An Unlikely Power Player In The Fight Over Solar On Farmland

ALBANY, New York — In early July, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins sat down in the White House Mess with an unlikely guest: a New York influencer who has attracted a national following attacking solar energy projects on farmland.

Alexandra Fasulo has no training in farming or professional background in energy policy. The upstate New York resident has been a political firebrand — embracing President Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud, posting about an impending civil war and lobbing derogatory insults at female conservative commentators, although she’s since toned down her online rhetoric.

But her wide-reaching anti-solar posts over the past year — with more than 2 million followers across platforms — have bedeviled New York policymakers and, increasingly, become a line of attack in the race for governor.

The White House visit came just a week after Rollins, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and country singer John Rich — whom Trump named in June as special envoy for American landowners, a post aimed at fighting solar and wind on farmland — sent a letter on June 26 to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul demanding answers to questions that mirrored concerns raised by Fasulo.

Rich has said publicly that her posts are what brought New York's solar buildout to his attention. The influencer said on her blog that she shared extensive information with Rich before the letter was sent, although Fasulo said she had no role in drafting the actual inquiry. And Rollins highlighted Fasulo's blog in a Sept. 23 X post celebrating the cancellation of a 300 megawatt solar project opposed by the influencer and local officials including Democratic state Sen. Pat Fahy.

“It still feels surreal in a lot of ways that me crashing out on the internet consistently for about 10 months finally produced some type of result,” Fasulo said on a conservative Substack podcast shortly after the White House gathering. “When I was standing there, when I was eating lunch in the White House, it absolutely felt surreal.”

The 33-year-old’s warnings about foreign companies “taking over” farmland voluntarily leased by property owners have become talking points for Trump officials and Bruce Blakeman, the Republican nominee for governor of New York.

Fasulo appeared with Blakeman in a campaign ad, with the Nassau County Executive declaring “no more solar on farmland” if he’s elected. Similar sentiments have buttressed his attacks on Hochul’s energy policy and become a rhetorical staple of his campaign. Blakeman appeared with Fasulo in April in Albany County, called solar projects under construction in Genesee County a “total scam” on a July campaign stop in Batavia and rallied with Sullivan County officials opposing a solar project there in August.

“People say don’t bring politics into this but … this is inherently political,“ Fasulo said in an interview with POLITICO. “As it currently stands, our current governor is all for the destruction of our land for solar and wind.”

The issue of whether — and where — to build renewables is an increasingly partisan battleground nationally. Solar built on farmland has been slammed for taking away productive agricultural land by Republican candidates for governor in California, Michigan, Wisconsin and Tennessee.

Solar is another flashpoint where Trump’s actions could undermine Hochul’s “all of the above” energy agenda that prioritizes new generation and affordability. The Democratic governor has clashed repeatedly with the president over offshore wind while seeking alignment on nuclear energy.

Hochul’s administration has pushed back on concerns about solar on farmland, pointing out in a July 24 letter responding to the Trump administration inquiry that only 0.13% of prime farmland is impacted by state-permitted projects. But state officials have struggled to mount a comparable response to the growing online and media furor over solar policies, a gap the renewable industry has been pressing them to close.

Michael Abboud, a spokesperson for the USDA, declined to answer questions about the basis of the letter sent to the Hochul administration or Fasulo’s meeting with Rollins.

“We stand firmly behind the letter,” Abboud said. “The concerns it raised remain valid and urgent: the systematic conversion of highly productive farmland into industrial solar installations under a state process that prioritizes speed over long-term agricultural integrity, local control, and the character of rural communities.”

The renewable industry is pushing the state to mount a more effective defense and scrambling to amplify more pro-solar voices on social media. A national solar trade group in August launched an ad campaign to counteract Fasulo’s narrative.

Marguerite Wells, executive director of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, the renewable industry’s state trade group, said historically the renewable energy industry relied on the clout of the environmental movement, which has waned. Now, the industry needs to make the case on economics as well.

“We don't have to rest just on the climate change message. It's also just, ‘Oh we need new electrons and we need cost-effective electrons,’” Wells said.

Siting divide

While solar is cheaper to build than other new forms of energy, it takes up more land than conventional power plants. The transition of thousands of acres of land from open fields, forests or grasslands to fenced-in solar arrays is an affront to Fasulo — and many upstate New York residents fighting projects in their communities.

