The Trump-MAHA-Stanford nexus of US health policy

Photo Illustration by Alberto Mier/CNN/Getty Images/AP

In early 2022, Stanford medical student Santiago Sanchez set out to organize a campus debate with Jay Bhattacharya — a professor at the university whose outspoken denunciations of pandemic lockdowns made him a right-wing icon and a lightning rod both inside and outside the school.

But when Sanchez pitched the idea to Stanford faculty, the response was tepid. University academics he approached warned that debating Bhattacharya would elevate his views rather than challenge him. The prevailing sentiment, Sanchez said, was that Bhattacharya’s 15 minutes would eventually subside along with the coronavirus.

Three years later, Bhattacharya’s once-marginal platform has ascended to the top of American public health policy. He now leads the N