Why One Of The World's Biggest Animal Rights Group Is Praising Trump

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. eats steak for breakfast, and has been accused by family members of blending up mice and chickens to feed his hawks and cutting off a dead whale’s head to bring it home. But he has nonetheless found common cause with one of America’s most uncompromising animal rights groups.

The health secretary’s kinship with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals — which has reported popping champagne at its Virginia headquarters to celebrate — stems from Kennedy’s determination to end animal testing. It’s also another example of how Kennedy, who was a Democrat on the left of his party until he teamed with President Donald Trump, has shaken up traditional political allegiances.

Trump aides believe Kennedy supporters who share his skepticism of vaccines and ultraprocessed food helped the president win the popular vote in 2024 and will help Republicans again this November. And with parts of the MAHA base at odds with the administration over pesticides, Kennedy can use new GOP converts where he can get them.

"It's night and day compared to previous administrations, both Republican and Democrat,” Kathy Guillermo, senior vice president of PETA, said of the reception the group has received from Kennedy.

PETA, one of the world’s largest animal rights group, uses radical protest tactics and undercover investigations to advocate against animal cruelty. The group is more extreme than animal welfare organizations like Humane World for Animals (formerly the Humane Society of the U.S.) or the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and known for campaigns featuring nudity, manure and fake blood.

PETA has long campaigned for the Department of Health and Human Services to close down primate labs funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health that house thousands of monkeys used in medical research. Guillermo said previous health secretaries largely ignored those requests. But Kennedy and his deputies have embraced the cause, arguing that shifting to more high-tech methods of testing drugs will speed scientific discoveries and save money.

“HHS is committed to a responsible and safe transition that advances new cures and treatments while reducing reliance on animal models,” said HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard in a statement.

PETA points to real change. The NIH launched an $87 million project last year to develop standardized alternatives to animal testing. The agency entered into negotiations with the Oregon Health & Science University in February to consider shutting down its federally-funded primate lab and make it a sanctuary. The lab currently holds 5,000 primates, mostly macaques. It now uses them for experiments on infectious diseases, HIV and conditions like dementia.

The NIH funds six other national primate research centers across the country that house more than 10,000 animals, including baboons, macaques and marmosets.

The CDC also plans to shutter its Atlanta-based primate research program, which involves around 200 rhesus and pig-tailed macaques that are used to study infectious diseases like HIV in Atlanta. And the Food and Drug Administration, which uses animals for drug testing, has published a roadmap for reducing animal testing.

Other animal rights activists haven’t embraced the Trump administration so enthusiastically. The critics point to Kennedy’s new dietary guidelines, which encourage Americans to eat more meat, not to mention the administration’s support for policies that threaten animal habitats. Those include its withdrawal from international efforts to combat climate change and its move to allow more energy exploration on federal lands.

Among animal rights groups, PETA is known for its flamboyant stunts rather than a pragmatic approach. Compared to the ASPCA, which raises money by running emotional TV ads of abused animals, PETA favors aggressive headline-grabbing tactics, like dumping manure on celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey’s doorstep to protest his cooking horse meat, or running newspaper ads comparing the meatpacking industry to cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer.

PETA calls itself nonpartisan, and stops short of saying it fully supports Kennedy or his Make America Healthy Again movement. But despite PETA's pro-vegan, anti-hunting roots, the group frequently praises the Trump administration and has stayed largely silent on the new dietary guidelines that tell Americans to eat more meat and other animal products. It's a stark example of Kennedy's ability to rally support among traditionally left-leaning groups, like he did with proponents of alternative medicine and additive-free, healthy foods.

“Sometimes you have to weigh your options and really look at what's the greater good and not shoot yourself in the foot — which I think PETA is smart for doing,” Marty Irby, president and CEO of lobbying firm Capitol South and longtime animal welfare advocate, told POLITICO.

A rightward shift

PETA’s kinship with the Trump administration might seem strange to the untrained eye. But the groundwork for a Republican focus on animal testing has been in process for years, according to Wayne Pacelle, a long-time animal welfare activist in Washington and founder of the lobbying group Animal Wellness Action.

