Democrats and Republicans generally don’t agree about science. The vast majority of Democrats believe climate change is a major threat, for example, while less than a quarter of Republicans say the same.

But people across the political spectrum agree on animal testing. Or, more accurately, no one knows what to think: About half of each party supports the use of animals in scientific research, while the other half opposes it.

Increasingly, everyone from crunchy moms to right-wing tech bros also agrees that we should Make America Healthy Again. Distrust of health care systems, federal science agencies, and pharmaceutical companies crosses party lines and runs deep.

Acting on this distrust, Trump 2.0 is promising to deprioritize research on infectious diseases and overhaul the nation’s science agencies. Trump has picked a handful of anti-establishment leaders such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Jay Bhattacharya, who aim to slash federal science funding, for health positions in his administration. Given the widespread use of lab animals in biomedical research, animal testing could get caught “in the crosshairs” of these changes, Emily Trunnell, director of science advancement and outreach at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), told me.

This story was first featured in the Future Perfect newsletter.

Sign up here to explore the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them. Sent twice a week.

Less federal science funding could, as a side effect, mean less animal testing. Animal advocates I spoke to welcome these potential changes. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, so the lives of millions of animals depend on what happens to it.

In the long run, forcing scientists to shift away from animal models by drying up existing funding sources could not just benefit animals used in experiments, but also make science better. Replacing animals with human-centered tools will provide better insight into human biology, speeding up the development of much-needed treatments for diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

Trump’s war on science, however, has little to do with improving human or animal lives. He famously loves meat — especially if it’s well done — and, with a handful of exceptions, doesn’t seem concerned with animal welfare. In fact, his first term saw a significant drop in penalizing animal welfare violations. Rather, the Trump administration’s plans to defund animal testing while deregulating........

© Vox