A few weeks after his election in November, President-elect Trump announced his pick for secretary of agriculture. Brooke Rollins was so little-known in farm policy circles that my first thought was, who? And I wasn’t alone. But as I have learned more about her, it has only heightened my concern that she is the wrong person for this important job that touches all of our lives at every meal.
As a Senate committee prepares to question Rollins at her confirmation hearing this week, they should take a hard look at her record, which includes far more anti-science rhetoric, inflammatory political statements, and ties to polluting industry than demonstrated interest and expertise in agriculture or food policy.
Rollins has virtually no farm and food policy experience
Rollins and Trump have touted the Texas farm she grew up on, her childhood participation in 4-H and Future Farmers of America, and a bachelor’s degree in agricultural development as her bona fides for the job of secretary of agriculture. But that degree is from 1994, and as far as I can tell, Rollins hasn’t spent much time thinking about agriculture, or the public policies that guide it, since then.
Instead, her resume looks like this: She pursued a law degree, worked as deputy general counsel and then policy director for then-Governor Rick Perry of Texas, and led a state-based free-market think tank that advocated for school vouchers and fossil fuel interests and against environmental safeguards. Starting in 2018, she worked in the Trump administration, first as head of the White House Office of American Innovation and then as acting director of the US Domestic Policy Council. After Trump’s re-election loss in 2020, she co-founded and led the America First Policy Institute. This anonymously funded think tank, described as Trump’s “White House in waiting,” has had so little interest in agriculture under her leadership that its website lists no staff members with relevant expertise and highlights only one issue: the misdirected concern about Chinese ownership of US farmland.
Essentially, in more than three decades, Rollins has never had a job solely focused on food and agriculture policy. No wonder her nomination came as a surprise to farm groups as well as Trump surrogates and Mar-a-Lago denizens. Senators should press her on why she wants to be the next secretary of agriculture, how she believes her background has prepared her for this challenging role, and why she thinks she is qualified.
Her anti-science climate denial and fossil fuel ties are troubling
Climate change is having increasing impacts on farming and food production. In 2022, the Biden administration and Congress took a major step to boost the resilience of US agriculture and food production, investing nearly $20 billion in incentives for farmers to adopt climate-friendly practices on farms. While some in Congress have attempted to divert this funding, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has continued to use it to empower farmers to be part of the climate solution. But the USDA’s approach to climate change could change dramatically if Brooke Rollins takes the helm.
Rollins has been described as a “climate skeptic,” but that really means that she denies the reality of climate change, its causes, and the devastating impacts that are already happening and will continue to worsen. In 2018, then-White House aide Rollins told participants at a right-wing energy conference that “we know the research of CO2 being a pollutant is just not valid”—a perspective that is extreme even in the Trump era—and she advocated withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in the first Trump administration, a move the new administration has already taken (again) with a Day One executive order.
And while climate denial or misrepresentation is something of a religion in Trumpworld, Rollins has a particular reason to invalidate climate science and efforts to decarbonize the US economy: fossil fuels are the family business. Her husband, Mark Rollins, is the president of HKN Energy, an oil exploration company operating in Iraqi Kurdistan and sister company to Hillwood Energy, a Texas-based, Perot family-owned oil and gas company. (She also has ties to the CEO of the Fertilizer Institute, which represents an industry that is highly dependent on fossil fuels and highly polluting in its own right.)
Climate denial and meddling with science at the USDA was a big problem in the last Trump administration, when a major report on climate and agriculture was buried, an unqualified non-scientist was (unsuccessfully) nominated for USDA chief scientist, and two science agencies were decimated through an abrupt relocation from Washington, DC, to Kansas City, MO. The Senate should ask Rollins if she intends to repeat that shameful history.
She promotes hateful and dangerous conspiracy theories
Rollins has a lengthy track record of divisive, dangerous, and hateful rhetoric. In the press and on social media during the Biden administration, she labeled federal employees the “deep state,” characterized federal law enforcement as the “political police of the regime,” and claimed the government would “come for you and me next” after the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago to recover stolen classified documents in 2022.
She has characterized social justice movements such as Black Lives Matter and women’s marches as inherently violent and leveled a laundry list of misdirected allegations, falsely accusing Democrats and “the left” of attempting to assassinate candidate Trump, seeking to jail their political opponents, and engaging in election manipulation, insurrection, and “the slow overthrow of the Constitution.” And during the 2024 campaign, she called on Trump voters to “become ungovernable,” an appeal that carried echoes of the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol. The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism has more on Rollins’ dangerous and incendiary rhetoric and worldview.
Given her apparent antipathy for social justice movements, I have to wonder what Rollins thinks about the 66 recommendations made in early 2024 by the USDA Equity Commission to address a long history of racial discrimination and level the playing field for farmers of all kinds. Or whether she supports her new boss’s cruel mass deportation plans that will hurt farmworkers—and that are worrying even farmers who voted for him. Senators should ask her.
Policy questions the Senate should ask Rollins
Before they hand over the keys to the USDA, the Senate must vet Rollins thoroughly. In addition to digging into her lack of qualifications and overall unsuitability for the role at her hearing this Thursday, members of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry should ask specific questions about her intentions on a range of food and farm policy issues confronting the USDA. My colleagues and I at the Union of Concerned Scientists have prepared a detailed list of such questions, including:
- Under your leadership, how will the USDA work to protect, support, and improve access for small farms, beginning and young farmers, and other farmers who have been historically underserved and faced discrimination? How will you prioritize the unfinished work of implementing the Equity Commission’s recommendations?
- What qualifications do you believe are necessary in a candidate for assistant secretary for civil rights at the USDA? How will you improve the discrimination complaints process at the department?
- Do you acknowledge that human-caused climate change is real and is already harming farmers, and that shifts in farming practices that build healthy soil can buffer farmland from flooding and drought, making farmers and our food supply more resilient?
- Given the strong interest among US farmers in voluntary conservation practices such as use of cover crops, no-till, and techniques to prevent soil erosion, do you agree that the USDA should continue its work to support and encourage the use of such practices to help farmers build resilience against floods, drought, and extreme weather?
- How would you ensure that farm and food system workers are supported by the USDA under your leadership?
Find our full list of proposed policy questions for Rollins here. If your senator is on the committee—made up of senators from 20 states—urge them to ask Rollins one or more of these questions. Find their contact information and suggested language here.