Is it possible Anthony Fauci goes to prison?

Alex Wroblewski / AFP via Getty Images

Anthony Fauci declined to answer questions in a hearing last week about his role in the lead-up and response to the Covid-19 pandemic. In response, a Senate committee voted to hold Fauci in contempt.

The entire Senate will now vote on whether to hold the former chief of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in contempt. If it does, the Justice Department would then decide whether to prosecute him — a sentencing that can include up to $100,000 in fines and one to 12 months in prison.

When asked yesterday whether the DOJ should prosecute Fauci, President Trump said, “They prosecuted Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon, two decent people over something that was never prosecuted before. … When you see that happen, you think maybe he should. What he did is far more serious than a lot of crimes.”

Fauci had previously received a “preemptive” pardon from President Biden because of Biden’s belief that the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers were likely to target Fauci. That has proved prescient. How did we get here? STAT’s Daniel Payne has the news.

DISABILITY

Advocates decry Trump administration push to ‘streamline’ Head Start

As part of a bid to “reduce federal bureaucratic burden,” the Trump administration published a proposal on Thursday that would drastically change the early education program for children from low-income families. Health and disability advocates say these changes could drastically worsen the program’s quality.

The proposed rule rescinds more than 1,400 regulatory provisions in favor of a more streamlined, state-by-state approach — a “roll-back of almost every quality and implementation standard not explicitly in the law,” said one advocate.

English-only instruction is now required, while states no longer have to meet key benchmarks related to nutrition, curriculum, and teacher qualifications. The changes could also spell disaster for children with disabilities, as state requirements for services often pale in comparison to Head Start’s federal mandates.

It’ll be a minute before any changes come to pass. Stay tuned.

FIRST OPINION

The state of the CDC, one year after shooting

Aug. 8, 2025, was a normal Friday at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Until it wasn’t. Daniel Jernigan was working in his office when he heard “what sounded like hammering outside.” Why was the building shaking? Construction? It was Friday afternoon, near quitting time. That didn’t make sense.

It was an active shooter.

One year after a shooter fired hundreds of rounds into CDC buildings, Jernigan reflects on the events of that day and why just a few days later he resigned from his role as the director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases.

Where do things stand with the agency now? “CDC was built to respond to the world’s threats, and as made real by the shooting, the agency now remains the target of threats.” Read more from Jernigan.

TRANS

A third clinic settles with DOJ over trans care

A third hospital has reached a settlement agreement with the Justice Department over the provision of gender-affirming care to young transgender people. Connecticut Children’s Medical Center — which last summer stopped providing gender-affirming care to patients under 19 in the wake of the Trump administration’s pressure campaign — will continue not to provide the care for an unspecified amount of time, pay an unspecified fine, and set aside $500,000 for anybody who feels harmed by previously provided care. (Worth noting: Pediatric gender-affirming care remains legal in Connecticut.)

Questions remain about whether there will be much demand for such remuneration, or for the detransition services that federal and state law enforcement have required of Texas Children’s and Cleveland Clinic. (Transgender people make up a small portion of the American population, and detransition is rare.)

Speaking of the Texas settlement: The full agreement, released Wednesday, requires the hospital to keep and maintain for 10 years a confidential “Break the Glass List” of patients who have ever had diagnoses for gender dysphoria or gender identity disorders. The hospital must also keep a list of people who could have potentially received gender-affirming care, based on a related list of diagnostic codes. The hospital is required to update the list monthly and prohibited from removing someone from the list, whether or not anything in their medical record has changed. The stipulation — not included in the Cleveland settlement — could raise concerns about patient privacy as the DOJ continues to press other hospitals for patient data. — Theresa Gaffney

ORGAN donation

HHS continues crackdown on organ donor network

The Trump administration wants to shut down a Kentucky organ donation group accused of continuing plans for organ retrieval from some patients who unexpectedly showed signs of life.

Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called the nonprofit Network for Hope “a bad apple” and accused it of “persistent” safety failures — the latest move in a campaign to reform the organ transplant system. Among the allegations is that Network for Hope’s predecessor organization pressured a local hospital to proceed with plans to withdraw life support and retrieve organs from a man despite signs that he was waking up from a drug overdose. (The man survived.)

The nonprofit “strongly disagrees” with Kennedy’s decision to decertify it and plans to appeal. Read more.

More around STAT

What we’re reading

Trump administration considers order on autism and vaccines, Bloomberg
Rand Paul’s Fauci diary dump exposed peoples’ medical histories, NOTUS
Study reveals new role for tau, a top target for Alzheimer’s drug development, STAT
Sydney Towle, who chronicled her cancer on TikTok, dies at 26, the New York Times
Bank of America spends $250 million a year on GLP-1 drugs for its employees, CEO says, CNBC