New Trump admin hire raises alarms over 'incredibly chilling' social media posts

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), led by Secretary Kristi Noem, hired 21-year-old Peyton Rollins — a former U.S. Labor Department employee — to help manage its social media accounts. But the hire is now being scrutinized by the New York Times, which reports that Rollins made posts on Labor Department accounts that "raised internal alarms over possible white-nationalist messaging."

Times reporter Evan Gorelick, in an article published early Wednesday morning, February 11, explains, "Mr. Rollins has spent most of the past year giving the Labor Department's social media pages a makeover in Mr. Trump's image. Current and former employees said career staff members had been pushed aside after Mr. Rollins' arrival and rarely, if ever, crafted social media posts once he took control. Instead, Mr. Rollins personally posted social media content, which he has included on his personal website."

Recent federal government posts, according to Gorelick, "have used evocative imagery, some reminiscent of the 1920s and 1930s, with phrases like 'Restore American Greatness' and 'he globalist status quo is OVER.'"

"During the period when those posts were made," Gorelick reports, "the department's social media following exploded, even as colleagues warned superiors that the department's accounts could be seen as promoting white-supremacist rhetoric, Nazi imagery and QAnon conspiracy theories. Some employees who have since left the Labor Department said that the agency's posts had grown increasingly questionable."

Gorelick notes that according to "dozen internal e-mails and Microsoft Teams conversations obtained by The New York Times," Rollins' co-workers "expressed personal discomfort with the posts, cited data showing engagement with right-wing extremists, and urged a more moderate messaging style."

Former Labor Department employee Egan Reich, who spent 15 years with the agency before leaving in April 2025, told the Times, "It's incredibly chilling and disappointing, and I do feel it diminishes the work my colleagues and I did over the years to educate people about the government."