title:  BUSTED: Trump’s Pick For Top USDA Scientist Is NOT A Scientist At All
text: The USDA, responsible for everything from our food safety to climate change, is soon to get a new Chief Scientist who under the 2008 Farm Bill will be chosen  from among distinguished scientist with significant experience in agricultural research, education, and economics.  The problem is, Trump s choice for this high-responsibility position is Sam Clovis, who has none of these credentials.Clovis is a business professor at Morningside College, is publicly skeptical of climate change and has never even taken a science course during his graduate studies. What s worse is that he is most known for being a conservative talk show radio host for  Impact with Sam Clovis  in Iowa. Touting that the only reason Obama wasn t impeached was because of his race, he came out as a fierce pro-Trump advocate while running an unsuccessful camping for Senate in 2014.As the current senior White House advisor for the USDA, Clovis has been described as  Trump s eyes and ears  at the agency. Clovis also takes credit for recruiting Carter Page, Trump s foreign policy advisor who s being scrutinized for his ties to Russia.The appointment of Clovis as the USDA Chief Scientist was compared to appointing someone without any medical credentials to lead the National Institutes of Health, by Obama Administration Scientists.Clovis has expressed repeatedly that he does not believe in climate change, and has called efforts for climate action  simply a mechanism for transferring wealth from one group of people to another.  He has promised that the Trump USDA will take a new direction, focusing on lessening regulation and boosting trade, rather than addressing climate change.Catherine Woteki, a Ph.D. holder in nutrition and the USDA s undersecretary for research states,  access to safe food and clean air and water is absolutely fundamental to personal security,  and adding that scientific research is critical to the job.  Food system are widely recognized by the national security community as being part of critical infrastructure. It looks like our access to safe food, fresh water, and clean air are now in the hands of non-scientists who wants to use the USDA for capital gains instead of the security of our natural resources.Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images