Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy Orders Road Projects To Make More Babies
These guys are so freaking weird.
Donald Trump’s new Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who qualified for the job by being on MTV’s “The Real World” and later on Fox News, has been in the public spotlight because of Wednesday night’s aviation disaster in Washington DC. Yesterday, Duffy took part in Donald Trump’s unhinged press conference, adding little information on the crash but promising that only the “best and brightest” will now work in his department, a pledge he betrayed by not immediately resigning. It was a weird, obsequious, fawning performance, in which Duffy frequently looked not at the cameras, but at the Great Man, presumably to make sure his praise of Trump was being heard.
The crash has brought instant scrutiny to Duffy and his first actions on the job, including a really strange memo turned up by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The memo, one of several released Wednesday by Duffy, includes a weird directive that DOT officials should take care to prioritize funding road projects in “communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average,” because that will somehow be good for America, you see. The memo also called for upgrading transportation access for “families with young children” as well as mitigating the downsides of transportation projects on families.
It also prohibits contractors working on DOT-funded projects from “imposing vaccine or mask mandates,” which is apparently another important priority of the federal government.
For shits and giggles, the memo was one of several released by the DOT Wednesday that Duffy claimed were necessary to provide Americans “an efficient, safe, and pro-growth transportation system based on sound decision-making, not political ideologies.” Definitely nothing political or ideological about using transportation funding to push for a higher birth rate.
Just to remind you all, when Secretary Mayor Pete Buttigieg called attention to funding in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that was aimed at repairing some of the damage caused by plopping down freeways in the middle of thriving minority communities, he was ridiculed for saying roads were racist, hurr hurr. But road projects aimed at promoting fecundity? Those are perfectly cromulent!
Duffy, a former member of Congress who represented parts of northern Wisconsin, is a very pro-forced-birth Catholic who has nine children, so he knows how important it is for roads to help Americans keep filling their quivers with children, we suppose. We couldn’t find anything on whether Duffy is formally part of the weird Christian nationalist “Quiverfull” movement, apart from his own very heavily loaded personal transportation, whatever it is. A Suburban? Maybe a Conestoga drawn by oxen?
Now don’t you go acting like the higher “marriage and birth rate” language is some sort of affirmative action spending for white rural communities, or a slam against all those Urbans and unmarrieds who are wrecking America, wink-wink, hard nudge in the ribs. (But seriously, that’s also a stereotype that isn’t borne out by actual demographic trends, so hooray, the bullshit could blow up in the Right’s face.)
It’s simply that your giant SUV full of kids needs wide highways, after all, and woke little EVs are no good for people with big families. OK, there’s the three-row Kia EV9, which seats nine as the name suggests. And the Rivian SUV. And the giant four-door electric pickups from Ford, Chevy, GMC, Rivian again, and Hummer. And the Toyota Sienna that safely carries our Holy Editrix’s precious cargo of seven sometimes eight, but that’s a hybrid. But other than those, Mrs. Lincoln Navigator …
Also too, the Journal-Sentinel, out there in the heartland, points out that Wisconsin actually has declining birth and fertility rates, although the article adds that a “spokesman for the state Department of Transportation said it was too early to determine whether such metrics would result in more or less funding than current levels.”
Heck, maybe the new regime of transportation funding will do the job and encourage Wisconsinites to get married and screw more, the way God and JD Vance want?
In another DOT order issued by Duffy Wednesday, the secretary directs all Transportation Department personnel to “identify and eliminate” any written material produced during the Biden administration that refers to topics that no longer exist under the Trump administration. The order specifies that the to-be-eliminated materials and topics include
all orders, directives, rules, regulations, notices, guidance documents, funding agreements, programs, and policy statements, or portions thereof, which were authorized, adopted, or approved between noon on January 20, 2021 and noon on January 20, 2025, and which reference or relate in any way to climate change, “greenhouse gas” emissions, racial equity, gender identity, “diversity, equity, and inclusion” goals, environmental justice, or the Justice 40 Initiative.
That’s rather a lot! And of course, it’s once again a completely illegal order, like the attempted “freeze” of federal grants, because much of the stuff that Duffy wants to redact into the cornfield, especially the items about funding, was established by federal laws, not just wacky Biden policies. And that’s leaving aside the notion that greenhouse gas emissions are simply an ideological invention that can be bleeped out of existence as easily as, say, Juneteenth or LGBTQ+ people.
Jesus these idiots are exhausting. We're sure the Roads For White Babbies Initiative will also face lawsuits, because there’s no earthly rationale for skewing transportation funding based on marriage or birth rates. But like everything else from these weasels, it’s going to take time and money and effort, and did we mention we’re exhausted?
[Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Department of Transportation / Paul Waldman on Bluesky / Department of Transportation]
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If a couple can't conceive, can they just adopt a highway?
"Duffy...is a very pro-forced-birth Catholic who has nine children,"
I can't imagine the food bill. I have one teenager and it's like an invasion of locusts in the kitchen.