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Friday, July 21st, 2017

Trump officially nominates climate-denying conservative talk radio host as USDA’s top scientist

Author:     Natasha Geiling
Source:     Think Progress
Publication Date:     20 July 2017
 Link: Trump officially nominates climate-denying conservative talk radio host as USDA’s top scientist
Stephan:   There is so much horrifying news coming out of the Trump administration, and the Republican congress is such a pusillanimous tribe of little zombies, that a major trend affecting every aspect of America has been swamped out of the media and is going on almost without public awareness. I am speaking here of the dismantlement of the American government. Hundreds of positions are going unfilled, and the ones that are filled, usually the most senior posts, are being filled by Donald Trump with men and women utterly incompetent for the job to which they have been appointed. As a result the quality of American government infrastructure has been severely degraded and that is going to affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Here is the latest example of what I mean.

Sam Clovis
Credit: Charlie Neibergall/AP

Sam Clovis, a former Trump campaign adviser and one-time conservative talk radio host, has no background in the hard sciences, nor any policy experience with food or agriculture. Still, that did not stop President Donald Trump from officially nominating Clovis to the position of the United States Department of Agriculture’s undersecretary of research, education, and economics, the agency’s top science position.

In the past, the undersecretary of research, education, and economics has brought years of experience in science, public health, or food policy. Previous undersecretaries have been biochemists, plant physiologists, or food nutrition experts. The most recent undersecretary, Catherine Woteki, came to the position from Mars, Inc., where she helped manage the company’s scientific research on health, nutrition, and public safety.

Clovis, on the other hand, comes to the position after serving as national co-chair for the Trump campaign, which he joined in 2015. Before that, Clovis was a professor of economics at Morningside College in Sioux City, […]

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