Tag: animal cruelty

34 dogs rescued in suspected dogfighting operation; sheriff’s deputy, 3 others charged

Authorities in South Carolina rescued 34 dogs from what investigators describe as a suspected dogfighting operation spanning two residential properties.

The rescue marks the latest crackdown on organized animal cruelty in the state.

34 dogs rescued in dogfighting operation

Big picture view:

Agents with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) executed search and seizure warrants early April 28, uncovering dogs tethered on heavy chains, many in dire physical condition. 

Responders from Humane World for Animals arrived in heavy rain to assist with veterinary triage, documentation and the removal of the animals.

Investigators described a grim scene: many dogs were chained so tightly they could not reach shelter from the weather. Many of the dogs bore visible signs of abuse consistent with dogfighting. One dog, nicknamed “Denali” by responders, had open wounds on her chest and shoulder from apparent dog bites. Another, “Fuji,” showed severe scarring, ear injuries and lesions along his neck and back. Several dogs were missing parts of their ears or lips, and some suffered raw, infected skin around their necks.

What they’re saying:

“The scars covering their bodies, and the ground worn beneath their chains told a story of a painful, lonely past. The sense of relief and hope was palpable as we freed each dog and carried them to safety,” Janell Gregory, the South Carolina state director at Humane World for Animals, said in a statement.

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Korean Air bans roosters from flights to Philippines after Texas tied to cockfighting supply

Korean Air has banned roosters on flights from the U.S. to the Philippines, following a report that found a large swath of Texas is tightly tied to supplying birds for cockfighting in the Asian nation. 

According to the airline, the decision was based on care for the safety of animals. 

While cockfighting is illegal in the U.S., breeding and selling roosters for agricultural or other benign purposes is not.

Korean Air restricts roosters

What they’re saying:

In a statement to FOX Local, Korea Air said the suspension applies to all roosters, regardless of age:

“Korean Air has suspended the transportation of roosters of all ages on routes from the United States to the Philippines. Korean Air is firmly committed to the lawful and safe transport of live animals, in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.”

The backstory:

Some months ago, an animal rights nonprofit called Animal Wellness Action (AWA) released an in-depth report calling an area including North Texas the “primary hub of illegal cockfighting” in the nation, with multiple reports of rooster breeders taking their animals to the Philippines for that purpose. That report claims Korean Air was the airline of choice for such operations. 

What they’re saying:

“We are grateful to Korean Air for giving us an audience and allowing us to present the mass of information revealing that the company was being rooked by U.S. cockfighters, pretending to be “farmers” and benign “breeders,” but who have been supplying fighting birds to the Philippines every year by the tens of thousands and directly participating in the fights themselves,” the group said in a Monday statement after Korea Air’s announcement. 

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Children pushed to suicide by online grooming network targeting kids through games and chat apps

A grieving British Columbia father is going after an online extremist group after his teenage daughter was allegedly groomed into taking her own life by a disturbing online network that targets children through popular gaming and messaging platforms.

The group, known as 764 or “the Com,” has been described as an international extremist network that preys on children as young as nine through apps such as Roblox, Discord and Telegram. Members are accused of manipulating young users into self-harm, harming pets, committing violent acts and ultimately attempting suicide, often while being watched online.

The father said his daughter Penelope loved amusement parks, zombie movies and creating digital art through games like Minecraft and Roblox. But over time, her behaviour changed dramatically. Her grades collapsed, she stopped attending school and began self-harming.

He later discovered she had allegedly been groomed by individuals connected to the group.

He said members sent him videos of his daughter trying to harm the family cat and that multiple suicide attempts may have been livestreamed. Penelope died in February 2025, three days before her 16th birthday.

Authorities in Canada have reportedly classified 764 as a terrorist organization, with investigations and charges emerging in multiple jurisdictions.

Public awareness remains dangerously low, and this is another reminder that parents should closely monitor children’s online activity. Once vulnerable youth are drawn into these networks, reversing the psychological damage can be extremely difficult.

