Business
Report: Federal agencies spent millions of taxpayer money torturing cats

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky
From The Center Square
By
A new report published by U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-KY, highlights more than $1 trillion worth of taxpayer money spent on projects that he argues wastes and abuses taxpayer money.
Tucked in the report are three programs funded by federal agencies using millions of taxpayer dollars to experiment on cats.
The details are explicit and gruesome.
$11 million on Department of Defense “Orwellian cat experiments”
The US Department of Defense spent nearly $11 million on “Orwellian cat experiments” that have nothing to do with training the U.S. military or national defense.
“When George Orwell wrote 1984, he couldn’t have imagined the bizarre, dystopian reality we find ourselves in today where tax dollars are being spent to shock cats into having erections and defecating marbles. Yes, you read that correctly,” the report states.
Through the DOD’s, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), $10,851,439 of taxpayer dollars were allocated to the University of Pittsburgh to conduct “grotesque and extremely invasive experiments on cats.”
This involved slicing open the backs of male cats to expose their spinal cords and inserting electrodes to send electric shocks “to make cats have an erection.”
The cats were then subjected to “even more electric shocks, sometimes for up to 10 minutes at a time, before having their spinal cords severed to paralyze their lower bodies,” the report states. “And just for good measure, the shocks continued for another 10 minutes. All this, in the name of ‘science.’”
In another DARPA-funded experiment, balloons were inserted into the cats’ colons and marbles into their rectums “to force these poor animals to defecate the marbles via electric shock.”
“Nothing says ‘national defense’ quite like torturing cats to poop marbles,” the report notes. “If we can’t stop the government from shocking cats into defecating marbles, then what can we stop?”
$2.24 million on feline COVID experiments
The report also notes that under the direction of Dr. Anthony Fauci, since 2022, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the U.S. Department of Agriculture allocated $2.24 million in grants to Cornell University to conduct feline COVID experiments.
Through a University of Illinois NIAID subgrant, Cornell received $1.59 million over the past two years in addition to a $650,000 USDA grant, bringing the total to $2.24 million, the report notes.
The experiments led to the suffering and death of 30 cats, according to the records of the experiments, the report notes.
The experiments involved injecting healthy cats with COVID-19, observing them suffer and then killing them in groups of four. The cats were not given any type of vaccine or treatment but killed as early as two days after being injected and left isolated in cages.
NIAID funding for the program is slated to continue through 2025; the USDA’s through May 2026, the report notes.
“It’s a mystery as to why the U.S. government continues to fund these barbaric types of studies, especially when the knowledge gained is either useless to society or could be learned without torturing an animal,” the report states.
$1.5 million to torture primarily female kittens
The National Institutes of Health spent more than $1.5 million to torture primarily female kittens in an extreme example “of waste and cruelty,” the report found.
“If you learned that your money is being used to electro-shock young kittens, torturing them for hours on end, and to the point that they vomit, would you believe it?” the report asks. “Since 2019, $1,513,299 worth of taxpayer money has been going to these medieval-type experiments. This is not some distant, dystopian future; it’s happening right now at the University of Pittsburgh, courtesy of a grant from the NIH.”
According to the report, primarily female kittens between four and six months old were strapped to a hydraulic table, spun 360 degrees, flashed with bright lights, injected with copper sulfate, had holes drilled into their skulls, to be “shocked, and abused without resistance.”
According to NIH, the purpose of the experiments is to study how different species, like cats and monkeys, respond to motion sickness. Understanding responses to the test “could have implications for human health, potentially aiding in the treatment of conditions like vertigo or helping us understand the effects of space travel on the human body,” the report states.
The report cites primary sources and includes photographs of the animals and diagrams of the machines used.
Automotive
Auto giant shuts down foreign plants as Trump moves to protect U.S. industry

