The Senate confirmed Brooke L. Rollins on Thursday to lead the Agriculture Department, putting her in charge of an agency responsible for promoting and regulating the nation’s food supply.
The final vote was 72 to 28, including 19 Democrats in support. Throughout the confirmation process, Ms. Rollins garnered noticeably more bipartisan support than some of President Trump’s other cabinet picks, with the Senate agriculture committee voting unanimously to advance her nomination.
On social media afterward, Ms. Rollins said it would be a privilege to help Mr. Trump “advance his agenda,” adding that it included foremost “the men and women of American agriculture.”
“Fighting on their behalf each and every day will be the honor of my lifetime,” she added.
Elements of Mr. Trump’s agenda are almost certain to reverberate across the agriculture sector. Plans for mass deportation may cut into a key source of the agricultural sector’s labor supply. Producers could be caught up in a trade war if countries targeted by Mr. Trump’s tariffs respond in kind. And farmers and agribusinesses across the country have described frustration and confusion as the administration’s freezes on grants and other funding have left many of them scrambling.
In her confirmation hearing last month, Ms. Rollins pledged to support farmers and ranchers if they were affected by retaliatory tariffs, and said she agreed with Mr. Trump’s immigration plans.
Ms. Rollins, a lawyer who has overseen two influential conservative think tanks and served as Mr. Trump’s domestic policy adviser during his first administration, will lead an agency with a sprawling portfolio. The Agriculture Department supports farms, inspects slaughterhouses, administers nutrition programs like food stamps and school lunches, manages national forests and supports rural development.
Among the priorities Ms. Rollins listed for her first days on the job were ensuring swift delivery of economic aid to farmers hurt by recent natural disasters and working with state governments and agricultural commissioners to combat bird flu. The disease is ravaging poultry farms across the country and causing egg prices to spike.
Ms. Rollins may also work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was confirmed as health secretary on Thursday and whom Mr. Trump has given wide latitude to influence food policy, in part to deliver on the president’s vow to “make America healthy again.” She has called Mr. Kennedy a friend and, in her confirmation hearing, shared his concerns over the proliferation of ultra-processed foods in school meals.
A number of influential farm groups and businesses welcomed Ms. Rollins’s confirmation, even as they alluded to the various challenges farmers and ranchers face.
“Farm and ranch families are looking for a champion and a voice as they continue to face economic headwinds, labor challenges and uncertainty over the rural impacts of Washington’s current policy debates,” Zippy Duvall, the president of the Farm Bureau, an advocacy group, said in a statement. “Ms. Rollins will need to hit the ground running to ensure the administration understands the challenges farmers and ranchers are facing.”
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