Donald Trump is incredibly unpopular, and that isn’t just the opinion of this particular left-leaning blogsite; He’s underwater in the polls, and Saturday saw about 5,000,000 people gather to protest his cruel, economically damaging policies. In addition to Trump ordering his masked goons to target the cities where some of the biggest protests took place, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy has threatened to withhold infrastructure funds from states that don’t stop the protests.
On Twitter, Duffy quoted a post from the so-called “Trump War Room” account that shared a screenshot of one of Trump’s TruthSocial posts and said, “The @USDOT will NOT fund rogue state actors who refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. And to cities that stand by while rioters destroy transportation infrastructure — don’t expect a red cent from DOT, either. Follow the law, or forfeit the funding.”
Exactly what laws Duffy believes these states are breaking to justify withholding funding isn’t clear, although it’s possible he was referring to the protesters themselves. That would, of course, make his threat even worse, since he’s basically saying states need to violently stop all protests if they want federal transportation funding. It also isn’t clear what transportation infrastructure the protests destroyed, since it isn’t like anyone bombed a bridge or tore out a road.
Plus, protests took place all across the country, including states such as Alaska, Montana and Wyoming. Does Duffy plan on getting rid of transportation funding altogether? Based on the Trump post he referenced in his tweet, he was most likely just talking about California, Illinois and New York, since Republicans have long hated those states the most.
Two tiers of Americans
If some states had tried to ban ICE from operating inside their borders, you could maybe, possibly argue Duffy has a point in those cases. It wouldn’t be a good argument, but it would be stronger than the one they’re making now. That also hasn’t happened yet, and as for the protests themselves, cops all across the country were absolutely ready to do the Trump administration’s bidding by being brutal to protesters. In California, one of the states Trump called out specifically, LA cops were so aggressive, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department ended up hitting officers from the Los Angeles Police Department with friendly fire, shooting them with rubber bullets and tear gas.
In states across the country, cops are already doing what Trump wants them to do, even if that didn’t stop the protests.These threats feel more like Republicans are inventing an excuse to cut funding to states they already don’t like. And as the Independent points out, if Duffy really did follow through with his threat to withhold transportation funds from states Trump is mad at, we’re talking about a massive amount of money that had been earmarked for transportation improvements as part of Biden’s 2021 infrastructure law:
California was set to receive billions in federal transportation funding as a result of the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law signed by then-President Joe Biden. The state was set to get roughly $40 billion over five years for highways, bridges, airports, public transport, electric vehicle charging, and safer streets between fiscal years 2022 and 2026, according to the state’s Department of Transportation… However, as of fiscal year 2021, California received the second least federal aid as a percentage of total revenue, with only Vermont receiving less.
Losing that funding would be a huge blow to the state’s transportation projects, but even worse, it would be a big step toward an America where everyone is still forced to pay federal income taxes, but federal funding would only be distributed to the states Republicans control. So much for one nation and all that, I guess.