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GOP-led Farm Bill Amendments Target Animal Tests in US, China, and Russia

New bipartisan amendments led by Republican lawmakers for the 2026 Farm Bill target USDA funding for animal tests in the U.S. and in adversarial nations, first uncovered by watchdog White Coat Waste.

The House Rules Committee is reviewing amendments now, and the full Farm Bill is expected to be voted on by the House during the week of April 27.

Two proposals submitted by Rep. Paul Gosar and cosponsored by Reps. Nancy Mace, Scott Perry, and Dina Titus would cut USDA funding for painful testing on dogs and cats, and prohibit the USDA from funding any animal tests “being conducted in, or performed in collaboration with” China, Russia, or other “countries of concern.”

The amendments result from White Coat Waste investigations in recent years that uncovered USDA funding for these kinds of animal tests and drew criticism and action from lawmakers and Trump Administration officials.

In 2024, White Coat Waste exposed USDA and National Institutes of Health funding for experiments at Cornell University that infected kittens with COVID and then killed them.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, Senator Rand Paul featured the project in his Festivus waste report in 2024, citing White Coat’s work.

The USDA funding for Cornell’s COVID cat lab is set to run until May 31, 2026.

The group also uncovered USDA funding for deadly kitten testing at Auburn University.

The proposed Farm Bill amendment to defund foreign adversaries’ animal labs also follows a White Coat Waste investigation exposing how the Biden USDA funded a $1 million bird flu gain-of-function collaboration with Chinese researchers affiliated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and its CCP-controlled parent organization.

The grant drew scrutiny from Senator Joni Ernst and Rep. Ben Cline, and, as Gateway Pundit previously reported, last year, Trump’s Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins cut funding for this dangerous animal research project and ended it early.

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19 GOP Lawmakers Demand NIH Defund Transgender Animal Experiments After White Coat Waste Exposes Disturbing New $584K Taxpayer Grant

Nineteen Republican House members, led by Rep. Paul Gosar and including GOP Conference Chair Lisa McClain, have sent a letter to the House Appropriations Committee urging the complete elimination of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for transgender animal testing in the fiscal year 2027 spending bill.

The letter cites investigations by the White Coat Waste Project, which recently revealed that the NIH allocated $584,117 of new taxpayer funding in January to a University of California–San Diego grant involving transgendering mice, according to a new report from Red Press Wire.

“Investigations by the non-profit White Coat Waste…have uncovered dozens of National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants issued under the Biden Administration by Dr. Anthony Fauci. These grants have funded disturbing experiments to create ‘transfeminine’ and ‘transmasculine’ lab mice, rats, and monkeys to mimic transgender human children and adults. The animals subjected to invasive surgeries and hormone therapies were subsequently wounded, shocked, injected with street drugs and vaccinations, and endured other disturbing procedures,” the letter states.

The project involves thousands of female mice subjected to invasive surgeries, including ovary removal and testosterone injections, to “model transgender men.”

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HHS Changes Voicemail to Domino’s Pizza to Mock Taxpayers Demanding End to NIH Kitten and Beagle Experiments

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is facing backlash after a “rogue employee” allegedly changed the agency’s public voicemail to a Domino’s Pizza recording, trolling taxpayers who flooded the lines demanding an end to ongoing NIH-funded cat and dog torture experiments.

White Coat Waste Project, the bipartisan watchdog group that has long exposed wasteful government animal testing, urged supporters to call HHS this week over continued funding for cruel kitten experiments at a taxpayer-supported lab at the University of Missouri, which was covered by The Gateway Pundit.

Instead of reaching agency officials, callers heard: “Thank you for calling Domino’s Pizza.”

WCW Senior Vice President Justin Goodman exposed the sick “prank” during a Senate hearing on Wednesday.

“Torturing puppies with our tax dollars isn’t funny, but people at HHS apparently think it is,” Goodman said.

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NIH’s Fauci-Holdover Animal Testing Czar Caught Lying About Funding Dog and Cat Experiments – Approved Millions While PETA Applauded

In a complaint filed with the National Institutes of Health, White Coat Waste has accused Dr. Nicole Kleinstreuer, the agency’s Deputy Director and overseer of its massive animal testing portfolio, of spreading outright lies about the agency’s funding of experiments on dogs and cats.

