Carla Sands is no stranger to far-fetched ideas. In 2019, while serving as an ambassador under then-President Donald Trump, she played a role in his quixotic effort to buy Greenland from Denmark. More recently, Sands has said without evidence that children are committing suicide to save the planet from global warming and that the Biden administration’s climate policies suggest the influence of Chinese corruption. Now, with Election Day fast approaching, Sands is in position to sway an effort that isn’t far-fetched at all — shaping the people and policies that would guide a second Trump administration. Since 2022, Sands has worked as a top energy official at the America First Policy Institute, a think tank that got a huge boost in August when Trump picked Linda McMahon — the group’s board chair — to serve as co-chair of his presidential transition team. That’s where Sands, who serves as vice chair of the group’s Center for Energy and Environment, has found a platform for her conspiratorial views on climate change.
Trump’s choice of McMahon elevated the America First Policy Institute as a nexus of influence — especially since Trump has distanced himself from the Heritage Foundation, another conservative think tank. The two groups have similar goals, but the Heritage Foundation gave Democrats ammunition to attack Trump — thereby earning his ire — by publishing Project 2025, a detailed playbook of how a second Trump administration might work. The institute, founded in 2021, boasts a number of former Trump officials including former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and former Energy Secretary Rick Perry. It’s expected to have an outsize influence on both personnel and policy if Trump recaptures the White House. Sands’ ideas about climate and energy policy could make their way into a second Trump administration, no matter how outlandish they may seem.
“Kids are killing themselves to save the planet,” she said last year at an America First Policy Institute event in Texas. “Children are committing suicide because they don’t want to put out CO2. That’s how much they’ve brainwashed and hurt our children.” At the same event, Sands took aim at an urban planning concept known as 15-minute cities. The general idea is to make cities more pedestrian-friendly, but the proposal has become a lightning rod for the far-right, who see it as a tool for government control. “They’re geo-fencing people to 15 minutes from their home, and you have to get special permission to leave,” she said. “This is happening right now … because we know climate isn’t about climate at all. It’s Marxism to control humanity — and I mean the working people, the great masses of the people.” Not all of Sands’ views are so far outside the mainstream.
In her work with the America First Policy Institute, Sands has taken a more reserved approach in blog posts or newspaper op-eds that hew more closely to broader Republican beliefs. She wants to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act. She said the administration’s climate policies will benefit China more than the United States. She rails against regulations on the oil and gas industry as well as the Paris climate agreement. And she falsely claims electric vehicles are more harmful to the environment when compared to gasoline-powered vehicles over a 15-year span. Stephen Moore, a Trump economic adviser and senior fellow at the America First Policy Institute, touted Sands as someone who understands energy policy. “I know she’s very much in favor of an all-of-the-above energy strategy, and that includes oil, gas, coal, nuclear power, all of the major sources of energy that make our economy work,” Moore said. “I think Carla completely understands that and is committed to that.”
But one expert who studies climate disinformation said there’s a real danger in elevating officials such as Sands to positions of influence because it opens the door for their fringe ideas to become mainstream. “They become amplified,” said Arunima Krishna, a Boston University communications professor. “It is detrimental to our political system, to our democracy and the planet.” Sands’ pathway into politics hasn’t followed the usual script. Sands’ late husband, Fred Sands, died after suffering a stroke in 2015. He made his fortune with a real estate brokerage and investment firm, and the same year he passed away, he called Trump “a joke.” But after his death, Carla Sands hosted a major fundraiser for Trump at the couple’s Bel Air mansion. Ultimately, she gave more than $200,000 to Republican candidates and political action committees during the 2016 cycle, according to OpenSecrets, a campaign spending tracker. Sands’ effort in the 2016 election helped land her a position overseas — as Trump’s ambassador to Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. Her work history prior to that post included a career as a chiropractor, as well as a few small acting roles.
It was during her time as ambassador that Sands repeatedly violated the Hatch Act by using her government Twitter account to attack Democrats — including one message that questioned whether Vice President Kamala Harris was eligible to run because she is the child of immigrants. She was hailed by far-right commentator and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon as a “MAGA Steel Magnolia.” Sands’ time as ambassador ended after Trump lost the 2020 election, but she has remained active in politics. She ran in 2022 as a Republican candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania, finishing a distant fourth in the GOP primary. During that campaign, she billed herself as the “energy senator,” despite having little to no experience in the industry. “I want to be Pennsylvania’s energy senator,” Sands told a local television station. “We need a champion for American and Pennsylvania energy independence and not just independence, but let’s get back to American energy dominance.”
She also has continued her role of big-time donor — raising more than $85,000 to advance Trump or GOP efforts this election cycle, according to OpenSecrets. And she’s embraced the role of attack dog. On the right-wing Real America’s Voice streaming network, Sands said in 2023 that Biden’s climate policy suggested that China was bribing government officials to “control our legislation.” “There’s a lot of corruption in the U.S. government because of the bribery and then also this sort of sweet payments from the Chinese Communist party to help control our legislation and our, I would say, leaders in our country,” she said. Eden Alem, a spokesperson for the Democratic-aligned group Climate Power, said Sands’ comments are in line with those of Republicans who deny the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act, even as it has created clean energy jobs throughout the country. She compared AFPI’s work to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 effort to tear down climate policy and energy regulation to benefit the fossil fuel industry.
“Carla Sands spouting climate conspiracy theories shouldn’t come as a surprise,” she said. “America First Policy Institute and Project 2025 are cut from the same cloth,” she added. “They are Trump’s Big-Oil-backed projects that will kill our climate and clean energy progress so their Big Oil funders can continue to make record profits and pollute our communities.” The Trump campaign did not response to a request for comment. Harris campaign spokesperson Joseph Costello said in a statement that “Donald Trump will sell out the middle class and our children’s future to appease the Project 2025 conspiracy theorists and enrich the billionaire oil barons who will dictate his extremist agenda.” In recent weeks — as AFPI has become more closely entrenched with the Trump campaign — Sands has been encouraging Republican voters to cast their ballots early. She opened for Trump with that message at a rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, last month, telling the crowd that the “reason our air is cleaner was because of clean Pennsylvania natural gas.”
