Editor’s note: This is part two in a two-part series.

I have some good news and bad news regarding Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The bad news is that he has been appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services. The good news is that he will not be appointed Secretary of Agriculture.

Prior to the election he was videotaped standing in front of USDA headquarters in Washington excited about what he was going to do with our food system “when he got into the building.” He will impose influence over how foods are regulated in his duties pursued from HHS. I believe that he intended to run the USDA remotely from his HHS office.

Brooke Rollins was named as Ag Secretary. She is reportedly not seen as a pushover but in the end both Rollins and Kennedy work for Donald Trump.

USDA has 100,000 employees. How many will still be employed by the USDA four years from now will be impacted by the Department of Government Efficiency. The USDA is a prime candidate to get DODG’d, something you might be surprised as to how many farmers will support.

Kennedy takes himself seriously and will hit the ground running. Others will soon be taking him seriously too. Food companies like Kellogg’s, Kraft, Con Agra, Tyson, General Mills and others, along with even McDonalds, will pool resources to send a delegation of lobbyists and litigators to Washington, D.C. to battle Kennedy’s HHS. Consumers his food inflation.

Unleashed by the incoming president and told to “go wild on health care and food,” I doubt Kennedy had to be told twice. Wonder how long that it will take him to undermine public confidence in both our health care and food production systems?

Sen. John Thune of South Dakota was voted Senate majority leader. I do not know whether he deserves our congratulations or condolences. Thune was the best pick for the biofuel and ag sector.

Mitch McConnell reverts to being a regular senator for the rest of his term.

One of the first big challenges that will face Thune is whether to go along with recess appointments if the Senate cannot muster majority approval. Typically, recess appointments are only used when the president and the Senate are not of the same party. The rules are that when the Seante adjourns, then the individual pending being appointed can take the position without a Senate vote to confirm. The Senate will sometimes play games to not formally adjourn to thwart a recess appointment. Thune would thus have to cooperate with adjournment to allow the recess.

An official with a recess appointment can serve for only two years and typically doesn’t have the clout within the department or agency that he is trying to run because they are temporary. Trump will attempt to strongarm his appointments through with the usual coercion … primary threats, retribution and such … so most opposition will cave. No Republican in Congress wants to be Trump’s enemy.

Trump is testing the character of many Republicans in Congress by the extremeness of his nominees. That will sort out who is MAGA and who is not. Loyalty is the primary characteristic of nominees chosen by Trump and this test of loyalty now expands to Congressional members themselves. A number of Trump Cabinet level appointees are not likely to get all GOP senators’ support, but they will have a 53-vote majority so can lose a couple.

Will Kennedy be confirmed by the U.S. Senate? Who knows? But he will likely get a recess appointment if the GOP Senate balks at his confirmation.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum was named Interior Secretary and similarity to Kennedy taking two positions, Burgum will also be our Energy Czar, run from his Interior office. His nomination should be easily confirmed. Wonder if the Interior Department gets DOGED by Musk and Ramaswamy? The Burgum pick is good for agriculture, and despite his petroleum industry ties is very much pro-biofuel including support for the Summit Carbon CO2 pipeline.

North Dakota regulators approved the Summitt Carbon pipeline route last week, leaving growing pressure on South Dakota as the remaining holdout to do so. Burgum and Harold Hamm … Balkan fracker, major Trump donor and one of the major investors in the CO2 pipeline, are loyal to Trump. This was the reward.

Remember Scott Pruit? He was Trump’s first EPA administrator at the start of his first administration. He was as anti-biofuel/pro-Big Oil as one could get. He caused us a lot of trouble and was behind the RIN waivers that cost us 1.5 billion gallons worth of ethanol consumption.

Trump’s new pick for EPA this time is Lee Zeldin who, relative to biofuel policy, is Pruit 2.0. Every piece of legislation to gut the RFS has had him as a co-signer to it. My bet would be that they will label the RFS as “regulation” and then hand the RFS over to DOGE to let them get rid of it.

Donald Trump will be in charge of all facets of government and its departments and agencies. Trump is appointing people to the White House whose primary job will be to oversee the people he has appointed to run departments and agencies in his stead to report back to him that they are doing what he wants them to. The common denominator of them all is proven loyalty to the president. Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Deputy Director of policy Stephen Miller hold those oversight positions in the White House. Newly appointed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s job will primarily be to keep the generals in line. They will fire several to send the message to the rest. Trump’s appointees are from a different cloth from the type of individuals traditionally chosen to staff administrations because what Trump intends from them is different.

The change about to take place in how government is run will hit like the storm behind the wall cloud. The election result says that the American people want this.