In an aggressive campaign to cut wasteful government spending, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency announced the recent cancellation of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts, including a six-figure contract for a Dr. Anthony Fauci museum exhibit.
In a social media post on Friday evening, DOGE claimed that it had axed 199 contracts across 35 government agencies totaling $250 million. Earlier that same day, in a separate post, the DOGE said that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had canceled 62 contracts totaling $182 million. These cuts allegedly targeted administrative expenses and did not affect any healthcare programs.
One of the HHS contracts cut was $168,000 to create an Anthony Fauci exhibit at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) museum. It was originally slated to open on the taxpayer’s dime in July 2025, per Fox News. The exhibit, which would have highlighted Fauci’s decades of work at NIH and his role as public health spokesperson during the COVID-19 pandemic, was a point of contention even before its cancellation.
Additionally, Fauci’s security detail, provided during the pandemic, became another point of debate with Trump. Within his first 30 days in office, Trump ended Fauci’s taxpayer-funded protection, according to Fox.
“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. We took some off other people, too, but you can’t have a security detail for the rest of your life because you work for government,” Trump said.
DOGE has pushed for eliminating USAID, a big foreign aid agency, and plans to cut over $100 billion annually in Treasury Department entitlement programs that are being paid to people lacking a Social Security number.
Focused on trimming the fat from excess government spending under the former presidential administration, DOGE is expected to continue defunding multiple government sectors deemed unnecessary in the following months.