‘Breathtakingly Ignorant and Dangerous’: Trump’s DOT Orders Sweeping Purge of Climate, Gender, Race, Environmental Justice Initiatives

Under the Biden administration, the department had considered the current and future impacts of climate change in almost everything it did, calculating how increased heat, flooding and drought affected roads and other transportation infrastructure.

The new head of the U.S. Department of Transportation issued sweeping memos this week, directing the department to “identify and eliminate” nearly all initiatives relating to climate change, racial equity, gender identity, DEI or environmental justice implemented during the Biden administration. 

Among these memos is one issued Wednesday by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, that calls for the purge of “all orders, directives, rules, regulations, notices, guidance documents, funding agreements, programs and policy statements” that 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.”

The memo limited its targets to initiatives that were “authorized, adopted or approved” during the four years that Joe Biden was president. 

The memo instructs DOT personnel to compile within 10 days a written report listing all such programs or policies and submit it to the DOT’s Office of the General Counsel, which is directed to “initiate all lawful actions necessary to rescind, cancel, revoke and terminate” those initiatives.

Gretchen Goldman, who served as the DOT’s director of climate change research and technology under the Biden administration before resigning in January to accept a position as president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the directive is ill conceived and will harm vulnerable Americans most. 

“It’s breathtakingly ignorant and dangerous,” Goldman told Inside Climate News. “You can’t surgically remove these topics. They’re central to the mission and congressional mandates of DOT.”

The move is one of many efforts by the administration of President Donald Trump to undo government initiatives relating to climate change, DEI and environmental justice at dizzying speed. Duffy signed the so-called “Woke Rescission” memos one day after being sworn in as transportation secretary. Duffy had already issued a memo ordering the “rescission or replacement of any fuel economy standards” the same day he was sworn in.

In a news release announcing the changes, Duffy contended that the actions would restore “commonsense governance and merit-based policies” at the DOT.  

“Under President Trump’s leadership, we are focused on eliminating excessive regulations that have hindered economic growth, increased costs for American families, and prioritized far-left agendas over practical solutions,” Duffy said.

A current employee of the DOT, who asked not to be identified, told Inside Climate News that the new directives were “convoluted,” “poorly written” and would be difficult to implement, because they ignore other statutory requirements of the department and use ill-defined terms like “Green New Deal” and “EV mandate.” 

“I think a lot of them don’t say what they mean to say,” the source stated. “From a basic grammatical perspective, they don’t make sense.”

The memo specifically said that existing DOT orders creating the Department of Transportation Equity Council; the Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience Policy for DOT Operational Assets, and the DOT Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-income Populations, were “hereby canceled.”

Climate change already is increasing the costs of transportation systems and is expected to do so dramatically in the years and decades to come. Extreme temperature fluctuations cause more splitting of asphalt, increased flooding in places like the New York City subway system and higher bridge maintenance costs. 

The revocation of the DOT’s resilience programs would mean less accounting for these impacts. 

Duffy also issued an order Wednesday to “mandate reliance on rigorous economic analysis and positive cost-benefit calculations” in decision-making and to ignore “the ‘social cost of carbon,’” a means of measuring damage caused by each ton of additional greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere. That order also directed the DOT to utilize “user-pay models” and to “give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.”

Goldman, the former DOT official, said that climate change resilience—considering the current and future impacts of climate change—was integrated throughout the department, and was necessary for departmental operations. 

“Thinking about, are we prepared for increased heat, road buckling, floods, drought, impacts on infrastructure? How does that affect aviation and maritime? There’s a whole bunch of climate impact work and resilience that needs to be done,” she said. “And then that also doesn’t include all the emissions reductions effort, which is a whole other universe of activities around energy efficiency and reducing air quality impacts and greenhouse gas emissions from transportation sources.”

Goldman said in particular that research around low-carbon materials for roads had wide support across the political spectrum and among industries. 

“There’s a lot of industry players on board with a lot of DOT climate work,” Goldman said. “The transportation sector in general has a lot of private-sector partnerships, and so there’s a lot of private-sector investments, and people invested in success on these topics. 

“So I think that’s one thing they should be mindful of in taking a wrecking ball to these efforts.”

Shruti Vaidyanathan, director of federal and state transportation advocacy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the climate resilience efforts at DOT in particular were simply telling states to consider climate change in their decision making. 

“That’s all the greenhouse gas rule does: It tells states to consider the climate impacts of their decisions,” Vaidyanathan said via email.

“This is just simple good governance for state transportation departments to be transparent about where and how taxpayer dollars are spent and what the impacts of those spending decisions will be,” Vaidyanathan added. “Having states stick their heads in the sand is not a viable strategy. This is a huge mistake.” 

Jesse Piedfort, the Sierra Club’s Clean Transportation for All deputy campaign director, said Duffy’s actions would “hurt Americans’ wallets and health.”

“Instead of building upon DOT’s progress the last four years toward affordable, clean transportation options, [Duffy is] doing the exact opposite—attempting to worsen pollution from transportation projects across the country and increase fueling costs for Americans,” Piedfort said in an email. 

Goldman said former colleagues at the DOT are struggling with the new directions. 

“It’s pretty devastating,” Goldman said. “It’s a lot of people who put blood, sweat and tears into work these past four years to meet the mission of DOT, to meet the climate and equity and environmental justice goals that DOT has, and all of that work is being unraveled now, so it’s really heartbreaking.”

The DOT employee agreed. 

“I haven’t been in a meeting where someone hasn’t cried in 10 business days,” the employee said.

Despite the tumult, the DOT employee is more committed than ever to staying in the department. 

“I think the ‘fork in the road’ memo had the opposite effect as intended,” the employee said, referring to an Office of Personnel Management email pressing federal employees to resign. “It’s made me realize just how important it is to be here in service to the American people.”

Cover photo:  Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy speaks during a press conference at Reagan National Airport on Thursday. Credit: Allison Robbert/The Washington Post via Getty Images