WASHINGTON — President elect Donald J. Trump announced on Tuesday night that he would nominate Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford professor of health policy and outspoken critic of the nation’s public health system, to lead the National Institutes of Health.

President-elect Donald Trump nominated Stanford University physician and economist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health on Tuesday, a move that would hand the reigns of the country’s premier medical research agency to a noted critic of COVID-19 lockdown measures and a proponent of “herd immunity

President-elect Donald Trump nominated Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health — an agency under the Department of Health and Human Services. With a $48 billion budget, NIH oversees how grants are distributed for medical research on vaccines,