Less than a year after the Department of Government Efficiency abruptly halted funding for transgender experiments on animals, intended to improve so-called gender-affirming care for humans, the National Institutes of Health chose to fund at least one again.

The University of California San Diego study of "androgen effects on the reproductive neuroendocrine axis" to fine-tune male hormones for women who identify as men, using mice that were "gonadectomized," injected with testosterone and decapitated, received another $584,117 for fiscal 2026, following the $646,301 it received for fiscal 2025.

Last summer, a federal court ordered NIH to resume funding hundreds of studies including UCSD's trans mice research, saying their termination had been "arbitrary and capricious," but the order applied only to the grants' current budget periods, according to the anti-animal testing White Coat Waste Project, which showed the Jan. 16 approval to Just the News.

NIH funding policy says it has no "legal obligation to provide funding beyond the ending date of the current budget period" and warns grantees that "projected levels of future support are contingent on satisfactory progress, the availability of funds, and the continued best interests of the Federal government."

That means NIH's legal obligation to the UCSD study ended Nov. 30 with its budget end date, said WCW Senior Vice President Justin Goodman.

NIH is also funding a parallel human study by UCSD researchers, last updated Jan. 15, to understand "the mechanism of menstrual disruption" for women who identify as men and receive "testosterone replacement therapy." Flooding female physiology with wrong-sex hormones is known to have severe side effects far beyond menstruation.

They are studying "blood reproductive hormone secretion" in these women before and during hormone therapy, and in female control subjects who do not identify as men.

Stop 'wasting money on this woke pseudoscience': Rep. Gosar

Goodman said the court-ordered resumption of funding for the UCSD trans mice study "seems to undermine" HHS's response to The Gateway Pundit, two months later, about four NIH grants for University of Florida research that floods male macaque monkeys with estrogen to model "feminizing hormone therapy" for men who identify as women.

Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blamed "an Anthony Fauci grant from 2020 that terminated in 2022" for that study, which wasn't published until August 2025, in the medical journal Cell Reports.

Dr. Fauci led the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years, reportedly retiring as the richest federal employee in history by salary, benefits and pension.

HHS further claimed that "none of the funds from these grants are currently funding transgender animal experiments, and no other NIH grants still fund transgender animal experiments," but walked that back after Gateway Pundit noted the court order to resume funding. 

"We believe the one you asked about," the trans monkey research, was part of that order, HHS said, but did not mention the also-reinstated UCSD trans mice research. 

"They haven’t comment[ed] on the UCSD grant at all, and their statement from August indicated they were[n't] funding any more transgender animal tests (which doesn’t appear to be true)," Goodman wrote in an email.

"Tax dollars shouldn’t be funding the Biden Administration's sickening transgender animal tests," Arizona GOP Rep. Paul Gosar said in a statement to Just the News via WCW. He cosponsored the TRANS MICE Act (HR 4512) to ban such research following WCW's investigations, though it hasn't moved since introduction last summer.

"That’s why I’ve been working with White Coat Waste to stop the NIH and other federal agencies from wasting money on this woke pseudoscience ever again," Gosar said.

The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to Just the News queries on whether it favors research into improving gender-affirming care, as illustrated by NIH approving new money for trans mice experiments after its legal obligation ended and for the human study, and whether HHS gave incorrect information to The Gateway Pundit last summer.

"After White Coat Waste exposed it, President Trump quickly put transgender animal tests on the chopping block – and cut them," Goodman said in a lengthy statement. The annual National Defense Authorization Act signed by Trump in December includes a ban on "painful research" on domestic dogs and cats.

"The NIH is openly defying President Trump and blowing up claims from RFK’s team that it had stopped funding transgender animal tests," Goodman said.

Freedom of Information Act records show that this "Biden-era experiment ... will subject nearly 10,000 mice to horrific abuse – drilling into their skulls, injecting toxins into their brains, and ultimately decapitating them," he wrote.

Pentagon stonewalling on records from joint Thai monkey research

WCW has been on a tear against the Trump administration in recent months as federal science agencies gain allies among other animal-rights groups.

It filed a FOIA lawsuit Thursday against the Department of Defense – avoiding the "War" name instituted by Secretary Pete Hegseth – for videos, photos and other documents on its "taxpayer-funded primate experiments in the U.S. and foreign countries."

"The legal name of the agency for the purposes of the lawsuit is still DOD" and it wasn't meant as a dig at Hegseth, a spokesperson told Just the News.

The Pentagon has given no response to three WCW FOIA requests five to nine months after acknowledging them, and it never responded to the other two, according to the suit. 

WCW is seeking records from the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences, in Thailand; U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit South, in Peru; Fort Detrick medical research institutes for chemical defense and infectious diseases, and the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, Md., the home of NIH.

The Thailand primate colony, operated with the Royal Thai Army, "has quietly operated with millions of American tax dollars and minimal public scrutiny for decades," according to WCW, which said its investigation uncovered 500 monkeys in captivity and 30-45 bred each year. 

"These monkeys are abused in experiments involving infectious diseases like malaria, Zika, dengue, typhus, shigella, and SHIV," WCW said. "They are surgically mutilated, intentionally infected with diseases, forced to ingest drugs, fed to disease-carrying mosquitoes, and subjected to sleep deprivation tests."

Citing a public grant database, WCW said DoD paid the disgraced animal breeder Envigo more than half a million dollars just last year to ship another 18 monkeys from the U.S. to Thailand, years after the Department of Agriculture cited Envigo for dozens of Animal Welfare Act violations. It was forced to shut down a Virginia breeding facility.