The Trump administration is illegally withholding money for desperately needed multimodal transportation projects — and Congress must act today to reassert its power of the purse and pass a budget that delivers communities the funds they were promised, a coalition of advocates demand.
In a letter to Washington lawmakers (onto which sympathetic organizations can still sign on by 4 p.m. Friday, Sep. 26.) a consortium lead by the National Campaign for Transit Justice accused the White House of conducting "illegal and unilateral" clawbacks to roughly $300 million in grants for safe, equitable, and sustainable mobility funded under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, America's core federal transportation law.
The authors of that law made a fatal error of putting a three-year expiration date on key programs that benefit people outside cars. That sell-by date typically would have been more than enough time to finalize grant agreements between the feds and communities, but since the Trump took office, the Campaign says his administration has weaponzied what would normally be surmountable government bureaucracy — by running out the clock on programs it doesn't like until the final deadline arrives when federal fiscal year ends on Sept. 30 and wipes the money out.
Those delay tactics, the letter writers say, amount to a slow-motion coup over the will of policymakers and the American people they represent — and Congress needs to have the spine to fight back.
"Let’s be clear: These rescissions are not backed by the majority of Members of Congress or Senators, nor would they ever survive the legislative process," the letter said. "That is precisely why the administration has resorted to circumventing Congress, breaking both precedent and the law in the process.
"This is not only a breach of public trust, but a constitutional crisis in real time," the letter continued. "Arbitrary and capricious acts like these rip up the rule of law and undermine the very foundation of congressional power over the purse."
In legal terms, those "arbitrary and capricious acts" are known as "pocket rescissions" — and for the record, they're illegal.
And in this case, the campaign says they'll also have devastating impacts on America's ability to "utilize more affordable modes of transportation to access jobs, healthcare, and other essential services," as well as their ability to breathe clean air and walk down the street without fear of death in a car crash.
Some of the programs under threat include money to reconnect communities torn apart by highways, reduce truck emissions that give people diseases like cancer, and make transportation networks more resilient to climate change. (A list of the specific projects subject to expiration is available here.)
"This is going beyond red and blue communities," said Corrigan Salerno of Transportation for America, one of the co-authors of the letter. "This is an ideological attack on the concept of safety, and what that [word] means for people outside of cars. People in Alabama, people in Georgia — they're all being affected by these grant cancelations. And I think how the administration is defining 'safety projects' is extremely dangerous."
In a perverse twist, though, Congress could actually use the budget process to rubber-stamp the Trump administration's massive illegal power grab and strip grantees of any hope of getting their money back — or they could stand up for the law they themselves passed and require the White House to keep the money flowing.
That's because, when the federal fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, Congress will sign a continuing resolution that will either allow Trump's clawbacks to stand, or demand that they be reversed. And that means the time to act is right now.
"[If Congress doesn't rewrite the budget resolution], these expiring grants are going to go away — and there's nothing a judge can do about it, because Congress already said the funding wasn't available after a certain time," added Salerno. "Congress needs to act to ensure that the money they put forward is protected — especially when you're dealing with an executive branch that's refusing to implement the law that they themselves wrote."
The letter also argues that protecting these grants is essential for protecting public trust — especially after the IIJA expires. A separate letter signed by many of the same groups argued that Congress should refuse to negotiate the nation's next federal transportation bill — which is supposed to be passed in 2026 — until they have confidence that the Trump administration is actually implementing this one as Congress intended.
"Democrats, as they're negotiating reauthorization, need to realize that a lot of their priorities are being thrown out the window under existing statute," added Salerno. "I don't understand how they can negotiate in what they think is good faith when they know that every piece of existing law is being trounced on."
To make it right, the letter signatories say Congress essentially needs to rewrite the continuing resolution to push back the expiration date for the expiring grants, while simultaneously making it explicit that "all previously awarded grants — especially under the IIJA — [must] be honored at their full project scope as authorized and appropriated by Congress," so the Trump administration can't simply run out the clock again.
Those "previously awarded grants," by the way, include yet another $300 million for sustainable and equitable projects awarded under programs that didn't have expiration dates — but which the Trump administration recently cancelled anyway, because they said the didn't adequately "promote vehicle use" or were "hostile" to drivers. Those projects included, bafflingly, bike trails that barely even intersect with public roads, and which received only a tiny fraction of the boatload of funding guaranteed to highway agencies every year.
Congress also needs to future-proof the next transportation bill by "enforceably reasserting Congressional authority and oversight" over America's core transportation laws, and restoring any semblance of order to how laws like these are implemented, the letter says. Failure means that an administration that claims to champion government efficiency will continue to wreak havoc on city and state governments, with massive downstream consequences for the residents they serve.
"Without the federal government being a partner here, we're anything but efficient," Salerno added. "You've got local needs that are absolutely not being met, and as a result of these delays, there's been cost inflation; there's been staff time wasted. ... So all those factors considered, it's extremely Inefficient to be working to delay [and cancel] these projects."
The National Campaign for Transit Justice and their partners invite organizations to sign onto this letter no later than Friday, Sept. 26 at 4 p.m. ET.