Phasing out animal testing is a goal that often garners bipartisan support, despite its lefty reputation, he added. Trump signed a handful of animal welfare-related laws during his first term, such as making cruelty to animals a federal crime and offering rewards to certain wildlife trafficking whistleblowers, noted Irby.

During Joe Biden's presidency, Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) spearheaded the FDA Modernization Act 2.0, which removed a requirement that all new drugs be tested on animals before human clinical trials.

The Covid-19 pandemic was an inflection point. A right-leaning anti-government waste group capitalized on conservatives' rage over Anthony Fauci's handling of the pandemic as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and tied the institute to experiments on beagles in Tunisia.

While the group, White Coat Waste, doesn't have the national profile PETA does, it's increasingly visible in the animal testing debate, especially on Capitol Hill. The White House and members of Congress have cited White Coat Waste reports and investigations in hearings and press releases to argue that NIH is hurting animals and overspending.

'Night and day'

While PETA has made the case on Fox News for years that NIH experiments are an animal rights issue, it's only during Trump's second term that the administration is making major changes to reduce animal testing.

That's due in large part to Kennedy, who has upended decades of precedent across the health agencies.

The good feelings have trickled down to Kennedy's deputies, with PETA sending NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya flowers last spring after the agency announced efforts to reduce animal testing.

“Normally, I think NIH directors tend to get physical threats, but they sent me flowers,” Bhattacharya told Fox News.

Guillermo and Kennedy met in June to discuss closing the National Primate Research Centers, which were mostly founded in the 1960s and which receive NIH funding. By February, the health research agency and the Oregon National Primate Research Center were negotiating turning the largest of the seven centers into a primate sanctuary.

Kennedy's burn-it-down approach could be motivated by an impulse beyond animal welfare, Irby suggested: it's politically popular. “Even though Trump's not going to be running for reelection, I think it does help in the midterms,” Irby said.

While animal welfare isn’t usually considered an issue that motivates voters to get to the polls, surveys have shown broad support for phasing out animal testing.

A Morning Consult survey — commissioned by Physicians for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit that advocates against animal testing — found 85 percent of U.S. adults at least somewhat agree with the idea that animal testing should be phased out in favor of alternatives.

But many scientists say that not all areas of study have viable non-animal alternatives, and phasing out animal testing too quickly would hinder scientific progress.

“You don't want the policy to get ahead of the science,” said Naomi Charalambakis, who directs science policy and communications at Americans for Medical Progress, an advocacy group that supports responsible animal testing in biomedical research. “You can't recreate biology in a dish or on a computer with AI — at least not yet.”

Staying in the animal-testing lane

While PETA's protest tactics are uncompromising, the group has assumed a more pragmatic posture when it comes to other Trump administration agenda items that threaten animals, like wildlife protections and food policy.

PETA’s Guillermo did not weigh in on new meat-forward dietary guidelines, besides noting that the organization “obviously” disagrees with them. While PETA promotes veganism and opposes animal abuse in the farming industry, she said, "we don’t do a lot on food recommendations by agencies."

In comparison, Humane World for Animals called the nutrition guidelines and a law Trump signed in January to return whole and 2 percent milk to schools receiving federal assistance, an "immense failure of public trust on the part of our government” in a blog post.

Whether it's Trump, Biden or Obama, "we call balls and strikes where we see them,” Sara Amundson, president of Humane World Action Fund, said of the group's position on animal protection issues.

To PETA's more flexible stance, Amundson said: "If that's the approach that they want to take, bully for them. Fantastic.”

Another tricky area the groups are navigating is Trump 2.0's attempt to roll back wildlife protections. The administration revived changes to the Endangered Species Act last year that Trump enacted during his first term, which the Biden administration later blocked.

The rollback would remove protections for animals at risk of endangerment, to the relief of oil and gas industries.

On that, PETA's mostly staying in the animal-testing lane. "We're most active in the wildlife area on the importation of primates, and especially long tail macaques," Guillermo said, although she noted that PETA signed a letter urging the Trump administration not to roll back Endangered Species Act protections.

“We work all the time with people we disagree with on other issues," Guillermo said. "If we needed to agree on everything, we would be hampered in our work."