White Coat Waste and Republican Sen. Joni Ernst released two letters on Thursday exposing how Pentagon-funded animal labs are flat-out ignoring federal law and refusing to tell American taxpayers how much of their money is being spent on cruel and bizarre experiments.
Ernst sent a letter to the Department of Defense Inspector General, Platte Moring, demanding answers about why grantees are dodging the COST Act, the commonsense transparency law she authored that requires every DOD-funded project to publicly post the exact dollar amount in press releases, studies, and announcements.
In her letter, Sen. Ernst laid out five jaw-dropping examples where labs took Pentagon money but conveniently forgot to tell the public how much, including:
- “Octopus hypnosis” (tonic immobility) research funded by the Office of Naval Research
- Elephant seal sleep studies backed by seven different Pentagon grants
- Snail mucus experiments paid for by the Air Force, Space Force, and Navy
- “Doomscrolling” on Facebook behavioral research
- Monkey brain-signal decoding to “read their minds” – one project that reportedly sucked up as much as $6.25 million
Every single one of these public announcements or published studies admitted “DOD funding” in vague terms but refused to post the actual price tag, a direct violation of the COST Act, which Ernst got passed in the 2021 NDAA.
“The Pentagon diverted defense dollars toward octopus hypnosis, calculating how long seals—the fin-footed, semiaquatic mammals, not Navy SEALs—sleep, and monkey mind reading,” Ernst told the Daily Caller. “Well, monkeys and seals and octopi, oh my! It’s anyone’s guess how much was spent on this questionable research because the price for taxpayers isn’t provided, as required by law.”
“This is exactly why I authored my COST Act — to put an end to this shady spending and ensure folks in Iowa, and across the nation know exactly how their hard-earned money is being spent,” Ernst added. “If we want the Pentagon – the only federal agency that has never passed an audit – to clean up its books, putting public price tags on these funds can no longer be Mission Impossible.”
On the same day, government watchdog White Coat Waste Project sent its own formal complaint to the IG, which they first shared with The Gateway Pundit, naming four major universities for brazenly violating the same statute while torturing animals with taxpayer cash.
- Oregon Health & Science University – Injected monkeys with an experimental HIV-like virus after giving them a “therapeutic.” At least $7.3 million in taxpayer dollars.
- Emory University – Pumped synthetic mRNA into mice. Roughly $28.7 million was funded by taxpayers.
- Harvard’s Wyss Institute – Gave pigs traumatic brain injuries. About $4.4 million in taxpayer dollars spent.
- UC Berkeley – Implanted neural probes into bats’ brains. Nearly $1.5 million from taxpayers.
All four universities touted the experiments on their websites and news pages but never disclosed the exact taxpayer funds involved, brazenly violating the COST Act.
WCW is urging the DOD to suspend funding to those who have violated the law.
“We respectfully urge your office to work with Senator Ernst to ensure full compliance with the COST Act and request that the DOD suspend taxpayer funding to any grantees that violate this statute,” WCW’s letter concluded.
This isn’t the first time Sen. Ernst and White Coat Waste have teamed up to expose and end wasteful animal experiments. The two previously worked together to shut down Pentagon-funded cat constipation studies and cruel puppy poisoning tests that were being conducted in China with U.S. tax dollars.
In a statement provided to The Gateway Pundit, WCW Senior Vice President Justin Goodman said:
“White Coat Waste is proud to support Senator Joni Ernst’s tireless work to rein in reckless DOD spending at home and abroad, like the Pentagon’s wasteful cat constipation experiments and puppy poisoning tests in China that we worked together to expose and end. Her common-sense COST Act requires a public price tag on Pentagon-funded projects, and our investigators have uncovered animal labs skirting her transparency law and referred them to the Inspector General. Taxpayers have a right to know how their money is being spent — and any animal lab that violates Sen. Ernst’s federal funding disclosure requirements doesn’t deserve another dime.”
The Pentagon’s $140+ billion annual research budget is supposed to make America stronger, not fund snail slime, octopus hypnosis, or secret monkey mind-reading projects while hiding the costs from the Americans footing the bill.
Taxpayers deserve to know exactly where their money is going. Sen. Ernst’s COST Act was designed to end the secrecy. These labs are violating the law, and the DOD Inspector General now has a clear mandate to enforce it.
The post Sen. Joni Ernst and White Coat Waste Hammer Pentagon-Funded Labs for Hiding Spending on Octopus Hypnosis, Monkey Mind-Reading, and Mouse mRNA Tests in Violation of Federal Law appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.