Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has canceled more than $180million in contracts from the Department of Health and Human Services – including nearly $170,000 allocated for a museum exhibit on Dr Anthony Fauci.
DOGE announced on social media Friday that it canceled 62 contracts at HHS over the course of 48 hours.
‘These contacts were entirely for administrative expenses – none touched any healthcare programs,’ DOGE wrote.
‘This included terminating a $168,000 contract for an Anthony Fauci exhibit at the NIH museum.’
It also included a screenshot of the funds allocated for the Fauci exhibit, showing the money was meant to be spent between July 2024 and July 2025.
Details about the planned exhibit were scarce, but it would likely focus on Fauci’s long career in the federal government, which began in the National Institutes of Health in 1968 and ended with him advising Presidents Trump and Biden during the COVID pandemic.
But Fauci’s legacy was marred by the unpopular COVID restrictions he helped implement, including social distancing, mask wearing and harsh vaccine mandates that led to members of the armed forces being forcibly discharged.
Elon Musk ‘s Department of Government Efficiency has canceled more than $180million in contracts from the Department of Health and Human Services
Among the canceled contracts were nearly $170,000 allocated for a museum exhibit on Dr Anthony Fauci
He included a screenshot of the funds allocated for the Fauci exhibit, showing the money was meant to be spent between July 2024 and July 2025
He was also accused of lying to Congress about the U.S. sending money to fund gain-of-function research at the laboratory in Wuhan, China, where the virus is thought to have originated and leaked from.
Fauci had testified at a May 2021 Senate hearing that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases had ‘not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.’
But emails showed that in February 2020 Fauci, NIH head Dr. Francis Collins, and Dr. Peter Daszak, head of the company that dispersed grants to the WIV, EcoHealth alliance acknowledged that scientists at Wuhan University were working on gain-of-function experiments to study bat viruses adapting to human infection prior to the outbreak in Wuhan.
In one email, Fauci even admitted he had concerns that COVID might have been genetically engineered and that these were worsened by the fact that gain-of-function research was taking place in Wuhan before the pandemic.
Faui laterclaimed that he was using a different definition of GOF during his Senate hearing.
Details about the planned exhibit were scarce, but it would likely focus on Fauci’s long career in the federal government, which began in the National Institutes of Health in 1968 and ended with him advising Presidents Trump and Biden during the COVID pandemic
Yet the NIH’s own definition of gain-of-function notes that the research could be used ‘to enhance the pathogenicity or transmissibility of potential pandemic pathogens.’
A meticulous 520-page report by the the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic also concluded that ‘Dr. Fauci’s testimony was, at a minimum, misleading.’
If the Department of Justice did decide to pursue criminal charges against Fauci, prosecutors would have had to prove that the doctor made a false statement and knew it was false.
They would have also had to prove that Fauci intended to deceive the Congress members he testified in front of, rather than making an innocent mistake.
But in the moments before he left office, President Joe Biden pardoned Fauci for any crimes dating all the way back to 2014.
In the aftermath, Trump terminated Fauci’s taxpayer-funded security detail.
‘No, I think you know, when you work for government, at some point your security detail comes off, and you know, you can’t have them forever,’ the president said at the time.
‘So I think it’s very standard. If it was for somebody else you wouldn’t be asking the question,’ Trump added.
Trump terminated Fauci’s taxpayer-funded security detail
The move to defund a museum exhibit honoring the doctor came just days after Musk’s team at DOGE were seen at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where they received access to key payment and contracting systems.
CMS, a part of the Department of Health and Human Service, is a major distributor of healthcare payments.
The center sent out about $1.5 trillion in fiscal 2024.
With around 6,710 employees, it oversees Medicare, the health coverage program for older and disabled Americans, and Medicaid, for lower-income people.
‘Yeah, this is where the big money fraud is happening,’ Musk wrote last week.
But Musk’s group has been causing controversy with many Democrats protesting the cuts to government and the layoff of federal workers.
Unions have even started filing lawsuits.
Democrats have questioned if Musk has any oversight, but Trump said the billionaire owner of X is only acting with his approval. He added that his administration is keeping the SpaceX founder, who has billions in federal contracts, from interfering in any area where there is a conflict of interest.
‘Elon will not do anything without our approval and we will give him the approval where appropriate,’ he said in the Oval Office last week.
‘If there is a conflict, we won’t let him get near it. He has a team of talented people. We are trying to shrink government. Where we think there is a conflict or a problem, we won’t let him go near it,’ he added.
