If there was any lingering confusion about the Trump administration’s willingness to faithfully and fully implement any current or future bipartisan deal on transportation reauthorization that Congress might consider, USDOT Secretary Duffy’s unhinged letter to Senate leadership about the administration’s reauthorization priorities should put a nail in that coffin.
Congress should extend the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) for a year to keep the transportation funding moving, and then they should not even consider coming to the negotiating table on a long-term bill until past grants that are rescinded are restored, frozen transit capital projects are restarted, and ironclad protections are put in place to ensure that USDOT faithfully implements whatever Congress assembles—whether it aligns with the administration’s priorities or not.
During the surface transportation reauthorization process, Congress sets policies, priorities, and funding levels for multiple years to come. USDOT’s role is to implement the law as Congress has written it, which includes issuing regulations and managing grant programs. But Congress—not the Executive Branch—decides the nation’s long-term transportation policy, strategy, and funding.
But these well-established roles have been upended by this administration.
USDOT has shown blatant disrespect for the intent and allocation of Congressional funding from the IIJA since the Trump administration took office in 2025.
USDOT has usurped Congress’s constitutional authority by withholding funding for projects and programs they oppose, delaying the Capital Investment Grants pipeline, killing research programs that they did not agree with, and reinterpreting grant-funding criteria to align with their agenda by weaponizing programs like Safe Streets and Roads for All by refusing to select projects that propose data-backed safety measures like new crosswalks, bike lanes, or lane configurations. Despite the courts saying that withholding congressionally appropriated funding is illegal, it is clear that the Executive Branch holds the fundamental belief that USDOT has unilateral discretion to determine how transportation funding should be spent, regardless of what the law says. Many of the specific priorities in Secretary Duffy’s letter for the next reauthorization align precisely with the ways the administration has already undermined the existing law on the books. This letter is another clear example of USDOT’s belief that if they disagree with a grant program that Congress codified into law, it does not need to implement it.
The administration’s track record and this letter should be a clear signal to Congress that, even if members negotiate in good faith and preserve bipartisan grant programs, putting those good-faith negotiations into the next reauthorization bill will not matter—because there is no guarantee that USDOT will actually implement them. This letter is just a preview of how the administration plans to carry out whatever deal Congress may make on reauthorization: However they please.
The Executive Branch’s audacity to intervene in this way signifies that we have reached the end of the premise of surface transportation reauthorization as we know it. Even if the Senate does the right thing and decides not to capitulate to USDOT’s requests, the damage has already been done.
The question now is whether Congress understands what this means for their attempt to pass a new “bipartisan” transportation law. If USDOT decides that it does not have to do what the law says, it begs the question of why members should continue to negotiate the law as though the old rules still apply.
Congress needs to decide between striking a deal that the administration will not implement, or waiting for proof that USDOT will faithfully implement the law before signing the next deal. This decision is more important than ever, because without assurance that the law will be followed, the bipartisan legacy of transportation is dead, and USDOT will have killed it.
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