Secretary Sean Duffy’s Department of Transportation (DOT) tackled everything from wasteful spending to blue states handing out commercial drivers licenses to illegal immigrants in 2025, all while securing Christmas bonuses for thousands of Amtrak union employees.
For much of 2025, Duffy was the head of DOT and NASA’s acting administrator. Following Jared Isaacman’s bipartisan confirmation as NASA administrator, Duffy was able to resume his sole focus on running DOT, where, his team says, he’s saved taxpayers billions of dollars, including almost $10 billion in just his first 100 days on the job.
One of Duffy’s high-profile moves was a blow to hopeful presidential nominee Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif); Duffy investigated “California’s train to nowhere,” a proposed high-speed rail system whose costs have ballooned and that critics argue will never be completed. The DOT has simultaneously revitalized moribund train stations across the country, including Union Station and Penn Station.
Several of Duffy’s actions have benefitted car-driving commuters. One of his first acts was to reset Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, lowering the price of a car for American consumers. In President Donald Trump’s hometown of New York City, Duffy is fighting to axe the Big Apple’s congestion pricing plan, which he called “a slap in the face to working class Americans and small business owners.”
“Commuters using the highway system to enter New York City have already financed the construction and improvement of these highways through the payment of gas taxes and other taxes,” Duffy explained at the time. “But now the toll program leaves drivers without any free highway alternative, and instead, takes more money from working people to pay for a transit system and not highways. It’s backwards and unfair. The program also hurts small businesses in New York that rely on customers from New Jersey and Connecticut.”
Sean Duffy’s regulatory reform led to changes from American automakers, with Ford Motor Company altering its production to make more affordable gas-powered trucks — a move that won praise from Senator Marsha Blackburn (R., TN.) who told the Washington Reporter at the time that “President Trump has taken decisive action to reverse these harmful policies, and I’m pleased Ford is listening to their customers and giving them what they want by changing the EV factory at BlueOval City into a truck factory that will make gas-powered trucks Americans can afford.”
Another program that Duffy targeted is how blue states like Newsom’s California and Gov. Kathy Hochul’s (D.) New York account for roughly half of the non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) that were issued in America, many of which have gone to illegal immigrants who have killed Americans in tragic car crashes.
“I can’t get in their heads as to why they would allow individuals to get these licenses, especially when they’re not well-qualified,” Duffy told the Washington Reporter. “But it’s what’s happening.” Duffy explained that the federal government has a role to play because “you don’t just drive in New York if you get a New York commercial driver’s license. You drive around the country.”
“If you are from my home state of Wisconsin,” he added to the Reporter, “and you think this doesn’t impact you, it does, because the drivers with these licenses, these unqualified drivers, operate in every single state, and so everybody is at risk in the country, which is why this is a federal issue, and that is why we take it so seriously.”
Due to his department’s findings, Duffy moved to withhold almost $100 million from New York if the state continues to issue CDLs to illegal immigrants. He also said New York should revoke every illegally issued license.
Amid Duffy’s work on safety and efficiency, he gave bonuses toAmtrak’s union employees. “There was a bonus structure in place for the [Amtrak] executives, and the top executives agreed to give back half of their bonuses, and then the next tier of executives are giving back part of their bonuses as well, 40 percent,” Duffy told the Reporter. “That gave us $18 million to then give a little Christmas gift back to the transit workers, so they are going to get $900 as part of a bonus for doing great work keeping our rail working and operating really well.”
