WASHINGTON – From a window on the seventh floor, Dr. Anthony Fauci recognized one of the hundreds of protesters who had swarmed the National Institutes of Health. They had blocked entrances and pathways at the campus in Bethesda, Maryland. They set off colorful smoke bombs and blasted air horns every 12 seconds as a reminder that, statistically, someone had just died of AIDS. They carried fake coffins with Fauci’s name on them, focusing their anger on him, the nation’s top infectious disease doctor, for what they felt was the government’s lackluster response to a disease that was, at that point, killing mostly gay and bisexual men and intravenous drug users.
Fauci watched the man he recognized climb onto the concrete portico of the main building. Police wrestled him down, and Fauci, dressed in his white lab coat, bolted downstairs. “Peter, is that you?” Fauci asked as a burly officer marched the man through the main door of the building and toward a police van, his hands zip-tied behind him. “I did it! I was the first one arrested,” the man, Peter Staley, replied. Fauci knew Staley, who was HIV-positive, as one of the leaders of the protest. Publicly, Fauci had argued with Staley and other activists over the government’s response to AIDS, but in this moment, Fauci wanted to make sure Staley wasn’t hurt. The baffled police officer stood by in disbelief as Staley grinned and assured Fauci he was OK. “It was an extraordinary moment,” recalled Staley, who remains close friends with Fauci almost 40 years later.
For Fauci, it would be one of many personal moments in a 56-year career that would see him become the nation’s most revered – and, in some cases, reviled – scientist and infectious disease expert. He served seven presidents, from Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden. He advised leaders through anthrax attacks, Ebola outbreaks, and the Zika virus. As director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, he became an icon because of his success, said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, who succeeded him as director after he retired in 2022. But it would be the COVID-19 pandemic under President Donald Trump that would turn the 85-year-old white-haired doctor with the gruff Brooklyn accent into a lightning rod like never before.
Fauci’s job often placed him between politics and science. George W. Bush gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work on HIV and AIDS. Biden gave him a presidential commendation. However, the political landscape shifted dramatically. On Thursday, Aug. 6, a GOP-led Senate panel voted 8-5 to hold him in contempt of Congress. A week earlier, he had appeared before the committee. The committee chairman, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, and other GOP lawmakers accused him of misleading the public regarding the origins of COVID-19. Digging through the diary Fauci kept on his government computer, they accused him of saying one thing in private emails and another in public briefings.
More than 100 times, Fauci’s response was the same: He invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Fauci’s attorney, David Schertler, declined ’s request for an interview with Fauci. Schertler said the broad, preemptive pardon he received from Biden covered only the period from 2014 to the end of Biden’s term, leaving him vulnerable to potential future investigations. Fauci’s defenders say he has been unfairly made a villain by MAGA Republicans putting politics ahead of public health. For Fauci, they say, the focus has always been the science. “I never saw him say one thing privately and another publicly,” said Jerome Adams, who was surgeon general under Trump.
Like many scientists working in government, Fauci understood there is often tension between science, policy, and political reality. “Those are difficult judgments, and reasonable people can disagree about them,” Adams said. But “I always found him to be a straight shooter.” Fauci credits his parents with instilling the values that led him to a career in medicine and public health. Born into an Italian-American family, Fauci grew up in a three-bedroom apartment above his father’s pharmacy in Brooklyn. His father, Stephen Anthony Fauci, whom he remembered as a shy man with a strong sense of ethics, integrity, and hard work, ran the business.
On Sunday, when the pharmacy was open half a day, Fauci worked the counter, ringing up prescriptions. He learned how to talk to people from all walks of life. In between, he was the starting point guard on the basketball team at Regis High School, an all-boy Jesuit school in Manhattan. Fauci remembered his father accommodating customers who could not afford their medication, a lesson in empathy that stayed with him. This foundation guided him through the AIDS crisis, where he evolved from a target of activist rage to a partner in drug development.
Regarding the COVID-19 era, experts note that science is inherently iterative. Fauci got some things wrong as he and other scientists tried to contain a virus they knew nothing about, said Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. But “I think he was the right man for the job,” said Offit, who had raised doubts about the reliability of early data on the effectiveness of the COVID vaccine and questioned some public health recommendations on booster shots. “It’s perfectly reasonable to change the way you think about a complex topic such as an emerging virus if you receive new insights that justify doing so,” said John Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Cornell. “Indeed, it would be professional malpractice to not do so.”
The polarization surrounding Fauci today is a stark contrast to the bipartisan respect he once commanded. During the height of the AIDS crisis, his willingness to listen to activists like Staley changed the way the NIH conducted clinical trials, speeding up the approval process for life-saving drugs. This collaborative approach became a hallmark of his tenure. Yet, the COVID-19 pandemic brought a different kind of pressure, where public health guidance became a flashpoint for cultural and political identity. The constant attacks from political figures have taken a toll, but those close to him say his resolve remains unshaken.
Despite the current legal and political challenges, Staley believes Fauci remains focused on his core mission. “He is fully ready to finish this fight,” Staley said. If anything, Staley said, Fauci has gone back to the thing he loves most: being a doctor. He continues to study, write, and engage with the scientific community, undeterred by the partisan vitriol that has defined his later years. His career, spanning over half a century, serves as a case study in how public health leadership is tested by both biological threats and political storms.
