Fauci's legal woes could deter scientists from government service

Senate Republicans' planned vote this week on whether to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress is the latest escalation in their attempt to right perceived COVID-era wrongs and further disempower the federal health care bureaucracy.

Why it matters: Critics fear the Senate Homeland Security Committee's efforts will deter scientific talent from taking government jobs, weakening America's public health infrastructure and ceding its dominance in biomedical innovation.

Driving the news: The panel is expected to vote Thursday to hold the nation's former top infectious disease official in contempt for refusing to answer the committee's questions on the coronavirus during a hearing last week.

• Fauci repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to senators' questions and accused Chairman Rand Paul (R-Ky.) of having an "unhinged obsession with calling for my prosecution."
• Paul has argued that the Fifth Amendment didn't apply to Fauci because he's already received a preemptive pardon from former President Biden covering all of his pandemic-era work.
• All of this "has a chilling effect" on scientists considering future government work, top committee Democrat Gary Peters of Michigan told Axios. "You could be pulled before a committee and have every decision you make questioned in a hostile way."

The big picture: The panel's actions follow a broad hollowing out of the federal health workforce and efforts to assert more political control over career scientists.

• The Department of Health and Human Services reduced its workforce from 82,000 full-time employees to 62,000 at the beginning of President Trump's second term.
• Senior career health officials have also departed HHS and its subagencies on their own, with several publicly citing disagreement with leadership or a chaotic work environment.
• Senate Republicans have signaled they may subpoena more government officials over their pandemic-era work, including Food and Drug Administration officials involved in COVID vaccine regulation.

What they're saying: "The government is becoming a less and less attractive place" to work, Ashish Jha, Biden's COVID response coordinator and former dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told Axios.

• "Now, we're essentially trying to criminalize government scientists giving advice to political leaders, if that is advice the political leaders don't like or it creates an outcome the political leaders didn't want."

The intrigue: The administration has also taken aim at federal research funding, most recently proposing a sweeping new regulation that would give political appointees the final say over the awarding of discretionary grants.

• A bipartisan Senate bill that would fund the government through mid-December would block that change from taking effect through Dec. 11.

The other side: Republicans argue that holding a bad actor accountable — which is what they say they're doing with Fauci — shouldn't deter scrupulous scientists from government service.

• "I hope everybody takes a look at really how dastardly Fauci performed throughout the pandemic. He was the anti-science," Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said.
• "It shouldn't if you're honest," Johnson replied when asked whether the committee's actions will have a chilling effect on the workforce.

And for some, weakening reliance on experts — or in the parlance of Republicans, unelected bureaucrats — is the goal, not an unintended consequence.

• "Now we know that Anthony Fauci, who was the expert, was lying about everything, about masks, about the social distancing, about natural immunity, about the transmission from the vaccine, about the source of COVID," Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a fiery exchange with CNN's Dana Bash last weekend.
• "He was lying, and you were punishing people for not trusting the experts. And now you're rolling out the experts again."

What we're watching: It may not take long to assess any impact on government hiring.

• The administration is trying to recruit top talent to fill openings, including FDA commissioner and top drug and vaccine regulatory positions.

The bottom line: "If you undermine government capacity to do scientific work, you end up with a government that is far less capable of doing scientific work," Jha said.