Transportation For America Unflooding the zone: What do the Trump administration’s newest actions sign for transportation?

Unflooding the zone: What do the Trump administration’s newest actions sign for transportation?

Federal funding recipients throughout the nation are coping with uncertainty, delays, and outright cuts to obligated funding. Our up to date evaluation of disbursements in danger finds that over $20 billion for initiatives at the moment underway throughout the nation is likely to be eradicated, in response to new memos launched by Secretary Duffy’s DOT. However don’t really feel overwhelmed. We’ve acquired the knowledge you want.

*THE LATEST: USDOT is anticipated to maneuver ahead with transportation funding freezes as quickly as this week*

It’s been a frenetic begin to President Trump’s second time period in workplace, and transportation funding and coverage has already performed a way more important function than it did throughout his first. Whereas we coated a lot of this in our final weblog on the influence of the brand new administration’s Government Orders, let’s recap all that has occurred to carry you up to the mark. 

Three issues you might want to know:

1. A sweeping rollback of electrification, local weather resilience, and equity-focused infrastructure insurance policies – The Trump administration’s government orders have got down to dismantle DEI and equity-related initiatives, environmental justice efforts, and local weather packages established throughout earlier administrations. This contains firing employees and eradicating sources, freezing funds from key infrastructure packages just like the Nationwide Electrical Automobile Infrastructure (NEVI) Program, and even halting technical help packages just like the USDOT Reconnecting Communities Institute. Over $20 billion in undertaking funding is in danger.

2. Funding freeze confusion continues unabated regardless of rescissions – The broad and haphazard language in President Trump’s government orders and memos from the OMB has led to widespread uncertainty amongst federal businesses, states, and grant recipients. Regardless of a short lived restraining order from a federal choose, the administration has continued to push its coverage goals, and we anticipate their funding freezes to proceed with out judicial authorization or authorized justification.

3. Time is operating out for billions of {dollars} in undertaking funding – USDOT Secretary Sean Duffy’s two latest memos define a dramatic shift in how Trump’s USDOT will prioritize funding, with plans to get rid of packages associated “in any means” to “local weather change, ‘greenhouse gasoline’ emissions, racial fairness, gender identification, “range, fairness, and inclusion” objectives, environmental justice, or the Justice 40 Initiative.” Different coverage goals to prioritize households, user-pay fashions, and benefit-cost evaluation stay ill-defined and murky. Crucially, USDOT’s new memos set a timeline for the elimination of all company insurance policies, funding agreements, and packages by February 18, 2025.

For the complete timeline and influence of President Trump’s government orders, check out our Trump Transportation Timeline discovered on the finish of this submit>>

Why is that this critical? How a lot is at stake?

Regardless of the two standing courtroom orders to halt the funding freeze, the Trump administration’s federal businesses are nonetheless refusing to disburse funding for obligated awards. Violating a choose’s order is clearly unlawful, however that has not stopped the administration as of but.

The Trump administration and USDOT are ignoring a short lived restraining order from a federal choose and persevering with to claim their authority to pause disbursements and new obligations at their discretion. 

As an alternative of evaluating precise waste, of which there’s a nice deal within the transportation sector, employees are systematically evaluating particular person grants, not in response to their efficiency and talent to maneuver the nation towards its measures of success, but when key phrases of their titles and descriptions would possibly set off reviewers.

Because the administration’s intentions to undo progress on insurance policies, packages, and initiatives come into focus, we took a have a look at the billions of {dollars} in funding at stake in congressional districts throughout the nation. 

Our evaluation has discovered that greater than $20 billion might be in danger, primarily based on what “references or relates in any means”  to ideas anathema to the brand new administration. 

The administration is indicating that they may take this motion even when a grant settlement (which is mainly a contract) has been signed and even the place a undertaking sponsor has spent cash assuming they might be reimbursed below that grant settlement.

What sort of initiatives would match the invoice? 

Who is aware of? Whereas the entire administration’s actions have been dramatic, none has been clear or particular. It may imply all initiatives funded below the “Carbon Discount Program,” together with street work in Indiana and modernized lighting in Arizona, have funding halted. It may imply an finish to rural transit working help for tribal communities in Idaho. It may imply senior transit initiatives targeted on equitably serving their communities get lower. It may imply that states that voted for President Trump lose out on almost $7 billion in owed funding disbursements that had been authorized on a bipartisan foundation. It may imply initiatives below the Nationwide Freeway Efficiency Program which have a component of one thing that USDOT finds offensive.

What you are able to do: 

Congress’ constitutional energy to make choices over funding is at stake. The Infrastructure Funding and Jobs Act, although flawed, handed on a bipartisan foundation and is distributing advantages throughout the nation that could be undone by the brand new administration. 

• Ask your state and native officers what they plan to do with out sure streams of federal funding. Share the information concerning the undertaking and program funding in danger with them. We break up funding info all the way down to the state, county, and congressional district ranges in our evaluation of funding in danger.






