{"id":6115,"date":"2025-02-13T17:18:52","date_gmt":"2025-02-13T17:18:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/brooke-rollins-confirmed-as-usda-chief\/"},"modified":"2025-02-13T17:18:52","modified_gmt":"2025-02-13T17:18:52","slug":"brooke-rollins-confirmed-as-usda-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/brooke-rollins-confirmed-as-usda-chief\/","title":{"rendered":"Brooke Rollins confirmed as USDA chief"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>The Senate voted 72-28 on Thursday to confirm Brooke Rollins\u2019 nomination to serve as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.<\/p>\n<p>All Republicans agreed to pass Rollins, but more Democrats voted against her than expected \u2014 including Sens. <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.politicopro.com\/member\/282320\" data-person-id=\"282320\">Tina Smith<\/a> (D-Minn.) and <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.politicopro.com\/member\/66871\" data-person-id=\"66871\">Ben Ray Luj\u00e1n<\/a> (D-N.M.), who initially helped advance her out of the Senate Agriculture Committee to the full Senate floor.<\/p>\n<p>Sen. <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.politicopro.com\/member\/51230\" data-person-id=\"51230\">Peter Welch<\/a> (D-Vt.), who voted in favor of Rollins, said \u201ca lot of Democrats\u201d are voting against most of President Donald Trump\u2019s Cabinet nominees in response to his efforts to overhaul the federal workforce.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of outrage about Trump\u2019s unlawful conduct,\u201d Welch said.<\/p>\n<p>Rollins, who was a domestic policy chief during Trump\u2019s first term in the White House, will be responsible for nearly 100,000 department employees and a budget of more than $200 billion. She\u2019ll also lead USDA\u2019s nutrition, rural developments, farm safety net and trade programs, as well as the federal response to the bird flu outbreak.<\/p>\n<p>Lawmakers and agriculture industry leaders are hoping that Rollins, a longtime Trump ally who joins the administration after leading the America First Policy Institute, will stand up for agricultural interests during Cabinet discussions about Trump\u2019s tariffs and deportations.<\/p>\n<p>The Senate Agriculture Committee <a href=\"https:\/\/subscriber.politicopro.com\/article\/2025\/02\/senate-panel-advances-rollins-nomination-for-usda-chief-00202220\" target=\"_blank\">unanimously advanced<\/a> her nomination last week.<\/p>\n<p>Many Democratic senators have indicated they\u2019ve had productive conversations with Rollins about their states\u2019 agricultural priorities. They\u2019ll have to work with her on ongoing farm bill negotiations, workforce issues and other USDA programs that their constituents rely on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Senate voted 72-28 on Thursday to confirm Brooke Rollins\u2019 nomination to serve as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. All Republicans agreed to pass Rollins, but more Democrats voted against her than expected \u2014 including Sens. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) and Ben Ray Luj\u00e1n (D-N.M.), who initially helped advance her out of the Senate Agriculture Committee to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}