EXCLUSIVE: Transportation Department Learns It’s Funding $54 Million In Woke Grants — And Ends Them

WASHINGTON—The Department of Transportation is terminating $54 million worth of recently-discovered “woke university grants,” The Daily Wire has learned, arguing that the grants advanced radical agendas that ran counter to the department’s mission.

Seven schools received grants which Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told The Daily Wire were advancing a “radical DEI and green agenda” that is wasteful and counter to the Trump administration’s priorities.

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.”

Other recipients of grants that have now been terminated included the University of Southern California Pacific Southwest Region, New York University, San Jose State University, University of New Orleans, and Johns Hopkins University, The Daily Wire can first report.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The University of Southern California’s Pacific Southwest Region University Transportation Center received about $9 million for research on how “the transportation system creates and perpetuates inequities,” the Transportation Department said, and New York University’s Connected Communities for Smart Mobility Toward Accessible and Resilient Transportation for Equitably Reducing Congestion was receiving $6 million for research into “e-bikes to low-income travelers in transit deserts.”

Under the former grants, San Jose State University’s Mineta Consortium for Emerging, Efficient, and Safe Transportation was also receiving about $6 million for research on “intermodal inequities, particularly how improvements to auto travel can benefit higher income, often white drivers, while depressing transit ridership potential and depriving it of revenues necessary to provide comprehensive services to lower income, often BIPOC people and research into using crowdsourcing and collaborative planning to address safety concerns of women and gender non-conforming people using public transportation,” the Transportation Department told The Daily Wire.

The University of New Orleans’ Center for Transit Oriented Communities was receiving $6 million for “equitable transit-oriented communities [and] how neighborhood stabilization efforts support environmental justice” research, and Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Smart Transportation was receiving $6 million for climate change focused research on “hyperlocal pollution exposure inequalities in New York City, promoting EV usage for low-income gig workers, long distance ride sharing, gentrification.”

The Trump administration has been vocal about ending these types of grants and wasteful spending, tasking the Department of Government Efficiency with ending wasteful spending. DOGE has cut almost $200 billion from government spending since Trump took office, Elon Musk shared in a recent interview.