• Make sure that your Congressional delegation is conscious of the chance to your undertaking and ask what they will do.  In the event you meet with them in individual or by telephone, that’s higher than a letter. If you wish to additionally write a letter, see beneath. 

Can’t discover your district? Funding is likely to be coming to your group by way of statewide awards, that are labeled as a congressional district ending in 90.

Trump Transportation Timeline

What’s in USDOT Secretary Duffy’s day-one memos?

1) The “Woke Rescission” Memo

• Orders, in accordance with the EOs outlined above, “to determine and get rid of all orders, directives, guidelines, rules, notices, steerage paperwork, funding agreements, packages, and coverage statements, or parts thereof, which had been licensed, adopted, or authorized between midday on January 20, 2021 and midday on January 20, 2025, and which reference or relate in any means to local weather change, „greenhouse gasoline“ emissions, racial fairness, gender identification, „range, fairness, and inclusion“ objectives, environmental justice, or the Justice 40 Initiative.”
• Inside 10 days, all DOT Working Administrations (akin to FHWA, FTA, NHTSA, FRA, and many others.) and the Workplace of the Secretary of Transportation (OST) should determine and develop a report on all DOT “orders, directives, guidelines, rules, notices, steerage paperwork, funding agreements, packages, and coverage statements” related to the EOs.
• Inside 10 days of the report (20 days after the January 29 memo), all working businesses and the OST shall “provoke all lawful actions essential to rescind, cancel, revoke, and terminate all DOT orders, directives, guidelines, rules, notices, steerage paperwork, funding agreements, packages, coverage statements, or parts thereof, that are topic to the related government orders and which aren’t required by clear and categorical statutory language.

Contemplating the Trump administration’s present broad interpretation of its authorized authority to regulate funding obligations, we discovered that billions in federal funding for present initiatives might be in danger primarily based on their relationship with the earlier administration’s priorities below the bipartisan Infrastructure Funding and Jobs Act. Almost $7 billion for present initiatives can be in danger in states that voted for President Trump within the 2024 elections.

2) Reducing Prices Via Smarter Insurance policies, Not Political Ideologies Memo

This new coverage memo updates requirements for insurance policies, packages, and actions to “keep reliance on rigorous financial evaluation and optimistic cost-benefit calculations,” setting forth the next coverage ideas:

• USDOT grantmaking, lending, policymaking, and rulemaking shall be “primarily based on sound financial ideas and evaluation supported by rigorous cost-benefit necessities and data-driven choices.”
• Grants, loans, insurance policies, and guidelines will need to have advantages that outweigh prices. Whereas the EPA updates estimates of the social price of carbon, the strategies used to estimate the worth of modifications in greenhouse gasoline emissions from company actions are reverted to steerage issued in 2003.
• Concentrate on minimizing prices and maximizing advantages to households and communities.
• Asserts that DOT-supported packages or actions (together with grants and loans) shall not be used to additional native political goals or initiatives that “are purely native in nature and unrelated to a correct Federal curiosity.” [“Local in nature” or a “proper Federal interest” is undefined.)
• USDOT should support projects and goals that:

  • Utilize user-pay models. [This is not defined but could refer to anything from congestion pricing, road tolling, to having EVs pay into the Highway Trust Fund. This was mentioned in the Mandate for Leadership’s Department of Transportation section. However, President Trump has voiced opposition to congestion pricing.
  • Direct funding to local opportunity zones.
  • Mitigate impacts on families and family-specific difficulties, and give preference to communities with “marriage and birth rates higher than the national average, (including in administering the Federal Transit Administration’s Capital Investment Grant program).
  • Recipients of DOT support or assistance are prohibited from imposing vaccine and mask mandates. [It is unclear if this applies to past, existing, or future mandates. All 50 states and the District of Columbia have one form of vaccine mandate or another, particularly for public school students. In terms of mask mandates, there are no statewide mandates currently.]
  • Require native compliance and cooperation with Federal immigration enforcement and “different objectives and goals” specified by the President and Secretary.
  • Lastly, this memo directs USDOT to replace all Notices of Funding Alternatives, grant agreements, mortgage agreements, and program paperwork, and many others. to adjust to this memo. [Updating open funding opportunities at the beginning of a new administration is common.] [/alert]

What’s occurred to this point and, when?