The filing demands corrections to Kleinstreuer’s false claims that these grants “predate” her tenure and that NIH is legally “constrained” to keep funding them, when in reality, millions in new and extended grants for painful, lethal tests on beagles and kittens have been approved under her leadership.

The complaint stems from Kleinstreuer’s appearance on an official NIH video podcast last July, where she tried to dodge criticism from WCW and animal lovers by insisting, “I understand that there’s part of the extramural portfolio that exists, that predates [us]. We are constrained under the law to leave those existing grants in place for now…. But to phase them out, we are working tirelessly behind the scenes.” She even claimed NIH was creating an “action plan to phase those out as quickly as possible under the law.”

However, WCW’s detailed analysis of NIH records paints a very different picture.

Far from being relics of Fauci’s past, these experiments have been actively funded and expanded during Kleinstreuer’s watch, which began in April of last year.

According to the complaint:

  • NIH has greenlit over 30 new grants potentially involving dog experiments, totaling around $40 million. One egregious example: a nearly $3 million grant to a pharma company for lethal tests on 68 beagles, force-fed an implant for opioid treatment (Grant No. UG3DA062511).
  • More than 45 existing grants for dog tests have been extended, with over $170 million awarded overall and at least $6 million in fresh funding. This includes over $900,000 in new money to Tufts University for force-feeding beagles diet pills mimicking gastric bypass (Grant No. R44DK141341).
  • At least 3 new cat grants worth $1.1 million, including a University of Minnesota project where up to 60 kittens endure skull drilling, virus injections, induced strokes, paralysis, and death – with $486,100 doled out in August 2025 and more to come through 2030 (Grant No. R01NS140244).
  • Over 10 extended cat grants totaling more than $45 million, with at least $533,961 new for spinal cord injuries and treadmill torture on cats (Grant No. R01NS110550).

These aren’t holdovers; they’re affirmative decisions by Kleinstreuer and her team to pump taxpayer dollars into what she herself called “unethical,” “misleading,” and “resource-intensive” animal models that “hold back progress in human health.”

WCW argues that this directly contradicts her podcast spin, violating federal information quality laws that require government officials to be accurate and objective.

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Diversity’s Fruits: Islam’s Brutal War on Dogs Comes to the U.S.

“The dog is man’s best friend” the saying goes. Why, we humans argue about most everything, notes website History and Headlines. “If there is one thing most people agree on, though, it is dogs,” it continues. “How can you not love them?”

Maybe one Nerdeen Kiswani can answer that question. After all, Kiswani, a Palestinian activist, recently agitated against the American norm of keeping dogs as indoor pets.

As she put it in a tweet last Thursday, “Finally, NYC is coming to Islam. Dogs definitely have a place in society, just not as indoor pets. Like we’ve said all along, they are unclean.”

After pushback, Kiswani attacked her critics. “Lmao at the Zionists frothing at the mouth at this…,” she wrote. “It’s obviously a joke.”

Many noted that it’s obviously not. Regardless, no one is laughing — especially given Islam’s history of condemning, abusing, and even torturing dogs. (More on that momentarily.)

Notable pushback came from Congressman Randy Fine (R-Fla.) who, among other things, tweeted the following. (Kiswani’s original message is below Fine’s.)

Predictably, many condemned Fine as not so fine and demanded he resign. (To his credit, he didn’t back down but doubled down.) Many took issue with his implication that Kiswani’s sentiments are general Muslim ones. The truth, however, is this: As Islam comes to the West, so does its war on dogs.

The Prejudice Is Against Canines, Not Muslims

Commentator Andrea Widburg addressed this Wednesday, writing:

Muslims look to their faith to justify hating dogs. No wonder, then, that the dog war has finally come to America. And while Americans are willing to tolerate many insults from Islam, it remains to be seen whether they will tolerate Islam’s murderous intent toward man’s best friend.

The Muslim war on dogs is nothing new. While there is a trend in Islamic countries towards laws protecting animals, the fact remains that, across the Islamic world, the Muslim street doesn’t just want fewer dogs. It has a culture that encourages exceptional cruelty toward dogs. Torturing dogs is as much a part of childhood culture in large parts of the Muslim world as cuddling dogs is in the Western world.

