The Trump administration’s deep and abiding hatred for New York City continues, along with their weird terror about mass transit. Those feels have combined into a Voltron of stupid, whereby the administration is withholding $18 billion in infrastructure aid to NYC because there might be forbidden diversity, equity, and inclusion in two mass transit projects.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy
Office of Management and Budget chief Russell Vought, who honestly gives White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller a real run for being one of the most repellent and ghoulish people in this administration, announced this in a one-line post on X. He then followed up by quoting his own post to clarify exactly which things he was attacking: the Hudson River Tunnel Project and the Second Avenue Subway Project.
Isn’t it cool to live in a world where officially proclaiming the federal government is yanking billions in infrastructure based on racist whims happens in little offhand posts on the world’s premier social media site for Nazis and eugenics enthusiasts?
If you can’t figure out how mass transit projects are secretly DEI, you’re not alone. It seems that this move was teed up by an interim final rule issued Tuesday by the Department of Transportation. The rule “removes race-and sex-based presumptions of social and economic disadvantage that violate the U.S. Constitution.”
It looks like DOT is basically abruptly destroying the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program, which allowed for small, independent businesses owned by “socially and economically disadvantaged individuals” to participate as subcontractors on federal projects.
Oh, well—wouldn’t want that.
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The day after issuing the interim final rule, DOT sent a letter to New York City officials saying they were under administrative review over the two mass transit projects and withholding funds. Seems sorta hard to immediately comply with a rule issued the previous day? Presumably, the underlying argument is that New York City has DBE contractors and therefore violates this brand new rule.
It also looks a lot like this was deliberately timed to dovetail with the shutdown, as there’s no doubt that will be leveraged to make it difficult for New York City to try to recover the money.
This is, of course, just a fig leaf, another way for the Trump administration to attack New York City, simply because they can. But it’s also a way to attack mass transit, a thing which Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is irrationally, hilariously afraid of.
To be scrupulously fair to Duffy, he’s not just terrified of New York City’s subway system. He also needed to exert his authority in Washington, D.C., and whine about crime and how he’ll fix Union Station by “driving out the homelessness.”
This pants-wetting terror of subways is by no means limited to Duffy. GOP Rep. Lisa McCain went on CNN on Wednesday to declare that finally, finally, thanks to Trump occupying D.C. with National Guard troops, “My daughter could actually ride the Metro for the first time since she has been in D.C.”
Her kid is 22, but okay.
This administration is deeply committed to attacking the millions of Americans who live in cities. New York City is a particular fixation, of course. It was only two weeks ago that President Donald Trump threatened to strip the Big Apple of federal funding if Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani wins the election.
Related | Trump threatens to punish New York if Mamdani wins
Is that wildly illegal for the president to do? Yep! Is it also … less than legal … to pull billions of dollars in funding based on a rule you just released? Yep. Is it ridiculous that we’re being led by people who see mass transit as something nefarious, filled with forbidden DEI? Yep.
So the now depressingly familiar cycle of litigation begins again, where New York City will sue, a lower court will likely rule that no, Russell Vought and Sean Duffy can’t claw back billions of dollars just because they want to, and then the Supreme Court will ultimately say that it’s totally cool to take money away from cities for reasons it will not explain.
As Donald Trump’s second disastrous term lumbers on, we’ve all seen this movie too many times.