Fasulo purchased land in upstate New York after a hurricane destroyed her home in Florida in 2022. Before becoming concerned about the proliferation of solar projects in the state, she mainly posted about her work on her seven-acre property.

“I'm a huge environmentalist, conservationist, animal lover, like a crazy one,” Fasulo said. “I have a tattooed turtle on my back, so it's like I'm Team Earth here.”

Fasulo’s nonprofit, the American Land Rescue Fund, has raised more than $100,000 in less than a year and filed three lawsuits against the state seeking public records and challenging siting rules for transmission projects.

She echoes criticism that upstate Republicans have leveled for years at New York’s energy policy: that new renewables sited in their communities destroy the land’s rural character and only benefits New York City.

“We’re districts in the Hunger Games, bled dry for those in costumes over in the Capitol that laugh as they give our best land to foreign corporations,” Fasulo wrote in one post. “I will never, ever forgive these people. They are anti-human, anti-environment, and anti-God.”

Fasulo often makes sweeping claims about specific solar projects and the industry as a whole. There are her concerns about those foreign-owned companies “destroying” land that landowners have leased for the projects. She’s concerned less with the impacts of human-caused climate change — a scientific consensus she’s skeptical of — than the more immediate ecological and societal impacts of building renewables.

Her primary target is New York state’s Office of Renewable Energy Siting. Established under Gov. Andrew Cuomo to speed up renewable permits to support New York’s energy goals, the office has now issued permits for 30 solar projects and six wind projects.

“ORES must be dissolved and anyone responsible for its creation must be called out and voted out of office. Period,” Fasulo posted.

Upstate Republican lawmakers, local government associations and residents fighting renewables in their communities have long opposed the office’s authority to override local laws in certain circumstances.

Fasulo’s efforts have drawn praise from Rep. Elise Stefanik and two upstate Republican congressional candidates, Kailee Buller and state Sen. Pete Oberacker.

Some Democratic lawmakers have also expressed reservations about covering productive farmland with renewables. Rep. Josh Riley, who is running for reelection in a competitive seat, recently echoed concerns similar to those raised by Fasulo about the state’s siting process.

Opposition to solar projects is often bipartisan in affected communities.

"Generally I vote for Democrats, but this is a Hochul project," said Jean Halloran, who splits her time between New York City and her home near a proposed solar project in Copake.

"It seems to me wrong to assume that every single project that applies to ORES for a permit is environmentally sound,” she said. “We shouldn't take our decades of environmental legislation and regulation and practice and throw it under the bus in order to build a few renewable energy electricity production facilities."

Who speaks for farmers

Fasulo’s arguments — and those of other critics of solar on leased farms — at once lionize and infantilize New York’s farmers. They are both the essential backbone to feed society, emblematic of a way of life under threat, stewards of the land — and also incapable of reviewing legal contracts to lease their land.

For some farmers, solar and wind leases can be a financial lifeline. They can also open up grazing land for farmers seeking to grow their operations.

“The biggest threat to farmland, in my opinion, is not solar. It's farms going bankrupt and going out of business. It's real estate development; it's suburban development,” said Rebekah Pierce, who operates J&R Pierce Family Farm in Clinton County which grazes sheep on solar projects.

The renewable industry and state officials emphasize that farmers should be able to lease their land for solar if they want.

“Private property owners have the legal right to make decisions about their own property,” said Jason Zehr, interim executive director at the Office of Renewable Energy Siting. “Farmers are not being forced to build renewable energy projects on their property. They're choosing to do that.”

Small, independent farms in New York are vanishing at a higher rate than the national average, according to Comptroller Tom DiNapoli’s office. Between 2024 and 2025, the state lost 500 farms and 100,000 acres of farmland, according to federal data. Eighty percent of those were farms with under $100,000 in revenue.

Rising labor costs and volatile commodity prices have made an always challenging business even more backbreaking.

Farmland is at greater risk from other types of development than solar, according to state and federal data. Solar facilities in agricultural districts represented just 0.5% of farmland lost from 2017 to 2022, according to another DiNapoli report.

‘You are my enemy’

While Fasulo has steered clear of more extreme political statements as she ramped up her solar posts, that wasn’t always the case.

