard of the WCW for the first time through coverage of the monkey escape, the group is not that new to the scene.

As The Washington Times reported, Joni Ernst, Iowa Republican and chair of the Senate Delivering Outstanding Government Efficiency Caucus, and the WCW recently highlighted 10 insanely stupid and wasteful primate projects the government funded in the U.S. and China that have squandered over $100 million. The list included Monkey Island and other labs doing critically important work with our money such as feeding THC edibles to pregnant monkeys and studying the history of homosexual behavior in monkeys.

Sen. Rand Paul’s annual Festivus report lampooning government waste has frequently featured taxpayer-funded animal experiments uncovered by the WCW, and this year is no different. The Kentucky Republican’s report, released earlier this week, includes a $10 million “constipation experiment” on cats being funded by the Pentagon and a National Institutes of Health grant. (We have been paying to make cats nauseated by furiously spinning them around in motion sickness tests.)

Under Mr. Trump’s first administration, the WCW made historic progress to end taxpayer-funded animal research. With support from agency chiefs and Trump allies known for their commitment to animal welfare such as his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, adviser Roger Stone and others, the WCW exposed and shut down a host of nonsense, saved a lot of money and ended a hell of a lot of animal cruelty.

Shockingly, the Biden-Harris administration attempted to roll back a lot of that progress, but in many cases, the WCW fought back and won. This year alone, the group stopped the Department of Veterans Affairs from resuming cat experiments and intercepted a Fauci-funded plan to revive kitten experiments, two of the aforementioned programs ended under Trump 1.0. 

Here’s the thing for conservatives to pay attention to: The WCW fights for animal welfare much differently from the way that tends to make headlines. The people at the WCW keep their clothes on and don’t throw paint at others. They aren’t gun-grabbers, food police or angry screamers like, say, PETA activists. And the WCW isn’t even trying to ban all animal testing; it just doesn’t believe taxpayers should pay billions for wasteful and unnecessary animal torture.

The group was founded by former Republican political operative Anthony Bellotti, an animal lover and lifelong waste hawk. It’s time for commonsense conservatives to co-opt leadership of the animal welfare movement, and Mr. Bellotti and his colleagues are helping to clear that path. 

DOGE leaders Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have tweeted out projects exposed by the WCW as poster children for government waste. And the WCW recently brought a beagle rescued from Dr. Fauci’s lab supplier to meet with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Republican, the recently appointed chair of the House’s DOGE subcommittee.

Cabinet nominees Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Marty Makary and Mr. Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric are among the many MAGA supporters of the WCW’s work. Animals could end up being unlikely winners in Trump 2.0 and animal welfare given the level of priority and seriousness it needs and deserves.

• Christian Josi is a veteran public affairs and media relations professional as well as a globe-trotting singer. He writes often for a variety of publications.