For the first time in the nation’s history, a Texan will be leading the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which runs federal nutrition programs like school lunches and food stamps.

That became certain on Thursday as the U.S. Senate voted, 72-28, to confirm North Texas Republican Brooke Rollins to be President Donald Trump’s secretary of agriculture.

Rollins, who is from a small town outside of Fort Worth, sailed through confirmation hearings while emphasizing her family’s deep roots in farming and ranching in Texas.

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“Farmers and ranchers are the cornerstone of our nation’s communities,” she said during a hearing last month. “If confirmed, I will do everything in my ability to make sure our farmers, ranchers and rural communities thrive.”

While the agency has key oversight over farming and ranching, it is also a major piece to food nutrition programs like the national food stamp programs and school lunch programs.

Those types of programs have been in the crosshairs of some Republican groups that accused former President Joe Biden’s administration of going too far in expanding them. Project 2025, the conservative blueprint written by Republican groups in preparation for a new Trump administration, has called for increasing work requirements on families who get benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the primary food stamp program. They also have advocated for reducing school lunch programs so they are targeted to only truly needy children while they are enrolled in school.

Rollins was not part of the drafting of Project 2025, but she faced a series of questions during her confirmation hearing on how she would handle food nutrition programs, including school lunch programs that go to more than 3 million Texas school children. Rollins, a Texas A&M graduate and former legislative advisor to former Gov. Rick Perry, said she has a “real heart” for helping people in federal nutrition programs.

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“It’s also imperative to us that every taxpayer dollar that is spent in support of these programs, we fully understand that it is reaching its intended recipient,” she added. “That that recipient is able to use it effectively and efficiently for true nutrition reasons.”

Last year, the USDA spent more than $50.8 billion on school nutrition programs. In 2020, that budget was $27.6 billion.

Texas was one of 13 states last year that turned down millions in extra federal funding to feed more than 3.8 million school children over the summer through the nutrition programs. Many of the states that rejected the money said they didn’t have enough time to implement the expanded program and feared the administrative cost would be more than what federal officials were offering.

U.S. Rep, Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston, has already been raising alarms about potential cuts to nutrition programs. Last fall, she had U.S. Department of Agriculture officials in Houston to see firsthand how the programs were helping children in her district, which has some of the highest poverty rates in the nation. She used to trip to blast the state for rejecting the additional federal funding and warned against cuts to nutrition programs more broadly.

“There is absolutely nothing wrong with making sure that children have food in their belly,” she said. “It’s just unconscionable.”

Rollins, 52, is the former CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative policy advocacy group based in Austin.

No Texan has ever run USDA, which was created by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862. USDA has about 100,000 workers spread over 29 different agencies.