Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's first appearance before America's top transportation committee was marked by screaming matches with Democrats, dubious statements about bike and transit safety and a disturbing defense of his decision to deprioritize research about what he called "racial stuff."
In his first testimony before the House Transportation and Infrastructure committee as U.S. DOT secretary, Duffy faced more than three hours of questions, including about how he'll balance running NASA with supervising our country's earthly transportation systems ("Some people might ask, 'how I can [raise] nine kids?') and whether he will use his position as a Trump confidant to encourage the president to release the Epstein files ("It's out of my space.")
Sprinkled into that mess, though, were a few standout moments that could have direct implications on America's non-automotive transportation system — or at least make for some memorable soundbites.
First, ranking member Rick Larsen (D-WA) made the strong case that it was "a federal interest to invest in sidewalk and bike paths, because we have a roadway death epidemic in this country [and] 20 percent of those roadway deaths involve ... someone on a bike, or someone walking."
Larsen applauded Duffy for advancing planning grants for bike and walk paths under the Safe Streets and Roads for All program, but urged the secretary to act faster on delivering implementation dollars that might actually "separate those folks from the cars and trucks."
Duffy's response, to put it mildly, requires some dissection:
"I think there's some places where you are right, we need separation," Duffy conceded. "But in other places, I think we're actually co-mingling automobile traffic with bikes and pedestrians, and it can also be a danger as well. And I think there's a balance to how we do this, just there's also a congestion issue that comes up as well when we convert traffic lanes to bike lanes.
"But I'm obviously open to that conversation, and I'm implementing the will of the Congress," he added.
While some of the grammar of Duffy's comments was a little unintelligible, the gist of the statement appeared to echo the parade of misconceptions he shared at an April media event, in which the Wisconsin native claimed that all "bike lanes" are dangerous for cyclists (while making no distinction between actually "separated" lanes with concrete barriers and legitimately dangerous, paint-only paths) and that they cause traffic jams by removing space for motorists (which countless studies show they don't).
Larsen didn't have time to push back on the secretary's assumptions — but other members of the committee didn't hold back.
In a heated exchange (around the 3:56:30 mark below), Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) chided Duffy for his recent "attacks" on his state's Metropolitan Transportation Authority, "claiming there's a surge in subway assaults and accusing the agency of withholding information," both of which he said "misrepresent the facts."
Rather than concede Nadler's point that major crime is down eight percent in the transit system since 2019 — a figure the MTA actually puts at an even more impressive 10 percent — Duffy countered that he'd seen stats that claim that assaults are up 60 percent since 2019.
Duffy's figures are a bit out of date — subway crime was down 3.9 percent through the end of May compared to last year, as Nadler noted. Felony assault is up 18 percent year-over-year. Nadler outright accused Duffy of lying to the American people.
"Why do you continue to lie about people being lit on fire in subways or pushed in front of trains?" Duffy countered, citing no evidence.
The shouting match between the two continued for several minutes, with Nadler further reprimanding Duffy for his attempts to rescind New York City's congestion pricing program — and Duffy responding that "our roads are not for the elitists, the ones who have money" and accusing Adler of "forc[ing] people" onto an unsafe subway system by tolling lower Manhattan.
Before Nadler had the opportunity to ask Duffy why he's thinks its okay to force New York's majority non-driving population to huff fumes and risk crashes with motorists, though, his time was over.
Duffy had a more-cordial exchange with representative John Garamendi (D-CA), who probed the secretary's controversial decision to defund a group of six "university transportation centers," a usually-sacrosanct corner of the American research landscape which perform dozens of studies a year across a range of topic — all of which Duffy derided as too "woke" to waste taxpayer money on.
Garamendi noted that the secretary had eliminated $54 million in research funding and workforce development initiatives for the centers, seemingly on the basis of a handful of keywords in their lengthy research agenda that conflicted with the administration's broad executive orders against diversity, equity and inclusion.
"It seems as though you've gone through a process of simply looking for words and canceling those projects," he added. "I think that is a terrible way to conduct policy."
Duffy's response was basically word salad (to which we've attempted to add a few croutons of language we suspect he omitted), but the gist seemed to be that he thought researching "safety" was more important than, to use his words, "racial stuff."
"You can name a few grants that I have canceled — I look, [for instance, at grants to study] "equitable decarbonization," the secretary said. "[Well,] we lose 40,000 people a year on our roads. I think there are better uses of our research and our dollars to make sure we can keep people safe."
"You might like equitable decarbonization, or you might like improvements to auto travel," Duffy continued. "[You might like studies that ask] how [an auto-dominated transportation system] benefits higher-income individuals or white drivers — I mean, the racial stuff — as opposed to keeping people safe. That — [keeping people safe] — is my drive. That's my mission."*
Of course, whether or not Secretary Duffy believes it, transportation decarbonization does "keep people safe" by keeping them from getting deadly pollution-linked diseases like asthma, or from dying in climate-related disasters like deadly storms. And studying who, exactly, is enduring those deaths while others enjoy shorter car commutes is critical to ending disparities that are devastating vulnerable communities across the country.
*Editor's note: Here's a word-for-word transcription of the above quote, for those who might have other thoughts on how to best interpret Duffy's comments in the larger context of the hearing:
"You can name a few grants that I have canceled. and I look again — equitable decarbonization. We lose 40,000 people a year on our roads. I think there are better uses of our research and our dollars to make sure we can keep people safe. You might like equitable decarbonization, or you might like improvements to auto travel. Can, how it can benefit, how it does benefit higher income individuals or white drivers — I mean, the racial stuff — as opposed to keeping people safe — that's my drive. That's my mission."
