MRC Free Speech America update summary: By a vote of 5-4 on Aug. 21, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that the Trump National Institute for Health (NIH) is allowed to cut off $783 million in grants, paving the way for the administration to eliminate grants that appear to be violative of Trump’s executive orders regarding both DEI (SCOTUSblog listed three EOs to that effect: (1) "Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing," (2)"Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government" and (3) "Ending Illegal Discrimination And Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity") and censorship ("Restoring Freedom Of Speech And Ending Federal Censorship"). In early April, the NIH also effectively fired several high-level bureaucrats who played significant roles in the censorship detailed in MRC’s report.
The following article is a supplement to the MRC Report: The Biden Administration Waged War on Free Speech with 57 Censorship Initiatives.
Initiative #19
The COVID-19 Censorship Contracts
Type of Censorship: Partnership
Agencies Involved:
- Department of Health & Human Services (HHS)
- National Institutes of Health (NIH)
- National Library of Medicine (NLM)
- National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Disease (NIAID)
- National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Summary:
In addition to its work with so-called media literacy firms, the Biden administration also partnered with a variety of other tech-based censorship outfits to silence criticism of its COVID-19 policies. For example, in 2022 alone, the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Disease (NIAID):
- Paid data analytics group Melax Technologies (now part of IMO Health) $300,000 to use artificial intelligence (AI) to surveil and censor online speech regarding the COVID-19 vaccine.
- Paid the tech firm Innov8AI $300,000 to use AI to flag American speech for online censorship. The campaign was conducted to control the “online narratives” on medical issues “in real-time.”
- Paid consulting group Gryphon Scientific (now part of Deloitte) $299,964 to develop strategies and targets for “elimination of misinformation online.”
In addition to the above contracts, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) administered a $1,462,532.78 grant to the University of Texas Houston’s Health Science Center. The grant was for the Health Science Center to develop an algorithm that would automatically flag “intent and belief attributes underlying COVID-19 misinformation” for immediate censorship.
Both NLM and NIAID are part of the National Institute of Health (NIH).
Key Individuals:
- Hugh Auchincloss, Acting NIAID Director / Principal Deputy Director for NIAID
- Patricia Flatley Brennan, NLM Director
- Francis Collins, NIH Director
- Larry Tabak, Acting NIH Director
