The U.S. Senate confirmed two Trump nominees on Tuesday who have the potential to reshape the public health conversation in the U.S. government. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, President Donald Trump’s pick to head the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Dr. Marty Makary, the president’s pick to head the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), both questioned the U.S. government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, led by figures such as Dr. Anthony Fauci. Now, these men will lead government health agencies.

The U.S. Senate confirmed Makary as FDA commissioner by a 56-44 vote, with Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) joining all the Republicans in confirming him.

Meanwhile, the Senate confirmed Bhattacharya as NIH director in a 53-47 party line vote. Bhattacharya is allegedly more “controversial” because he co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter from “infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists” endorsing herd immunity, with extra protections for the vulnerable, as a preferable alternative to the “damaging physical and mental health impacts” of extended lockdowns. The document now boasts more than 940,000 signatures.

Bhattacharya faced criticism and censorship for his public deviation from the unscientific diktats issued by America’s health experts. “I think the lockdowns were the single biggest public health mistake,” he said in March 2021.

Now, Bhattacharya aims to rebuild trust in science and increase transparency at NIH, he said during his confirmation hearing. The Wall Street Journal reported in December that Bhattacharya was “considering a plan to link a university’s likelihood of receiving research grants to some ranking or measure of academic freedom on campus.”

Even before Bhattacharya’s confirmation, Trump’s NIH had already made political waves by cutting off research grants to Columbia University over its failure to restrain anti-Semitic demonstrations on campus, and to the University of Pennsylvania for allowing a male swimmer to compete against women.

Several senior career officials at NIH abruptly left the agency ahead of Bhattacharya’s confirmation, including Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak, the agency’s second-in-command; Michael Lauer, deputy director of the NIH extramural research; and Eric Green, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

Likewise, two senior FDA officials jumped ship before Makary made his mark on the agency. Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods Jim Jones left in February over layoffs, while Patrizia Cavazzoni departed to become Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President of Pfizer.

Makary also faced questioning during his confirmation hearing over whether he would preserve the Biden administration’s loosened regulations on the chemical abortion regimen. He replied that he had “no preconceived plans on mifepristone policy except to take a solid, hard look at the data and to meet with the professional career scientists who have reviewed the data at the FDA, and to build an expert coalition to review the ongoing data which is required to be collected as a part of the REMS program.”

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins congratulated both men for receiving Senate confirmation, saying in particular that Bhattacharya’s “leadership is exactly what @NIH needs to restore science, morality, and truth to our nation’s medical research.” Both appeared as guests on Perkins’s daily program “Washington Watch,” one of the foremost media sources that pushed back against the U.S. public health establishment’s attempts to suppress alternative viewpoints on the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of these alternative viewpoints were labeled “fake news” at the time, but they were ultimately proven right.