PETA’s Latest Hoax Exposed: Liberal Animal Rights Group Falsely Claims Trump Funding Russian Cat Torture, But White Coat Waste and Republican Lawmakers Ended It Years Ago
PETA is up to its same old tricks, once again making questionable claims and repackaging other groups’ work as its own.
On Friday, the liberal animal rights group published a new webpage stating, “Your Tax Dollars Fund Russian Experiments on Cats—Tell NIH No More!” and posted on social media that, “a foreign experimenter funded by the U.S. government, is mutilating…cats in Russia.”
Tatiana Deliagina, a foreign experimenter funded by the U.S. government, is mutilating rabbits in Sweden & cats in Russia.
Rabbits’ backs are cut open, their brains drilled, electrodes implanted, & are left to suffer—cats endure similar torture
This NEEDS to end! pic.twitter.com/IL46Bja1L8
— PETA (@peta) January 16, 2026
The problem is that PETA’s claim seems to be false.
The NIH hasn’t funded these cat experiments in Russia for three years since the conservative watchdog group White Coat Waste first exposed and cut the funding.
WCW’s Senior Vice President Justin Goodman quickly jumped in on PETA’s social media posts to set the record straight.
I hate to defend NIH, but this is fake news from PETA.
In 2022, @WhiteCoatWaste exposed NIH funding for these exact Russian cat experiments, and in 2023, cut the funding for this lab and all other animal labs in Russia.https://t.co/wZJXnStzZM https://t.co/OGsEUIl0Ai pic.twitter.com/fNS13gpy6b
— Justin Goodman (@JustinRGoodman) January 16, 2026
Back in early 2022, WCW obtained records showing how the NIH was funding cat experiments at the Russian-government-tied Pavlov Institute of Physiology.
The group then led a grassroots campaign and lobbying effort that attracted support from both Republican and Democrat members of Congress.
WCW’s efforts, with people like GOP Conference Chair Rep. Lisa McClain and Senator Joni Ernst, ultimately led to the funding for those cat experiments and all other animal testing in Russia to be cut in 2023.
Since then, all Russian animal labs have been ineligible to receive any NIH funding, directly or indirectly.
PETA’s misleading new webpage claiming that “your tax dollars fund Russian experiments on cats” appears to be based on two 2025 research papers that actually say they used old data collected years earlier, before the NIH funding was cut.
The recent publications PETA is relying on also reference grant funding for cat experiments in Russia that WCW already led a successful campaign to cut back in 2023. The most recent version of the relevant NIH grant documents, obtained by WCW under the Freedom of Information Act, does not mention funding cat experiments in Russia or anywhere else, nor do federal funding databases.
PETA’s new campaign appears to be based on sloppy research at best, and a blatant lie at worst.
This isn’t the first time PETA spread fake news and tried to take credit for WCW’s work.
Last year, Gateway Pundit reported how in a now-deleted X post from November 2021, PETA wrote “Trump did nothing to stop animal experimentation.” This statement came after the first Trump Administration took historic steps to eliminate some of the government’s worst animal testing with the help of WCW.
In May, independent journalist Laura Loomer posted a viral tweet showing that PETA was taking credit for WCW’s victory at shutting down the NIH’s last in-house beagle testing lab.
Wow. This is such an egregious lie by @peta . PETA has a $75 million budget and they didn’t do anything to get the NIH septic shock experiments on beagles inside @NIH headquarters shut down.
It was uncovered by @WhiteCoatWaste . White Coat Waste met with lawmakers on both… https://t.co/sN8MCy0q4f pic.twitter.com/DMfZS4TdkP
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) May 4, 2025
As Gateway reported, PETA attempted to criticize WCW this past fall in a New Yorker article, stating, “White Coat Waste has young-male-testosterone energy, and it seems like they attack all the other groups for fundraising purposes.”
Goodman responded at the time by telling The Gateway Pundit:
“We’re proud of our hard-hitting campaigns and historic victories against government animal labs that made this issue high politics, front page news, and won the support of President Trump, his family, and his administration. We’ll never apologize for aggressively fighting to save animals from government abuse and to hold federal bureaucrats accountable for lying to taxpayers and wasting animals’ lives and taxpayers’ money. PETA hates us because they ain’t us.”
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