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In comparison to the massive waste and fraud that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has already uncovered, this is just a drop in the bucket. It is not so much a matter of money saved, however, as it is of rolling back the left’s sinister and destructive practice of forcing the celebration of its key figures as heroes. Anthony Fauci is no hero, and he doesn’t deserve a museum exhibit. Axing this exhibit is a step toward reclaiming the culture from the sinister authoritarians who have dominated it for far too long.

It’s everywhere. There is, for example, a Little Golden Book and several other children’s books lionizing Kamala Harris and introducing budding young leftists to her alleged “achievements.” There are no children’s books about J.D. Vance. Fauci is likewise the hero of a Little Golden Book, and the museum exhibit was certain to offer more of the same: here, kids, is a selfless public servant. There was no chance that the exhibit would have gone on to tell the truth, as in something like “If you grow up to be like him, you’ll be celebrated everywhere for imposing authoritarian restrictions upon Americans, including measures that you knew didn’t work, in order to meet the challenge of a wildly exaggerated crisis!”

Fox News reported Sunday that “the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) canceled more than $180 million in contracts over 48 hours, including a nearly $170,000 contract for an Anthony Fauci museum exhibit.” $170,000 isn’t very much money at all when the government is showering billions upon terrorists, but it’s actually $170,000 more than the government should be spending to hail Fauci.

DOGE announced Friday that “in the past 48 hours, HHS canceled 62 contract [sic] worth $182 million. These contracts were entirely for administrative expenses – none touched any healthcare programs.” Now there’s a significant little detail. DOGE added: “This included terminating a $168,000 contract for an Anthony Fauci exhibit at the NIH Museum.” This comes after Trump also terminated Fauci’s security detail, as well as after Old Joe Biden issued Fauci a preemptive pardon, even though the alleged hero hasn’t been charged with any crime.

At the time that the pardon was issued, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) wrote: “If there was ever any doubt as to who bears responsibility for the COVID pandemic, Biden’s pardon of Fauci forever seals the deal. As Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, I will not rest until the entire truth of the coverup is exposed. Fauci’s pardon will only serve as an accelerant to pierce the veil of deception. Ignominious! Anthony Fauci will go down in history as the first government scientist to be preemptively pardoned for a crime.”

Paul added on Feb. 2: “I think, Anthony Fauci accepting the pardon, he doesn’t escape judgment. I think history is gonna judge him harshly. So in some ways, from that point of view, I think he made a huge mistake accepting the pardon. If he wanted people to think he was innocent, you can actually reject the pardon. There’s also supreme court [sic] precedent for when you accept a pardon, accepting guilt. And so in many ways, he has accepted guilt. Now his pardon is unspecified. It’s preemptive and nonspecific, but that also means that it’s going to be the burden on him to try to prove that he was innocent after accepting a pardon.” This is the kind of man who should be celebrated in a museum exhibit? The NIH at this point should be trying to give the impression that it has never heard Fauci’s name.

It started with pulling down the statues of Confederates and renaming military bases that, in an earlier attempt to bind up the nation’s wounds, were named for them. Then the leftist thugs targeted not only statues of Confederate generals and slave-owners but of General Ulysses S. Grant, who led the great war to free the slaves; President Theodore Roosevelt, a “progressive” environmentalist; George Washington; Thomas Jefferson, and even the abolitionist Abraham Lincoln. In their place, we got statues of George Floyd, and you can be sure that if the left had succeeded in solidifying its hegemony over American culture, we would have started seeing statues of Obama, Kamala Harris, and Fauci in due time. They may still be coming if Trump and Musk don’t succeed in defeating the corrupt authoritarians they have confronted. At least for now, however, Fauci will not get his museum exhibit. That’s one small step in the right direction.