January 20, 2025: 

• President Trump indicators the next government orders:
  
• These EOs sought to undo environmental justice, local weather, fairness, and electrification-focused Government Orders made in the course of the Biden administration and Civil Rights Act-era fairness Government Orders relationship again to President Johnson within the Sixties.
• Federal workers whose work pertains to Range, Fairness, and Inclusion have been positioned on go away, and internet pages on accessibility and whistleblowing have been eliminated. We anticipate much more workers and sources might be focused within the coming weeks.
• The EO 14154: Unleashing American Power singles out the Infrastructure Funding and Jobs Act’s electrical automobile charging infrastructure grant packages to pause the disbursement of funds, however as a result of imprecise wording, the order paused all funding from the Infrastructure Funding and Jobs Act and Inflation Discount Act packages.
• These Government Orders are important and have been referenced in memos from the Workplace of Administration and Price range (OMB) and america Division of Transportation (USDOT). These memos name for figuring out and eliminating funding agreements and packages that had been out of line with the coverage outlined in these orders.

January 21, 2025:

• OMB launched a brand new memo, M-25-11, to “make clear” the scope of EO 14154: Unleashing American Power. Nonetheless, the memo references a piece within the EO that was unclear about which particular packages or insurance policies the administration meant to chop.
• This memo successfully paused all new obligations to present, appropriated packages, together with the Nationwide Electrical Automobile Infrastructure (NEVI) Program, the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI), and even technical help supplied below the Thriving Communities Program and Reconnecting Communities Institute was halted.
• This has led to uncertainty amongst present federal funding recipients and introduced discretionary grant awardees. In consequence, some states, akin to Alabama and Oklahoma, have paused work on the NEVI program.

January 27, 2025:

• Late within the night, OMB circulated the M-25-13 memo to all businesses, calling for a pause in all federal disbursements, profoundly complicated federal workers, Members of Congress, and recipients of federal funds and providers from the federal authorities.

January 28, 2025:

• OMB despatched businesses an expansive spreadsheet in a PDF to grade each federal help itemizing (together with defunct ones), requiring unspecified workers within the federal forms to justify the work performed below particular packages and guarantee they weren’t advancing fairness, local weather mitigation, or something amongst a listing of insurance policies the Trump administration objects to.
• Harvard’s Environmental & Power Legislation Program wrote an excellent summary of the authorized mechanisms obtainable to the administration and the dangers totally different sorts of program funds might face because of the memo.

January 29, 2025:

• Amidst important confusion concerning the implications, objections from Congress’s majority, and one looming court-ordered pause out of two parallel authorized circumstances (within the federal courts of the District of Columbia and Rhode Island), the Trump administration’s OMB pulled the funding rescission memo.
• Nonetheless, feedback from White Home Press Secretary Leavitt and different actions from the administration demonstrated that they might proceed to pursue the top objectives of the memo by way of company actions.
• These actions included a stop-work order for the Street to Zero Coalition, which funds security efforts from seat belt use and truck security to police enforcement and security training. It was launched below the Obama Administration and continued by way of the primary Trump Administration and the Biden Administration.
• USDOT Memos: Following Secretary Sean Duffy’s affirmation to guide USDOT, the company launched two coverage memos with probably far-reaching implications for initiatives underway in the present day and the way the company will strategy initiatives in the course of the administration.

January 31, 2025:

• The Rhode Island federal judges overseeing a go well with introduced ahead by 22 states and DC issued a short lived restraining order to drive an finish to the administration’s funding freeze.
• Nonetheless, agency-issued cease orders weren’t lifted and new ones had been put in place.

February 3, 2025: 

• The Division of Justice responds to the Rhode Island Choose’s Non permanent Restraining Order and asserts that the chief department has the authority to proceed implementing the Government Orders outlined above. The Trump administration continues to direct businesses to halt disbursements and the duty of funding that goes towards the administration’s new coverage goals.

What would possibly occur subsequent?

Primarily based on the memos and timelines set forth by inaugural government orders, the next dates could also be of significance going ahead.

February 6, 2025:

• New unelected and unappointed political operatives in USDOT are anticipated to start figuring out particular packages, insurance policies, and initiatives for elimination following the memos issued by Sec. Duffy on his first day in workplace.

February 8, 2025:

• USDOT will submit a written report figuring out all insurance policies, funding agreements, packages, and many others., that battle with the President’s broad government orders. This deadline was set by the “Woke Rescission” memo.
• Inside 10 days of the submission of this report, the USDOT will provoke all lawful actions essential to rescind, cancel, revoke, and terminate all USDOT funding agreements, insurance policies, guidances, and many others, out of line with Trump administration insurance policies and government orders.
• Contemplating the administration’s interpretation of what’s lawful, it’s unclear to what extent lively initiatives with obligated funding and licensed packages are in danger.

February 18, 2025:

• February 18 marks the deadline for the elimination of USDOT funding agreements, insurance policies, guidances, and many others., which can be out of line with Trump administration insurance policies and government orders, per the “Woke Rescission” memo.

April 20, 2025:

• This date marks 90 days of the momentary freeze initially introduced on January 20. This date was not referenced in OMB memo M-25-13 or in coverage memos launched by USDOT. There isn’t any indication that this could be the top of any deliberate pause for funding disbursement or obligation.