The transition from the AIDS era to the COVID era reflects a broader shift in American society. In the 1980s and 1990s, the fight against HIV was characterized by a desperate need for scientific breakthroughs and a government that was initially slow to respond. Fauci’s role was to bridge the gap between the scientific establishment and the dying patients who demanded a seat at the table. In the 2020s, the challenge was different: a global pandemic that required rapid, mass-scale interventions in a highly polarized media environment where misinformation spread as quickly as the virus itself.
Ultimately, Fauci’s legacy will likely be debated for decades. Supporters point to the millions of lives saved through his research and advocacy, while critics focus on the policy missteps and the perceived politicization of public health agencies. Through it all, Fauci has maintained a consistent, if sometimes contentious, presence in the national consciousness. Whether viewed as a hero or a villain, his impact on the trajectory of modern medicine and the public’s relationship with science is undeniable. As he navigates the aftermath of his long tenure, the man who once climbed over barricades to talk to protesters remains a central, if controversial, figure in the history of American public health.
Biden gave him a presidential pardon after congressional Republicans threatened him with criminal charges over his handling of COVID-19.
Schertler said in a statement that Paul is waging a baseless campaign to put Fauci in jail and harbors a “seemingly pathological” obsession with him.
The broad, preemptive pardon he received from Biden covered only the period from 2014 to the end of Biden’s term in January 2025.
He and his family receive so many death threats that he has his own security detail, which he pays for himself after Trump revoked his taxpayer-funded protection.
They blamed him for the closure of schools and businesses during the worst days of the pandemic.
They painted him as someone obsessed with celebrities and his own fame.
They battered him with serious questions about pandemic-era policies, vaccines and masking guidelines and not-so-serious questions about the day of the week and the color of the carpet in the room.
His attorneys feared Paul was trying to coax Fauci to say something under oath that could be misconstrued and used to prosecute him.
In his 2024 memoir, “On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service,” he described his family as loving and close-knit.
His father, Stephen Anthony Fauci, whom he remembered as a shy man with a strong sense of ethics, integrity and kindness, ran the pharmacy from 9 a.m.
He took a 45-minute break in the evening to have dinner with his family.
He delivered them on his Schwinn bicycle on weekends and during school breaks and summer.
We will just put it on a tab,” Fauci wrote in his memoir.
He went to Cornell University Medical College, graduated first in his class in 1966 and accepted a fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in 1968, studying how the human body protects itself against infectious diseases and cancers.
He had picked up the government’s morbidity and mortality weekly report from a pile of junk mail on his desk at the National Institutes of Health.
An article detailed an unusual form of pneumonia in five men who otherwise had been healthy.
The virus would kill more than 700,000 Americans.
Fauci built a research program that tried to learn how to stop HIV from destroying the immune system.
At the time, AIDS was often a death sentence.
The writer Larry Kramer branded him a murderer in an open letter published in 1988.
Two years later, on May 21, 1990, hundreds of protesters stormed the offices of the National Institutes of Health.
“We realized that our only salvation was going to come from science,” said Staley, who left his Wall Street job to become a political activist with the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP.
He invited them to meetings in his office and, later, to long dinners over bottles of wine at restaurants and in the home of his top aide.
Fauci listened, really listened, agreeing at times and pushing back strongly when he didn’t.
The meetings gave him insight he couldn’t get anywhere else.
He pressed the Food and Drug Administration to allow thousands of people into experimental drug trials.
“I am brutally honest with the guy,” Staley said.
“The stuff I have told him over the years, 9 out of 10 people would end the friendship.” But “he wanted to hear that.
By early 2020, COVID was spreading rapidly across the United States.
Trump announced at a White House news briefing on March 19, 2020, that the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine could be a game changer in COVID treatment, claiming early test results had been promising.
“Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work,” he responded, adding the evidence cited by those touting the drug was anecdotal and not backed by science.
At the same briefing, Trump referred to the State Department as “the Deep State Department,” and Fauci covered his face with the palm of his hand to hide his reaction.
A photo of the moment went viral and quickly became an internet meme – and Fauci noticed everything for him started to change.
He gave updates on television, answered reporters’ tough questions and served as the voice for the latest science on stopping the spread of the coronavirus.
“While millions of Americans appreciated or admired me, a hard-core group saw me as a nay-saying bureaucrat who deliberately, even maliciously, was undermining President Trump,” he wrote.
“They loved and supported the president and regarded me as the enemy.
To them, my hand to my forehead moment proved it.”
He and his family were bombarded with angry emails, texts and phone calls.
In Congress, Republicans aimed at Fauci more frequently and pushed the unproven theory that the coronavirus was created at a lab in Wuhan, China, instead of spreading from animal to human, as Fauci believed.
At a contentious Senate hearing in July 2021, Paul repeatedly clashed with Fauci and accused him of lying about the government funding research in Wuhan.
“If anybody is lying here, senator,” Fauci shot back, “it is you.”
The bitter exchange set the stage for Paul’s Senate hearing last week.
“I think he really did try and explain things clearly.
“I think I might crumble if this were happening to me.
Two days after he pleaded the Fifth, Fauci was back at Georgetown University Medical Center, where he has worked since retiring four years ago.
There, away from the chaos and the cameras, he quietly made his rounds and tended to patients.
Michael Collins writes about the intersection of politics and culture.
