President Trump’s nominee to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality once said that Texas would be “better off” as an independent republic, CNN reported Thursday.

Kathleen Hartnett White, whom Trump nominated to the post earlier this month, penned a 1995 essay for the 150th anniversary of Texas statehood. In it, Hartnett White wrote that the state would be “better off” if it were free from federal regulations, including environmental ones.

ADVERTISEMENT

"The desire of many Texans to be free from the federal yoke is far more than historical nostalgia for the Lone Star Republic,” the essay reads. “It is a well-warranted desire, shared by increasing numbers in every state, to reduce the domain of federal power and to return to the understanding of federalism that informed the founding of the United States as a republic. The sesquicentennial of Texas statehood is not a happy occasion."

She referred to the federal Clean Water Act as an “onerous unfunded mandate,” and criticized federal regulations, like EPA guidances, as “blatantly coercive” examples of “federal domination.”

Hartnett White, a fellow for energy and environment issues at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, is a controversial nominee because of her history of criticizing climate change policy.

In 2016, she referred to belief in global warming as a “kind of paganism” for “secular elites” in an interview on an online talk show.