A health economist who once famously clashed with officials at the National Institutes of Health and now is the nominee to lead the agency faced questions from senators from both parties Wednesday about drastic funding cuts and research priorities.

U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley said the president’s proposed changes present an “immediate, devastating and irreparable” risk of harm.

The new National Institutes of Health policy would strip research groups of hundreds of millions of dollars to cover so-called indirect expenses of studying Alzheimer’s, cancer, heart disease and a host of other illnesses — anything from clinical trials of new treatments to basic lab research that is the foundation for discoveries.