MxM News
Quick Hit:
Stellantis is pausing vehicle production at two North American facilities—one in Canada and another in Mexico—following President Donald Trump’s announcement of 25% tariffs on foreign-made cars. The move marks one of the first corporate responses to the administration’s push to bring back American manufacturing.
Key Details:
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In an email to workers Thursday, Stellantis North America chief Antonio Filosa directly tied the production pause to the new tariffs, writing that the company is “continuing to assess the medium- and long-term effects” but is “temporarily pausing production” at select assembly plants outside the U.S.
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Production at the Windsor Assembly Plant in Ontario will be paused for two weeks, while the Toluca Assembly Plant in Mexico will be offline for the entire month of April.
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These plants produce the Chrysler Pacifica minivan, the new Dodge Charger Daytona EV, the Jeep Compass SUV, and the Jeep Wagoneer S EV.
Diving Deeper:
On Wednesday afternoon in the White House Rose Garden, President Trump announced sweeping new tariffs aimed at revitalizing America’s auto manufacturing industry. The 25% tariffs on all imported cars are part of a broader “reciprocal tariffs” strategy, which Trump described as ending decades of globalist trade policies that hollowed out U.S. industry.
Just a day later, Stellantis became the first major automaker to act on the new policy, halting production at two of its international plants. According to an internal email obtained by CNBC, Stellantis North American COO Antonio Filosa said the company is “taking immediate actions” to respond to the tariff policy while continuing to evaluate the broader impact.
“These actions will impact some employees at several of our U.S. powertrain and stamping facilities that support those operations,” Filosa wrote.
The Windsor, Ontario plant, which builds the Chrysler Pacifica and the newly introduced Dodge Charger Daytona EV, will shut down for two weeks. The Toluca facility in Mexico, responsible for the Jeep Compass and Jeep Wagoneer S EV, will suspend operations for the entire month of April.
The move comes as Stellantis continues to face scrutiny for its reliance on low-wage labor in foreign markets. As reported by Breitbart News, the company has spent years shifting production and engineering jobs to countries like Brazil, India, Morocco, and Mexico—often at the expense of American workers. Last year alone, Stellantis cut around 400 U.S.-based engineering positions while ramping up operations overseas.
Meanwhile, General Motors appears to be responding differently. According to Reuters, GM told employees in a webcast Thursday that it will increase production of light-duty trucks at its Fort Wayne, Indiana plant—where it builds the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra. These models are also assembled in Mexico and Canada, but GM’s decision suggests a shift in production to the U.S. could be underway in light of the tariffs.
As Trump’s trade reset takes effect, more automakers are expected to recalibrate their production strategies—potentially signaling a long-awaited shift away from offshoring and toward rebuilding American industry.
Business
‘Time To Make The Patient Better’: JD Vance Says ‘Big Transition’ Coming To American Economic Policy

JD Vance on “Rob Schmitt Tonight” discussing tariff results
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Hailey Gomez
Vice President JD Vance said Thursday on Newsmax that he believes Americans will “reap the benefits” of the economy as the Trump administration makes a “big transition” on tariffs.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1,679.39 points on Thursday, just a day after President Donald Trump announced reciprocal tariffs against nations charging imports from the U.S. On “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” Schmitt asked Vance about the stock market hit, asking how the White House felt about the “Liberation Day” move.
“We’re feeling good. Look, I frankly thought in some ways it could be worse in the markets, because this is a big transition. You saw what the President said earlier today. It’s like a patient who was very sick,” Vance said. “We did the operation, and now it’s time to make the patient better. That’s exactly what we’re doing. We have to remember that for 40 years, we’ve been doing this for 40 years.”
“American economic policy has rewarded people who ship jobs overseas. It’s taxed our workers. It’s made our supply chains more brittle, and it’s made our country less prosperous, less free and less secure,” Vance added.
Vance recalled that one of his children had been sick and needed antibiotics that were not made in the United States. The Vice President called it a “ridiculous thing” that some medicines invented in the country are no longer manufactured domestically.
“That’s fundamentally what this is about. The national security of manufacturing and making the things that we need, from steel to pharmaceuticals, antibiotics, and so forth, but also the good jobs that come along when you have economic policies that reward investing in America, rather than investing in foreign countries,” Vance said.
WATCH:
With a baseline 10% tariff placed on an estimated 60 countries, higher tariffs were applied to nations like China and Israel. For example, China, which has a 67% tariff on U.S. goods, will now face a 34% tariff from the U.S., while Israel, which has a 33% tariff, will face a 17% U.S. tariff.
“One bad day in the stock market, compared to what President Trump said earlier today, and I think he’s right about this. We’re going to have a booming stock market for a long time because we’re reinvesting in the United States of America. More importantly than that, of course, the people in Wall Street have done well,” Vance said.
“We want them to do well. But we care the most about American workers and about American small businesses, and they’re the ones who are really going to benefit from these policies,” Vance said.
The number of factories in the U.S., Vance said, has declined, adding that “millions of workers” have lost their jobs.
“My town [Middletown, Ohio], where you had 10,000 great American steel workers, and my town was one of the lucky ones, now probably has 1,500 steel workers in that factory because you had economic policies that rewarded shipping our jobs to China instead of investing in American workers,” Vance said. “President Trump ran on changing it. He promised he would change it, and now he has. I think Americans are going to reap the benefits.”
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