LIVE: MAHA Summit 2026 Features VP Vance and Secretary Kennedy
What this video covers
NTD’s full-day livestream of the MAHA Summit 2026, the movement’s second annual gathering. Calley Means appears on the “Modernizing MAHA Regulation” panel alongside Kyle Diamantas — introduced here as acting FDA commissioner — and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, moderated by Tony Lyons, president of the MAHA Center. The panel takes stock of the whole-of-government chronic-disease effort, from GRAS reform and post-market chemical review at FDA to environmental work at EPA. The summit day closes with a wide-ranging, often joking on-stage Q&A between Secretary Kennedy and Vice President Vance.
Key points
- Means argues the administration’s “great historical accomplishment” is linguistic: three years ago, he says, “chronic disease crisis” was “not an accepted theory,” and policy treated diabetes, autism, cancer, and depression as separate silos rather than an interconnected crisis tied to food, phones, and chemicals.
- He recounts the executive order Trump signed the day Kennedy was sworn in, directing an all-of-government inquiry into the causes of chronic disease — Kennedy in a room with Zeldin, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, and military leadership — and calls the cross-agency relationships “the most inspiring thing I have seen in the last two years.”
- Diamantas describes the FDA’s two-track chemical strategy: GRAS reform on the front end, including rulemaking to require FDA knowledge of GRAS substances and a public listing, and a new systematic post-market review on the back end, with 37 chemicals currently under review.
- Diamantas says the food side of FDA had been “the redheaded stepchild of the agency” and that the team has been “putting the F back in FDA,” noting the dietary guidelines released with USDA earlier in 2026 and ongoing food work in schools, prisons, and military bases.
- Zeldin cites the EPA’s list of its top 500 environmental actions from the administration’s first year, points to nutrient-runoff progress in the Chesapeake Bay and a stopped shipment of illegal pesticides at the Port of Los Angeles, and says his biggest roadblock is time — and whether Congress will work with the administration.
- A figure cited on the panel holds that 1.2 million people will die this year from ultra-processed food, while media attention stays fixed on measles; a later speaker notes more than 50% of food companies have made voluntary commitments to remove dyes.
- Means insists the shift is permanent — “We are never going back to normal” — and Zeldin predicts the summit will outgrow its venue: “There’s going to be like a 30th annual summit.”
- In the closing Kennedy–Vance Q&A, Kennedy teases Vance about alleged White House pressure to put Oreo ice cream atop the new food pyramid; Vance jokes he is “the Brett Kavanaugh of ice cream,” says Kennedy’s diet has cut his ice-cream intake, and answers “no comment” — an exchange played for laughs to close the day.