Donald Trump taps health economist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, critic of COVID lockdowns and vaccine mandates, to the nation's top medical research agency.

President-elect Donald Trump nominated health economist Jay Bhattacharya to serve as the next director of the National Institutes of Health, a federal agency that spends most of its nearly $48 billion budget on medical research through competitive grants Bhattacharya is a physician and professor at Stanford University School

Bhattacharya's nomination, alongside Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Mehmet Oz, indicates potential shifts in vaccine policy under the Trump administration.