President Donald Trump took action on Monday to stop federal money going toward gain-of-function research, a controversial practice linked to the COVID origins debate, in China and other countries.
The move came in the form of an executive order, which Trump showed off in the Oval Office of the White House, with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jay Bhattacharya, and others in attendance.
“It’s a big deal,” Trump said. “It could have been that we wouldn’t have had the problem we had if we had this done earlier,” he continued, alluding to the COVID pandemic, which began during Trump’s first term.
🚨 BREAKING: @POTUS just signed an executive order protecting Americans from dangerous gain-of-function research.
The order:
— Ends any present and all future Federal funding of dangerous gain-of-function research in countries of concern like China and Iran and in foreign… pic.twitter.com/4Cn7iQ4i3L
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 5, 2025
The order halts federal funding for “dangerous” gain-of-function research conducted in China — which is believed to be ground zero for the COVID-19 outbreak in 2019 that led to millions of deaths and various lockdowns around the world — and other foreign countries with “insufficient” levels of oversight, citing risks to public health and national security.
Gain-of-function research — in which viruses are enhanced by scientists, often to study potential treatments or prepare for future outbreaks — has become a major focus of the lab leak theory increasingly favored by U.S. agencies.
Last year, the federal government suspended funds to EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based nonprofit group that was receiving millions of dollars in grant money as it faced intense scrutiny for its collaboration with a lab in Wuhan, China, suspected in the COVID outbreak.
Dr. Anthony Fauci denied under oath that NIH funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan, but he did not convince Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who accused the longtime health official of lying to Congress with a criminal referral to the Department of Justice.
While President Joe Biden issued Fauci a preemptive pardon before leaving office, the Trump administration may yet have more to say on the matter. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently said her team is working with Bhattacharya and hoped to release information “very soon” on gain-of-function and the COVID outbreak.
Trump’s executive order also mandates stricter oversight, transparency, and enforcement mechanisms for federally funded life-science research, while demanding frameworks for regulating non-federally funded research and nucleic acid synthesis to prevent misuse.
“Anthony Fauci essentially restarted the bio-weapons arms race and did it under the pretention [sic] of developing vaccines — eventually moving his experiments offshore, mainly to the Wuhan Lab,” Kennedy said on X. “[The president] today moved to shut down this kind of research in this country and to stop funding it abroad.”
