A BIG WIN FOR SCIENCE: From “Fringe” to Mainstream. Trump’s nomination of Jay Bhattacharya to head NIH is a major victory for science and academic freedom — —and a serious threat to the universities that suppressed scientific debate and promoted disastrous policies during the pandemic, as I explain in City Journal. Elite universities annually receive more than $500 million apiece from the NIH, the world’s largest funder of biomedical research, which is one reason that so many academics were afraid to challenge Anthony’s Fauci’s version of “The Science” — they needed his agency’s money.

Under Biden, the NIH used its financial leverage to promote critical-race research and the expansion of DEI bureaucracies. Those priorities are about to change. Assuming the Senate confirms Bhattacharya, one of the few scientists who did challenge Covid orthodoxy, he can use that leverage to promote genuine scientific debate on campus.