Quick, name one thing that 80% of Americans agree on. The weather? Pizza? You'd struggle. Yet here's a number that should make every politician in Washington sit up: eight out of ten Americans want the federal government to stop funding experiments on animals — and the National Institutes of
Health is still cutting checks to breed beagles and drill into their skulls.
Eight. Out. Of. Ten. You can't get 80% of Americans to agree that water is wet, and somehow you've got grandma in Ohio and the purple-haired vegan in
Portland holding hands on this one.
The number comes from a 2024 Morning Consult survey: 80% of Americans want a plan to phase out animal experiments, and 85% want federal research dollars going to methods that don't involve a beagle on an operating table. That's not a "both sides" issue. That's a layup. That's a free throw with nobody guarding the basket.
So naturally, the federal government is doing the opposite.
In FY2026 alone, the NIH handed $584,117 to UC San Diego for experiments involving nearly 10,000 animals — invasive surgeries, hormone injections, and yes, skull drilling. Your money. The taxes you paid so you could maybe, possibly, one day see a return on the investment. And what did you get? A grant for drilling into the heads of nearly ten thousand animals. Ka-ching!
Want to know who originally signed off on this gravy train? Dr. Anthony Fauci. Of course it was. The man never met a taxpayer dollar he didn't want to funnel into a lab, and the funding has happily chugged along under the new management ever since.
Then there's Ridglan Farms up in Wisconsin — a facility that bred an estimated 2,000 beagles for the sole purpose of selling them to research labs.
Cited for hundreds — hundreds! — of animal welfare violations. The place surrendered its state breeding license to dodge prosecution, then kept right on shipping dogs to federally funded labs anyway. (Nothing says "we take this seriously" like handing in your license and continuing to do the exact thing your license was for.)
Now, here's the part that drives Bob nuts. The momentum is already there. The wins are sitting on the table.
The NIH shut down its last in-house beagle lab back in May. The Navy announced it's done using dogs and cats in research. The FDA is phasing out animal testing requirements for certain antibody treatments. The dominoes are falling on their own. All somebody has to do is walk over and knock the last one down.
Enter Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), backed by Conference Chair Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) and more than a dozen colleagues, who want to ban federal funding for animal experiments in the FY2027 spending bill. A popular idea. A cheap idea. An idea that makes you look good in front of 80% of the country.
You'd think Republicans would be tripping over each other to sign on.
And what about RFK Jr.? Remember him? The guy who promised to clean all this up and "Make America Healthy Again"? He's talked a big game about cutting unnecessary testing. Talked. The receipts have yet to arrive. We're still waiting, Bobby. The beagles are still waiting too, and they don't have a lot of time.
Here's the thing the political geniuses keep missing: this isn't about hugging trees. This is about a federal bureaucracy that takes your paycheck, lights it on fire, and uses the warmth to drill into a dog's head — while 80% of you, left and right, beg them to knock it off.
Republicans want a win they can actually own? One that doesn't require a single focus group? Here it is. Stop funding the beagle factory. Sign the bill. Take the easy one for once.
Because if you can't get this done with 80% of America behind you, what exactly are you up there doing?
