Dr. Jay Bhattacharya speaks during a roundtable discussion with members of the House Freedom Caucus on the COVID-19 pandemic at The Heritage Foundation on Thursday, November 10, 2022. The NIH has been in the crosshairs of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH. The NIH director oversees 27 institutes and centers that conduct early stage research on everything from vaccines for emerging pandemic threats to targets for new drugs. Bhattacharya, a Stanford health policy professor and doctor, was an outspoken critic of the U.S. government's Covid-19 policies during the pandemic. Francis Collins, the NIH director and Fauci's boss, defended Fauci in a July 2020 interview with STAT News, saying it was "unimaginable" to consider firing Fauci, as some Republicans had demanded.

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Persons: Jay Bhattacharya, Donald Trump, Robert F, Kennedy Jr, Kennedy, Bhattacharya, government's, Anthony Fauci, Trump's coronavirus, Francis Collins Organizations: Caucus, Heritage Foundation, Tuesday, Stanford, National Institutes of Health, NIH, Department of Health, Human Services, RFK, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford's Department of Economics, NIH's National Institute of Allergy, Disease, STAT, Trump Locations: Stanford, Barrington, Fauci