In a previous life — before she moved from New York City to Florida — Fasulo was an officer for the New York Young Republican Club and ran its social media accounts in 2019 and 2020.

On her own since-deleted Twitter account, Fasulo posted frequently about politics and the 2020 election. Dozens of social media posts reviewed by POLITICO show a deep-seated distrust of the results of the presidential election.

The posts include declaring Fox News an “enemy of the people,” multiple sexualized insults aimed at conservative commentator Megyn Kelly, accusing Democrats of treason and calls for civil war.

“When you believe in destroying America, aborting children, taking God out of school, defunding the police, and worshipping Satan, we have nothing in common. You are my enemy,” she wrote on Nov. 14, 2020.

Shortly before moving to Florida, in a since-deleted Instagram video obtained by POLITICO, Fasulo criticized New York City, and then went further in attacking New York City’s mayor at the time.

“Bill de Blasio should be publicly eliminated from this planet,” she said.

Asked about these comments and her previous posts, Fasulo said on X that POLITICO planned a “character assassination” of her.

“It’s a sad time today, a time in which journalists will stoop to commenting on your past character when they can’t refute the claims and the facts you’re sharing with the public,” Fasulo wrote. “But as I said in the beginning of this, if that’s what I have to weather to save our rural towns and the animals caught in the crossfire here, then so be it.”

Some of Fasulo’s followers have made comments on her posts advocating violence against state officials, including some that have been reported to state police.

“What we see is this spread of misinformation about the work that we do has resulted in some online threats to staff, employees, which is inexcusable,” Zehr said. “She bears some responsibility here.”

Fasulo said she does not endorse violence and deletes any threats she sees. The influencer said she has her own safety concerns.

“I've had people write very scary things to me over things related to this,” Fasulo said. “They don’t care. This is the government versus a 5-foot-3 girl. It's hysterical.”

Transparency concerns

ORES holds public hearings on proposed projects, takes public comments and posts many filings online. But Fasulo has accused the agency of redacting too much information about endangered species impacted by projects, a policy ORES officials say is required by state law.

She first started to scrutinize the agency’s process during the siting of the Fort Edward Solar project several miles from her land in upstate New York, which she purchased in 2023.

The now-permitted project affects grasslands in a region known for hosting endangered birds, although the final conditions require the developer to submit a net conservation benefit plan to offset those impacts.

The influencer traveled to Albany twice — in November 2025 and January 2026 on the day of the governor’s State of the State address — to try to get an in-person meeting with someone at the agency but was turned away. In a February update to her followers, Fasulo claimed she’d never heard back from any ORES officials.

“No one has emailed,” Fasulo said in the video posted on Feb. 12, 2026.

But Fasulo told POLITICO she did receive an email from an ORES official after the January visit, before posting that video. The email, obtained by POLITICO through a public records request, included information about agreeing to confidentiality provisions to view redacted information — and also offered to schedule a meeting.

Fasulo said she never responded and instead forwarded it to her attorney.

“At this point I've emailed them so many times. Why bother?” she said. “I had to start going through my attorney because they escorted me out of the building when I tried to meet with them.”

Fasulo has claimed that solar developers are stripping topsoil from farmland while building their projects and moving it offsite. She shares videos or photos of construction activity and dumpsters with what appears to be dirt or other material in it.

But state permits don’t allow developers to remove topsoil from the site. It is required to be stripped for the construction of roads and some other components, but has to be stored on site and eventually restored upon decommissioning. The state requires an on-site agricultural monitor to be on location while construction is happening to ensure the rules are followed.

“There's an agricultural inspector on site every day to make sure that doesn't happen, because that's against the law. It's against the permit. It's against what the farmer would want,” Wells said. “You want the topsoil there. It's expensive to cart it away. No one would do that, but she can claim it, and it's very hard to refute in the moment.”

Fasulo plans to continue her work opposing solar projects and scrutinizing state agency decisions. But her influence is now reverberating far beyond Albany.

Fasulo said she’s had phone calls and other private communications with Rich, outside of the trip to D.C., although she declined to discuss any specifics.

“My issue is with the scale, the size of this,” Fasulo said. “If the wind and solar took up 10 acres at a time, you wouldn't even know my name. I would just be minding my own business here. But when you perimeter fence off 3,000 acres at a time, and I see all the roadkill from the animals that can't get around it, then I get mad.”