The Trump administration is threatening to indefinitely withhold billions for two of the largest transit projects in the nation— unless Democrats pass a budget resolution that will strip hundreds of millions more from other transit, biking and walking projects in communities across America permanently.
U.S. Department of Transportation Sec. Sean Duffy on Wednesday urged Congress to end "Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jefferies' shutdown" of the federal government (misspelling the House Minority Leader's surname, by the way) because the shutdown makes it impossible for his DOT to conduct a newly required "administrative review" of the Second Avenue Subway and Gateway Tunnel mega-projects in the New York City region.
The projects are slated to receive $18 billion in federal funding.
It's important to note, though, that Duffy himself created the rule that required that review only hours before the shutdown, alleging (likely spuriously) that the race- and sex-based contracting requirements in the project violated the constitution — even though the federal government actually requires "Disadvantaged Business Enterprise" contracting.
Moreover, the directorship of the civil rights office that would theoretically conduct the review has been listed as "vacant" on the agency's website since Trump took office in January.
"U.S. DOT’s review of New York’s unconstitutional practices will take more time [if the shutdown doesn't end]," wrote Duffy. "Without a budget, the Department has been forced to furlough the civil rights staff responsible for conducting this review. This is another unfortunate casualty of radical Democrats’ reckless decision to hold the federal government hostage to give illegal immigrants benefits."
But advocates say that Duffy is the one who's holding the federal government hostage — by pressuring Congress to pass a budget resolution that would cement hundreds of millions of dollars of his illegal transportation clawbacks, with little assurance that the New York mega-projects would even get moving again.
And unless Congress stands up and demands an end to the Trump administration's de facto shutdown of their priorities, the American people will have no reason to trust that our core federal transportation law is anything more than a sheet of paper, the advocates say.
How we got here
To understand how all this got so tangled up, let's do a little review.
When the Trump administration took office in January, U.S. DOT began scouring reams of Biden-era grants for evidence that they violated the administration's new executive orders against the "Green New Deal" and "diversity, equity and inclusion" — even though most experts say those terms are poorly defined and can mean just about anything.
In normal times, recipients of federal grants can rest safe in the knowledge that they'll eventually get their money after a press release goes out announcing that they've won a federal award. The Trump administration argued, though, that any money that hadn't yet been actually obligated was subject to being clawed back, unless each individual community succeeded in convincing a judge that the Trump administration had violated contract law — so it could rescind virtually any grant it wanted.
And Duffy's DOT did just that, most recently in September when it sent notices to dozens of grantees informing them that their awards — many of which funded biking, walking, and transit projects — had been deemed in violation of federal priorities because they did not sufficiently "promote vehicular travel" or were "hostile to cars." Transportation for America estimates those grants, to date, total more than $200 million.
Meanwhile, other transportation programs created under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — the nation's core federal infrastructure law — set an expiration date for final grant agreements of Sept. 30, 2025, allowing the Trump administration to simply run out the clock rather than hold up the government's end of the bargain. Those delays are also likely illegal — unless Congress makes them legal by ending the shutdown with a continuing resolution that doesn't include roughly $300 million in deliberately-expired funds, essentially rubber-stamping the president's delay tactics.
Finally, Corrigan Salerno of Transportation for America points out that several other federal programs, such as the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Program, still "seem to have effectively been 'frozen,' with the staff required to implement their statutorily required projects either fired or forced onto other priorities."
Put it all together, and some experts say that hundreds of millions of dollars for life-saving transportation projects has been withheld against Congress' explicit will, in red and blue communities alike — and it's time for lawmakers to stand up and pass a budget that reflects the bills they passed, rather than accepting the Trump administration's blatant overreach.
"Federal programs deemed insufficiently aligned with the Trump administration’s priorities have already been shut down for months now," Salerno wrote. "Simply extending the current funding levels would mean continuing the broken status quo that has allowed U.S. DOT to illegally cancel, delay, and reprogram federal funds as it sees fit."
An $18-billion bargaining chip
Of course, Duffy's decision to indefinitely pause two of America's largest signature transit projects is alarming on its face, as is the disturbing way that he did it.
As Streetsblog NYC's David Meyer previously reported, "New York has had requirements for awarding contracts to small businesses and women- and minority-owned businesses since the 1980s, adhering to federal legislation that the Trump administration now claims is unconstitutional."
Using a brand-new made-up rule to punish the Empire State for following federal law as it had long been written is dubious at best, and deeply disingenuous at worst — especially considering that the office that would "review" the project for alleged violations isn't even fully staffed, and there is little guarantee that review would even be fair.
But It's just important to remember what that Duffy appears to be using that $18 billion bargaining chip to do: to bully congress into passing a continuing resolution that will undermine countless American priorities, not least of which include hundreds of millions of dollars for the transportation projects we need the most. And that will impact red and blue communities across the country, unless Congresspeople on both sides of the aisle act now.
