Under the Biden administration, former Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation (DOT) spent $80 billion over his four-year term on DEI initiatives. Under Buttigieg’s supervision, around 400 DEI-related grants were approved, as opposed to only 60 under the previous Trump administration. Just one of these DEI initiatives, called Justice40, allocated half of the $150 billion in infrastructure investments to assist “disadvantaged communities.”
Throughout his tenure, Buttigieg tried tirelessly to blame airlines for delays and aircraft problems, but refused to acknowledge responsibility the DOT may have had for these issues. Meanwhile, the former Indiana mayor pushed the Left’s DEI agenda, and in multiple interviews, the former secretary took any opportunity to promote “improving racial equity” in the Transportation Department.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which operates under the DOT’s umbrella, was publicly seeking workers with severe mental and physical disabilities, according to their since-removed diversity and inclusion hiring initiative. According to the New York Post, “‘Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring,’ the FAA’s website states. ‘They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.’” The website also stated that “diversity is integral to achieving FAA’s mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel across our nation and beyond.”
Why didn’t the administration prioritize hiring quality, merit-based workers? Recent tragedies within the DOT garnered attention from many critics of DEI hiring. The horrific mid-air collision between American Airlines Flight 5342 and a U.S. Army helicopter that left 67 dead in January highlighted several concerns within the aviation community. Numerous factors such as lack of proper training, neglect of air traffic control procedures, staffing shortages, and more were highly criticized by lawmakers and the media.
The National Academies stated, “From fiscal years 2013 to 2023, the FAA hired only two-thirds of the air traffic controllers called for by its staffing models.” Officials within the air industry trade association sent a letter warning Buttigieg’s DOT “that at the current state of hiring, it could take as long as 90 years for the FAA to reach its targeted staffing levels in some of the critical New York air traffic control centers.”
David Grizzle, who acted as the FAA’s chief counsel under the Obama administration, explained, “The shortfall in budget is something that really began in the [2010s] and has really gotten worse over time,” before adding that Buttigieg had “no remarkable achievements in aviation during his term.”
The Trump administration has been paying special attention to these air traffic issues, especially after the president started off his second term with some of the most high-profile aircraft accidents in the last decade. Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill provided current Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy with $12.5 billion to begin updating FAA systems. “Decades of neglect have left us with an outdated system that is showing its age. Building this new system is an economic and national security necessity, and the time to fix it is now,“ Duffy stressed.
Grizzle showed his own confidence in the new secretary, “It’s not so much that prior administrations have been especially indifferent; [Duffy has] just been exceedingly attentive,” Grizzle remarked. “I’ve been on blue ribbon panels in Trump and Biden. … He will stand out for decades as one of the most engaged secretaries we’ve had.”
