Democrats in fight to block Trump agriculture nominee who called climate change science 'junk'

Democrats have said they will oppose Donald Trump's nominee for the Department of Agriculture's chief scientist, a well-known climate change skeptic.

Charles Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, and Senator Brian Schatz said the President's decision to pick Sam Clovis to be an undersecretary at the Agriculture Department sends a “clear as day message to the world that this administration continues to tolerate hate.”

“President Trump should withdraw the Clovis nomination immediately – not only because he is a proud ‘skeptic’ of climate change and wildly unqualified ... but also as a gesture to the American people that this administration is serious about rooting out the most hateful voices in our society,” the two lawmakers said in a joint statement.

They added that if the administration doesn’t withdraw its nomination of Mr Clovis, Democrats “will vehemently oppose his nomination and urge our colleagues from both parties to come together and summarily reject him as well.”

Mr Clovis has a BS in political science, a Master of Business Administration degree and a doctorate in public administration, according to the White House. The post for which he is being nominated – the Agriculture Department’s undersecretary for research, education and economics – has traditionally been held by individuals with advanced degrees in hard sciences or medicine.

Mr Clovis only needs a simple majority of votes in the 100-member Senate to be confirmed. In order for Mr Shumer’s and Mr Schatz’s efforts to be successful, three Republican senators would have to join all 48 Democrats in opposing the confirmation of Mr Clovis.

Mr Clovis has a history of making controversial statements, including his suggestion that former President Barack Obama wanted to “enslave” his opponents and that Mr Obama was happy about the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya that killed the US ambassador and three other Americans.

“The extremist views Mr Clovis has expressed and the racist conspiracy theories he has stoked about President Obama, former Attorney General Eric Holder, members of the LGBT community and others have zero place in the public discourse, much less coming from the highest levels of our government,” Mr Schumer and Mr Schatz said in their statement.

In a 2011 blog post, Mr Clovis called progressives “race traders”, according to CNN. He has also suggested that the legalisation of same-sex marriage could result in the legalisation of pedophilia.

“If we protect LGBT behavior, what other behaviors are we going to protect? Are we going to protect pedophilia?” he asked in a video uncovered by CNN's investigative unit. “We're not thinking the consequences of these decisions through.”

Mr Clovis, who served as one of Mr Trump's first campaign policy advisors, is a former economics professor at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa.

In an interview with Iowa Public Radio in 2014, he said he was “extremely skeptical” about climate change, adding that “a lot of the science is junk science.”

“It’s not proven; I don’t think there’s any substantive information available to me that doesn’t raise as many questions as it does answers,” Mr Clovis said. “So I’m a skeptic.”