In a dramatic shift that underscores the Trump administration’s effort to reorient federal transportation policy back to doing its job rather than practicing social engineering, the U.S. Department of Transportation has rescinded $54 million in university research grants, citing what officials described as a departure from core infrastructure goals in favor of progressive ideological themes.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy framed the move as a necessary course correction away from “woke university grants” in an interview with The Daily Wire. All told, seven universities received cash to promote a “radical DEI and green agenda.”
The University of California, Davis’s National Center for Sustainable Transportation was receiving $12 million for “accelerating equitable decarbonization” research, according to the department, while City College of New York’s Center for Social and Economic Mobility for People and Communities through Transportation was receiving about $9 million for research into “equitable transportation for the disadvantaged workforce.”
“The previous administration turned the Department of Transportation into the Department of Woke,” Duffy told The Daily Wire Friday afternoon. “I’ve focused the Department on what matters; safety, making travel great again, and building big, beautiful infrastructure projects.”
The department’s discovery is yet another instance of massive amounts of American taxpayer dollars going to the ideological pet projects of the past administration. In the Transportation Department’s case, officials looked under the hood and were horrified to find that many of the grants weren’t even aligned with transportation at all.
“The American people have zero interest in millions of their tax dollars funding research on the intersection of gender non-conforming people and infrastructure inequality or whether road improvement projects are racist,” Duffy added. “It’s time to inject a dose of reality back into our higher education system, and that starts with ending these wasteful and divisive grants.”
An internal DOT review found that many of the funded projects, while nominally focused on transportation, explored broader themes such as racial equity, gender identity, and environmental justice. One project analyzed “hyperlocal pollution exposure inequalities,” while another studied safety issues for “gender non-conforming” transit riders. “The American people have zero interest in millions of their tax dollars funding research on whether road projects are racist,” Duffy said. “It’s time to inject a dose of reality back into our higher education system.”
The cancellation comes amid a broader government-wide cost-cutting push led by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a newly empowered office tasked with rooting out what the administration calls wasteful spending. DOGE, whose efforts have been praised by figures like Elon Musk, claims to have identified nearly $200 billion in potential savings since Trump’s return to office.
Transportation isn’t the only place “woke grants” have been discovered. Earlier in the year, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced he had prevented tens of billions from being sent from his agency to leftwing activist groups. New Conservative Post reported that
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under the recently-confirmed Administrator Lee Zeldin, has announced it has reclaimed $20 billion in federal climate funds doled out during the final moments of the Biden administration in an attempt to keep leftwing groups afloat during the Trump years. Zeldin stated that the funds, distributed through the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, had been placed under the management of a financial institution in a process he described as rushed and lacking proper oversight. As part of this move, the EPA will terminate the financial agent agreement and return the money to the U.S. Treasury.”
A Project Veritas investigation has revealed that EPA official Brent Efron admitted to aggressively disbursing over $100 billion in climate-related grants under Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, describing the effort as an “insurance policy” against a Trump presidency.
[Read More: Trump Cancels NPR]
