President-Elect Donald Trump nominated former White House aide Brooke Rollins to be his agriculture secretary, the last of his picks to lead executive agencies and another choice from within his established circle of advisers and allies.
The nomination must be confirmed by the Senate, which will be controlled by Republicans when Trump takes office Jan. 20, 2025. Rollins would succeed Tom Vilsack, President Joe Biden’s agriculture secretary who oversees the sprawling agency that controls policies, regulations and aid programs related to farming, forestry, ranching, food quality and nutrition.
Rollins, an attorney who graduated from Texas A&M University with an undergraduate degree in agricultural development, is a longtime Trump associate who served as White House domestic policy chief during his first presidency. The 52-year-old is president and CEO of the America First Policy Institute, a group helping to lay the groundwork for a second Trump administration. Rollins previously served as an aide to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and ran a think tank, the Texas Public Policy Foundation. She worked as a litigation attorney in Dallas and also clerked for a federal judge in the Northern District of Texas after earning her law degree from the University of Texas.
Previously, the President-Elect nominated Sean Duffy, a Fox Business host and former Wisconsin Republican congressman, as secretary of the Department of Transportation in his incoming administration. Duffy, currently a co-host of “The Bottom Line” on Fox Business, served as a congressman for Wisconsin's 7th congressional district in the northwest part of the state from 2011 to 2019, overlapping with the bulk of Trump's presidency. A father of nine children, the 53-year-old Duffy left his seat in 2019 to care for a newborn daughter with a heart complication. The seat is currently held by U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-WI.