Republican Lawmakers Aim to Block Transgender Animal Testing Funding in 2027 Spending Bill

A group of Republican lawmakers, led by Rep. Paul Gosar from Arizona, is pushing to prevent federal funding for transgender animal testing in the upcoming fiscal year 2027 spending bill. This effort, supported by Lisa McClain, the Republican Conference Chair from Michigan, along with over a dozen others, seeks to include provisions that would ban federal funds for research focused on “drugs, surgeries, and other interventions” to alter the human body in animals.

“Tax dollars should not fund the Biden administration’s troubling transgender animal experiments,” Gosar stated in a communication. He expressed his ongoing collaboration with White Coat Waste to stop what he described as wasteful spending on what he called “woke pseudoscience.”

Recently, it was reported that the NIH had allocated over $584,000 to the University of California, San Diego for research on the effects of hormone therapy on mice. This news reignited frustrations among lawmakers who are now calling for a concrete ban on such testing, which has also been referenced in the Labor, Health, Welfare, and Education Appropriations Act of 2026.

This letter follows an investigation by White Coat Waste and the House Oversight Committee, which revealed that the NIH, under Dr. Anthony Fauci’s leadership, funded millions in experiments to create transgender mice, rats, and monkeys, meant to “mimic transgender human children and adults.”

Former President Trump had criticized NIH spending on these studies during his 2025 State of the Union address, proposing cuts to transgender animal research funding. A federal judge later mandated the continuation of many NIH studies, including those involving transgender mice, but this ruling only applied to the current fiscal year.

Goodman from the White Coat Waste Project critiqued the NIH for allocating further taxpayer dollars to such experiments. He noted that the funding will have dire implications for nearly 10,000 rats, subjecting them to invasive surgeries and hormone treatments to replicate transgender procedures, which includes rather gruesome methods.

An NIH spokesperson stated that the agency is increasingly investing in alternatives to traditional animal testing, emphasizing a $150 million investment to expand human-based methodology for more accurate and relevant scientific studies.