Rick Perry, Ex-Governor of Texas, is Trump's Pick as Energy Secretary

HOUSTON, TX — They met three times, most recently on Monday in Trump Tower, to discuss the issue, and now it seems a done deal: multiple sources are reporting that President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Rick Perry, a former governor of Texas, to be his energy secretary.

Perry, who holds a bachelor's degree in animal sciences from Texas A&M University, would be in charge of the department that plays a major role in designing nuclear weaponry and maintaining the nation's nuclear arsenal. The current secretary of energy, Ernest Moniz, is a physicist who held a professorship at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Perry infamously forgot the Energy Department when asked during a 2011 debate to name the three departments he would eliminate if he were president — the other two were Commerce and Education.

Perry, 66, comes from a state with abundant oil and a robust energy sector and has often questioned science and scientists. In 2001, during a presidential town hall, he said, "I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects." During his tenure as Texas' chief executive, he was a vocal opponent of what he called "the secular carbon cult" and claimed that the science behind the link between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change was not credible.

The nominee will likely face tough confirmation hearings, including questions about the Dakota Access Pipeline. He is a board member of Energy Transfer Partners, the firm constructing the embattled project near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. The Obama administration recently halted all work on the project, a decision that could be reversed by the Trump administration.

Perry was governor of Texas from 2000 to 2015 and also served as the state's agriculture commissioner. After he dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination in late 2015, Perry endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz and criticized Trump's background, but more recently began referring to the president-elect as "our guy."

— Image of Rick Perry courtesy flickr/Gage Skidmore