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What to Know About Brooke Rollins, Trump’s Choice for Agriculture Secretary
A Texas native, Ms. Rollins worked in the first Trump White House and has also led two influential conservative think tanks.
President-elect Donald J. Trump rounded out his cabinet selections on Saturday, picking Brooke Rollins as his agriculture secretary.
A lawyer from Texas, Ms. Rollins, 52, served in the White House during Mr. Trump’s first term and has spent more than two decades promoting conservative policies as the leader of influential think tanks.
Here’s what to know about her.
She is a veteran of Texas’ conservative movement.
Ms. Rollins’s conservative bona fides run deep. A 2012 profile of Ms. Rollins — who grew up in Glen Rose, Texas, southwest of Fort Worth, and participated in the youth agriculture programs FFA and Four-H — noted that her “commitment to conservative principles began when she was 8 years old, watching, transfixed, as Ronald Reagan took the oath of office in 1980.”
Ms. Rollins graduated from Texas A&M University and worked for Gov. Rick Perry, according to a biography from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank. She joined the think tank in 2003 as its president and chief executive, leading it for 15 years.
During her tenure at the think tank, she wrote opinion columns decrying “free-spending lawmakers and irresponsible choices,” urging the state to resist federal overreach and expressing support for school choice.
She was named one of Texas’ most powerful 25 people by Texas Monthly in 2011, and her think tank was once labeled the “most influential” in the state by The Texas Observer.
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