WJLA’s 7News I-Team has aired a detailed investigation this week into taxpayer-funded experiments on kittens at the National Institutes of Health.
The investigation raises serious questions about research that many Americans believed ended years ago.
Investigative reporter Scott Taylor detailed how newly obtained NIH records from White Coat Waste, a watchdog organization seeking to end cruel taxpayer-funded animal research, show the agency has been quietly continuing toxoplasmosis vaccine development studies on cats inside its Bethesda, Maryland, campus laboratories.
WATCH:
New Records Raise Questions About NIH’s Kitten Research in Maryland
Seven years ago, our @7NewsDC investigation helped expose and shut down a controversial @USDA program that bred, infected, and killed thousands of kittens for taxpayer-funded research.
Many Americans… pic.twitter.com/wtqEY2FnEB
— Scott Taylor (@ScottTaylorTV) July 9, 2026
The I-Team report builds directly on The Gateway Pundit’s May exclusive revealing that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases quietly moved the kitten experiments from the USDA’s Beltsville lab, which was shut down during the first Trump administration after White Coat Waste exposed it and public pressure forced the remaining cats to be adopted out, into NIH’s own internal facilities.
Records obtained by White Coat Waste through FOIA requests confirm the protocols were resurrected in 2021 by NIAID scientist Dr. Michael Grigg and remain approved through the end of 2026.
“NIH quietly insourced those experiments to its facility in Bethesda and restarted them after Congress, the public, and the press were told they were shut down,” Justin Goodman, senior vice president of advocacy and public policy for White Coat Waste Project, told WJLA.
Goodman added, “The NIH obviously knows it would be a scandal if people found out that they were testing on cats in experiments that everyone was told were finished.”
WATCH:
Trump’s NIH leaders are flagrantly defying him.
“They’re defying Congress.”
“They’re defying taxpayers.”
They’re still funding gruesome experiments on cats that they told us they had stopped.
WCW Senior VP Justin Goodman just told reporter Scott Taylor: “The NIH obviously… pic.twitter.com/PKSJk9gbE2
— White Coat Waste (@WhiteCoatWaste) July 10, 2026
According to the documents highlighted in the WJLA investigation, NIH researchers requested approval to use 54 cats across two studies titled “Toxoplasmosis Vaccine Development in Cats.”
Specific purchases include six two-month-old female cats in 2022 and four five-month-old female cats in October 2024.
The experiments involve force-feeding infected scrambled mouse brains to the cats, then isolating the cats and monitoring their feces for Toxoplasma gondii.
Despite the approved protocols running through the end of this year, NIH has neither confirmed nor denied that the research is actively ongoing.
White Coat Waste’s investigation found that an NIH in-house lab has been buying kittens from Marshall Farms, the controversial lab-animal supplier now under scrutiny by Rep. Nick Langworthy, specifically to conduct these experiments for Big Pharma vaccine development.
WATCH:
THEY SAID IT WAS OVER. NEW RECORDS AT NIH RAISE QUESTIONS ABOUT WHETHER IT REALLY WAS????
Back in 2019, the @7NewsDC I-Team & @WhiteCoatWaste helped expose and shut down controversial federal kitten experiments that led to the USDA shutting down the research and adopting out the… pic.twitter.com/LjmoU0r5k4
— Scott Taylor (@ScottTaylorTV) July 10, 2026
The television coverage aired as White Coat Waste exposes the broken promises of NIH’s animal-testing czar, Nicole Kleinstreuer.
One year ago, Kleinstreuer, a Fauci fangirl, claimed she was “working tirelessly” to phase out experimentation on cats and kittens.
Instead, investigators uncovered over $150 million in new taxpayer funding for dog and cat labs under her watch.
White Coat Waste President and Founder Anthony Bellotti issued the following statement to The Gateway Pundit:
Exactly one year ago, Nicole Kleinstreuer — the NIH’s anti-Trump, pro-Fauci “animal testing czar” — claimed she was “working tirelessly” to phase out experimentation on cats and kittens. Instead, we uncovered over $150 million in new taxpayer funding for dog and cat labs under Kleinstreuer’s watch. She broke her promise — in open defiance of President Trump.
A new White Coat Waste investigation exposed yet another federal cat lab scandal: an NIH in-house lab spent taxpayer money buying kittens from Marshall Farms — the despicable pet profiteer under scrutiny by Rep. Nick Langworthy — and has been force-feeding them scrambled mouse brains. And for what? Another big government handout for a Big Pharma vaccine.
Now, the Kleinstreuer NIH is defending these Fauci-era experiments, while PETA and the legacy animal rights groups continue to clap for her.
This fight is personal to me. I adopted Delilah and Petite — the two cat survivors featured in Gateway Pundit and the new WJLA television report covering this scandal — after a White Coat Waste campaign shut down nearly identical toxoplasmosis experiments at USDA’s Fauci-funded cat lab during the first Trump administration.
Once again, White Coat Waste is leading the fight for the NIH cats. The solution is simple: Stop the money. Stop the madness.
Scientific advances now allow greater use of computational methods, cell cultures, and other non-animal alternatives for testing.
Dr. Thomas Hartung, director of Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, told WJLA, “The animal experiments are more or less the technology of the 20th century.”
“Over the last 20 years, we have had both computational methods and cell culture methods, which are growing incredibly fast,” Dr. Hartung continued. “Science finds many strategies. This is the beautiful thing. We are not locked into one model because we did it that way 20 years ago. We now have technologies to do it faster.”
Hartung explained that, despite decades of cat-based research aimed at developing a vaccine, scientists have still been unable to do so for either cats or humans.
The White Coat Waste backed Preventing Animal Abuse and Waste Act congressional bill to defund all painful cat and dog experiments at NIH is advancing toward House debate.
