HISTORIC: Trump and RFK Jr. Just Shut Down Federal Support for Gain-of-Function Experiments

Before he ever stepped into office, RFK Jr. was warning the public about something few dared to touch—gain-of-function research.

Long before most people had even heard the term, Kennedy was calling out Dr. Anthony Fauci for experimenting on viruses, making them more deadly under the guise of science.

He explained it plainly: scientists were taking wild viruses and making them more contagious, more lethal, then building vaccines to counter the threats they’d just created. And for what purpose?

“The only real rationale,” Kennedy said, “is to develop bioweapons, and then develop a defense to those bioweapons.”

It wasn’t a fringe theory. It was happening under Fauci’s watch, and Kennedy revealed that Fauci even got a 68% raise from the military for his role in these new “military responsibilities.”

Trump held up the signed order and said, “It’s a big deal. Could have been that we wouldn’t have had the problem we had [Covid] if we had this done earlier.”

His aide, Will Scharf, explained exactly what the order does:

“What this executive order does: first of all, it provides powerful new tools to enforce the ban on federal funding for gain-of-function research abroad.”

“It also strengthens other oversight mechanisms, related to that issue and creates an overarching strategy to ensure that biomedical research in general is being conducted safely, and in a way that that ultimately protects human health more.”

Kennedy called it a turning point.

Not just because of what the order does, but because of what it ends. And that’s when RFK Jr. dropped the chilling history behind gain of function in America.

He explained how it all started back in 1947, when U.S. military and intelligence agencies began experimenting with biological weapons.

By 1969, the CIA bragged about achieving “nuclear equivalency”—the ability to wipe out the population for just 29 cents a person.

That same year, President Nixon toured Fort Detrick and shut it down. He called it “dual-use research”—bioweapons disguised as vaccine development—and led over 180 countries to sign a treaty to end it.

But after the 2001 anthrax attacks, everything changed. A quiet clause in the Patriot Act gave government officials legal immunity—even if they violated that bioweapons treaty. “That relaunched a bio weapons arms race,” Kennedy said, “and that was driven by gain-of-function research.”

In 2014, Obama tried to stop it after multiple pathogens escaped from U.S. labs. But the research didn’t stop—it just went offshore, to places like the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

That, Kennedy said, is where the COVID story really begins.

The ceremony ended with a powerful moment from Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the newly appointed Director of the NIH.

He called it “a historic day,” and warned that gain-of-function research—the kind that makes viruses more contagious or deadly—has always carried a catastrophic risk. “This research does not protect us against pandemics,” he said.

“What it does is there's always a danger that in doing this research, it might leak out just by accident, even, and cause a pandemic.”

Bhattacharya stressed that the vast majority of scientific research will continue as normal. But this small slice of high-risk experimentation? That’s no longer just up to scientists.

“This executive order puts in place a framework to make sure that the public has a say… that in fact, the public can say, no, don’t take this risk.”

For the first time, the door is finally closing on one of the most dangerous scientific practices in modern history.