Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has announced that the Department of Transportation has eliminated environmental justice and diversity, equity, and inclusion considerations when awarding grants, Breitbart reported. President Donald Trump had promised to reverse these policies set by then-President Joe Biden.
The "Green New Scam" and DEI have meant that projects and grants are awarded based on factors other than merit. Duffy announced Wednesday that his agency was bringing that to an end after being stuck with 3,200 grants hung up on these issues.
"It’s a new day in America, where common sense is in the driver’s seat. Our roads, rails, skies, and waters will be safer for it," Duffy promised in a statement.
"The public wants to see their hard-earned dollars going towards safety and efficiency standards – not woke DEI or American Energy-killing ideas," he added. Democrats are seething as Trump and his administration dismantle Biden's woke policies.
Duffy put current applicants on notice in a letter on July 2. The secretary said it was Trump's executive orders that "direct Federal agencies" to "identify and eliminate" funding agreements or policies connected "in any way to climate change, ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions, racial equity, gender identity, ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ goals, environmental justice."
The DOT will also eliminate any preference based on Biden's Justice 40 initiative, which prioritized environmental criteria. These policies were in effect "between noon on January 20, 2021, and noon on January 20, 2025" when Trump signed the executive orders.
Now Duffy said the agency "will no longer enforce these policies, or any other requirements incorporated into its Federal financial assistance agreements that are inconsistent with the policy objectives of this Administration and current DOT leadership." Duffy posted the letter to X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday.
"Progress on American infrastructure will not be paralyzed by the leftist mandates of the last administration," Duffy captioned it. We’ve already cleared roughly HALF of the 3,200 projects left over from the previous administration that were announced but never received funding. We’re just getting started," he wrote.
Progress on American infrastructure will not be paralyzed by the leftist mandates of the last administration.
Last week, I sent a letter to all recipients of @USDOT grants that our department ripped out Biden-era requirements for DEI and environmental justice holding up… pic.twitter.com/Jh7T24NIwB
— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) July 9, 2025
Rather than seeing DEI as discrimination codified by law, Democrats believed hiring on the basis of someone's race was a good and necessary thing. In contrast, Trump promised to dismantle DEI during the campaign, which the left tried to insinuate was due to his racism.
Still, Trump signed several executive orders to make it happen anway, as reported by USA Today earlier this year. "We have ended the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies all across the entire federal government and, indeed, the private sector and our military," Trump said at the time.
"And our country will be woke no longer." Of course, Democrats hated this and insisted that what Trump was doing was not only bad for the country, but also for the companies no longer forced to hire based on applicants' most superficial traits.
"Talk to any CEO of a major Fortune 500 company. They’ll tell you that their bottom line, dollar-wise, does better when there’s more diversity in the room," Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey puzzlingly claimed.
Giving preferential treatment based on someone's race, sexual preferences, or other characteristics is not only unfair, but also complete madness. Trump is restoring the country to sanity, and that includes Duffy's announcement to remove such criteria from funding decisions.
