Moments ago, President Donald Trump attended the dignified transfer of the U.S. service members recently killed in the war with Iran.
by NATALIA MITTELSTADT | The National News Desk
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WASHINGTON (TNND) — Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins pushed back on Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., saying that China-produced solar panels are taking over New York farmland.
Rollins testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, during which she said to Gillibrand, "And let me tell you what New York is stressed out about: it's the fact that your state is taking prime farmland and turning it into solar farms. That is absolutely inexcusable," according to a video clip the secretary posted on X.
Gillibrand responded, saying, "…New York farmers, you will see that smart farmers do both — do both."
"I have visited the New York farmers two times — two times in Upstate New York," Rollins said, before Gillibrand's time ended.
Rollins followed up on her response in the post, saying, "Since time ran out, let me be clear, @gillibrandny: Why are you ignoring the issues directly hurting farmers and driving up the price of farmland in your own state?
Rollins' remarks come after she, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, and country singer John Rich — who is the Trump administration's Special Envoy for American Landowners — sent a letter to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) last month demanding answers about the state taking over farmland for solar farms.
“Nothing is more insulting to hardworking New Yorkers than Albany politicians who think they know it all and enthusiastically override local control and railroad local communities,” Zeldin told The New York Post on Tuesday.
“The recent actions of Hochul and her allies to force upstate communities to take on the burden of far more solar farms on agricultural land is on-brand elitism that New Yorkers have grown to despise.”
Small Business Administration chief Kelly Loeffler told The Post on Tuesday, “New York has two-and-a-half-million small businesses and we’re watching a state apparatus go against these small businesses in favor of 18 large solar farms that are going to only raise the cost of operating for those small businesses, which employ nearly half of New York’s population. This is an example of big government overreach. That is the promise of socialism.”
Many of the multibillion-dollar solar contracts in New York have been given to foreign companies, including Canada’s Boralex, France’s EDF Renewables, and South Korea’s Cypress Creek Renewables, according to The Post.
A spokesperson for Hochul told the media outlet that New York was a “national leader in agricultural land protections” and had “invested hundreds of millions of dollars toward protecting agricultural land since the inception of the State Farmland Protection Program in 1992.”
The state "maintains robust environmental and agricultural protections for the development of new energy infrastructure projects," the spokesperson added. "Under Governor Kathy Hochul, the state has increased its support of the Farmland Protection Program, which has now preserved more than 138,000 acres of prime farmland. New York energy project development is occurring only on land that is willingly leased by landowners."
