MAHA caucus member pledges hearings into ‘corruption’ of a public health sector ‘captured by Big Pharma’

FIRST ON FOX: Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., a member of the newly created Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) senatorial caucus, told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview that one of the first hearings he wants to hold as chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations would focus on “the corruption of science” within the public health system.

Johnson said he hopes the MAHA caucus will “restore integrity” to the scientific community while adhering to recently confirmed Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s other agenda items.

“That’s just foundational, we have to do that first,” Johnson said. “I think we need to give the … COVID injection injured a fair hearing.”

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Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., hopes the MAHA caucus will investigate the “corruption of science” in public health. (Getty Images | Fox News Digital)

Created in December by Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas – who is also a physician – the MAHA caucus “will focus on nutrition, access to affordable, high-quality-nutrient-dense foods, improving primary care, and addressing the root causes of chronic diseases,” acting as a congressional arm for implementing RFK Jr.’s agenda.

So far, the only other members of the caucus are Republicans, but Johnson said the MAHA movement is largely nonpartisan. Other issues Johnson hopes the coalition will explore are the childhood vaccine schedule and potential theories behind the cause of autism.

“We haven’t even been allowed to ask these questions,” Johnson said. “I’d like to hold a hearing on what questions remain unanswered, what science needs to be conducted with integrity to start answering these questions.”

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(GREG NASH/POOL/AFP | Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg | Sebastian Gollnow/picture alliance)

“We can certainly reveal the fact that there are legitimate questions that are outstanding that the American people want answers to in a completely nonpartisan way,” he said.

Johnson said the HHS and scientific community were “captured by Big Pharma” and Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fauci is currently facing the ire of Republicans for unanswered questions about taxpayer-funded gain-of-function research.

He said MAHA’s goal is “to end that corporate capture of federal health agencies” and “reinstall in federal agencies their real mission, which is on behalf of the American public.”

And a new bill he said he may introduce could address that by restoring “doctors to the top of the treatment pyramid” instead of having their hands tied by associations and health groups.

“We should have a bill, and I would call it ‘Right to Treat,’” Johnson said. “Right now, they’re being crushed at the bottom of the pyramid, and the pyramid starts with people like Anthony Fauci, basically non-practicing physicians, telling doctors how to take care of their patients. That’s completely backwards. We need to re-establish doctors at the top of the treatment pyramid.”

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is sworn in as secretary of health and human services by Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch on Feb. 13, 2025. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

RFK Jr. was confirmed by the Senate last week in a 52-48 vote, nearly entirely along party lines. Kennedy’s controversial hearings focused on his previous public statements about vaccines. Kennedy has been critical of “Big Pharma” and “Big Food” on the campaign trail during his own independent bid for the presidency and continues in the MAHA movement under Trump’s administration.

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“Our country is not going to be destroyed because we get the marginal tax rate wrong. It is going to be destroyed if we get this issue wrong,” Kennedy said of the increase in chronic illnesses. “And I am in a unique position to be able to stop this epidemic.”

Since RFK Jr.’s swearing-in, Trump has issued sweeping firings across several federal departments, including HHS, leading to a protest led by federal employees outside HHS in Washington, D.C., on Friday.