• Thanks to years of White Coat Waste’s (WCW) relentless investigations, grassroots pressure, and lobbying, President Trump just signed legislation that cuts funding for the Department of Defense’s (DOD) painful dog and cat experiments
• The WCW-backed measure is the first ever to defund the DOD’s dog and cat testing.
• The move is the culmination of years of WCW’s blockbuster investigations, campaigning, and bipartisan work with Congress.
• Earlier this year, Trump’s Pentagon credited WCW with prompting the cancellation of a $10 million cat constipation experiment, the US Navy’s dog and cat testing ban, and millions more in cuts to painful, deadly experiments on dogs and cats in the U.S. and worldwide. 
• Despite this progress, the Defense Department is still funding millions in contracts for dog and cat testing and this bill would cut the spending.
• WCW is the first and only group to expose and end the Pentagon’s wasteful spending on dog and cat experiments in U.S. and foreign labs, and to lobby for laws to defund them.  
• During the first Trump administration, WCW worked with Congress to successfully enact first-of-its-kind legislation defunding dog, cat, and primate experiments across another federal agency, the Department of Veterans Affairs.
• WCW’s top priority for the Trump Administration is defunding dog and cat testing.

UPDATE (12/18/25): President Donald Trump has signed the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act into law, cutting funding for the Defense Department’s painful testing on dogs and cats following a years-long White Cat Waste campaign.

ORIGINAL POST (12/10/25)

Thanks to years of White Coat Waste’s (WCW) relentless investigations, grassroots pressure, and lobbying, the U.S. House and Senate just voted to cut funding for the Department of Defense’s (DOD) painful dog and cat experiments with its passage of the 2026 Defense policy bill.

If the National Defense Authorization Act is signed into law by President Trump, as is expected, the WCW-backed measure will be the first ever to defund the DOD’s dog and cat testing.

This hard-fought win didn’t happen overnight. WCW started—and is still winning—the lobbying and advocacy campaign to end the Pentagon’s pet abuse.

In 2023, WCW successfully sued the DOD for documents detailing its deadly cat experiments. Then, in 2024, WCW’s exposés of the agency’s dog and cat labs prompted the House to vote to defund the Pentagon’s pet experiments in the Defense policy bill. The text was cut out of the final bill late last year, despite broad bipartisan support.

This year, we came back with a roar. 

In February, at a bipartisan House Oversight Committee hearing chaired by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), WCW testified about the DOD’s wasteful $10 million constipation experiments on cats. Later that month, we joined forces with Ben and Jerry’s progressive co-founder Ben Cohen to urge the Pentagon to cut funding for these and other animal tests. 

Then, in May, President Donald Trump’s U.S. Navy canceled the $10 million contract exposed by WCW and Laura Loomer. Days later, the agency banned all dog and cat testing, directly crediting WCW for the moves. This made the Navy the first agency ever to prohibit all testing on pets. That same month, WCW also successfully ended a DOD-funded contract for cruel drug testing on 300 beagles a week in China.

Thank you to @RobertKennedyJr, @DOGE, @LauraLoomer, @WhiteCoatWaste, and @SenRandPaul, among others, for bringing the issue of animal abuse to our attention, leading to @SecNav’s decision to ban medical research testing on cats and dogs.

Also, thanks @mattgaetz for having me on… pic.twitter.com/hEOtAU19fW

— ARCHIVE: NavSecSpox (@SecNavSpox) May 31, 2025

In July, just days after a WCW investigation uncovered over $57 million in active Army and Pentagon-funded dog and cat experiments in labs worldwide, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cut millions in contracts for the cruel tests we exposed and specifically credited WCW for bringing them to his attention. 

The active DOD-funded experiments unearthed by WCW included implanting electrodes in cats’ heads and blasting them with loud noises, poisoning beagles with experimental drugs, intentionally detaching dogs’ retinas, slicing dogs’ muscles, and other barbaric abuses. 

In a Senate hearing, Sec. Hegseth even cited the Navy-funded cat constipation experiments exposed and ended by WCW as a prime example of wasteful spending. 

“@SenRandPaul thanked @PeteHegseth for highlighting the spending that he worked with White Coat Waste, an organization dedicated to ending taxpayer-funded animal testing, to expose”

📰 Hegseth Says DOD Was Spending Tens of Millions Sticking Marbles Inside the Rear Ends of Cats… pic.twitter.com/iB1Ia2cnQC

— White Coat Waste (@WhiteCoatWaste) June 12, 2025

Despite this progress, we’ve documented that the Defense Department is still funding millions in contracts for dog and cat testing.

So throughout the year, we successfully worked behind the scenes with bipartisan lawmakers, including Congresswoman Nancy Mace (R-SC), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, to include language in the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act—the annual must-pass DOD policy bill—to cut funding for painful pet experiments across the entire Pentagon.   

We worked with Rep. Mace, Senate Armed Services Committee member Joni Ernst (R-IA), and others to ensure the life-saving and cost-saving measure was preserved in the final bill that got to the president’s desk—and it was! 

WCW’s historic campaign against the Pentagon’s painful pet testing united a big tent coalition: Elon Musk, Laura Loomer, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), dozens of bipartisan House members from Matt Gaetz (R-FL) to Don Davis (D-NC), thousands of taxpayers from across the political spectrum, and military veterans.

Our top priority for the new Trump Administration is defunding dog and cat testing, and we’re delivering.  

WCW’s latest win is great news for taxpayers and pet owners, as it sends a message to the big-spending animal abusers across the federal government: