President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency last week stopped over $180 million worth of Department of Health and Human Services contracts, including funding for a museum exhibit focusing on former COVID-19 czar Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Trump appointed Elon Musk to oversee DOGE, which has been tasked with finding ways to streamline government and reduce spending.
"In the past 48 hours, HHS canceled 62 contract[s] worth $182 million. These contracts were entirely for administrative expenses — none touched any healthcare programs. This included terminating a $168,000 contract for an Anthony Fauci exhibit at the NIH Museum," DOGE posted Friday on its official X account with a screenshot showing that the money was meant to be used from July 2024 to July 2025.
"Amazing job by @NIH team. Saved > $4B annually in excessive grant administrative costs," DOGE posted little more than two hours later.
HHS' National Institutes of Health had been slated to donate $168,000 for the Fauci exhibit, which would have been placed in the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, Maryland. The exhibit was expected to be completed by the end of July.
Fauci, 84, was director at NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases between 1984 and 2022 and was known for his efforts to combat AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci was a member of Trump's White House Coronavirus Task Force and then became President Joe Biden's top medical adviser.
Fauci, whom conservatives have blasted for his actions during the pandemic and surrounding gain-of-function research, accepted a preemptive pardon from Biden.
Emails suggest that a top Fauci lieutenant helped restore a grant for EcoHealth Alliance to fund research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, from where it has been posited that the coronavirus likely escaped, and that Fauci was made aware of the change via a "secret back channel," the New York Post reported.
Fauci claimed he didn't "recall any specific interaction" and added that he wasn't "involved" with that grant.
Trump late last month said Fauci no longer could have government-provided security and urged the doctor to hire his own.
Fauci received taxpayer-funded security detail from the U.S. Marshals Service worth $15 million from Jan. 24, 2023, to Sept. 20, 2024, according to Freedom of Information Act documents obtained by independent journalist Jordan Schachtel and Open the Books.