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EXPOSED: Taxpayer-Funded Horror at University of Chicago – NSF Pours Millions into Inducing Severe Strokes in Dogs Before Killing Them

In a shocking new exposé highlighting the grotesque waste and cruelty involved in federal science funding, watchdog White Coat Waste (WCW) has uncovered documents revealing how the University of Chicago is using millions in taxpayer dollars from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to deliberately inflict the “most severe” strokes on dozens of dogs, only to kill them shortly after.

This barbaric practice, which involves blocking the animals’ brain arteries and subjecting them to immense suffering, comes as the NSF is already under fire for a litany of wasteful and inhumane animal experiments.

According to WCW’s investigation, obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, the lab at the University of Chicago has conducted these experiments on at least 64 dogs, inducing what researchers themselves describe as the “most severe stroke” possible.

The process is cold and methodical, spanning three days:

  • Day 1: The dogs undergo imaging scans and blood draws to establish baselines.
  • Day 2: Experimenters block the animals’ middle cerebral arteries using coils, triggering massive strokes. The dogs are then assessed using a “stroke scale” to measure the damage.
  • Day 3: The suffering ends – not with treatment or mercy, but with euthanasia. Lab documents admit that if the dogs were allowed to survive, they would endure “significant suffering” due to the lack of round-the-clock care equivalent to what human stroke patients receive.

These experiments are purportedly testing a stroke treatment that has already been proven safe and effective in human clinical trials, raising serious questions about why innocent dogs are being tortured and killed for redundant research.

WCW notes that this continues despite NIH’s pledges to phase out dog testing, led by figures such as Fauci-fan girl Nicole Kleinstreuer, who heads the agency’s efforts to promote non-animal alternatives.

While the NIH has wasted $4.9 million on these dog experiments, including a new $596,000 grant awarded in June with three more years of funding secured, the NSF’s involvement is even more egregious.

Portions of two massive NSF grants, totaling a staggering $40.5 million, are supporting the University of Chicago lab. The current active grant alone is worth $24.7 million and runs through August.

Those are your hard-earned tax dollars, part of the NSF’s bloated $9 billion annual budget, going straight to needlessly torturing man’s best friend.

This isn’t an isolated incident.

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Oregon Could Vote to Ban Hunting and Fishing – Proposed Law Would Classify Both as Cruelty to Animals

A petition to ban hunting and ranching in Oregon is nearing the number of signatures needed to be placed on this fall’s ballot.

David Michelson, the organizer of Initiative Petition 28, said supporters have gathered about 105,000 of the 117,713 verified signatures needed by July 2, according to Fox affiliate KPTV.

“If it makes it on the ballot and is approved by voters in November, the protections that currently apply to pets such as dogs and cats would extend to wild animals, livestock, and animals used in research,” the outlet reported. “Supporters call the proposal the PEACE Act, short for People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions. Supporters say the measure is intended to protect animals from abuse, neglect, and killing.”

The proposed law reportedly has exceptions for veterinarians and for those who kill animals in self-defense.

Michelson told the NBC affiliate KOIN-TV, “We really want to make Oregon the first state to vote on something like this.”

“We are aware that it’s unlikely 50 percent of Oregonians are ready right now to move away from killing animals,” he added. “But we want to get that conversation out there. So that we can hopefully move in that direction.”

Amy Patrick with the Oregon Hunters Association told KPTV, “I’m hopeful that Oregonians will not vote ‘yes’ on this. I’m hopeful that whether you’re in an urban region or a rural region, you understand what makes Oregon great.”

“And part of that is our wildlife. And part of that is our economy that comes from our farming and ranching,” she continued. “And that folks will really, really delve into what this [proposal] does and how this is going to affect us not just in the abstract. So if you’re not a hunter or you’re not a rancher or a farmer, don’t think that this is not going to affect you in your day-to-day life.”

An Oregon State University report issued in February 2025 stated that cattle ranching makes up a significant portion of the state’s economy, contributing over $900 million annually.

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