In the past week, the Trump administration has done its best to create anxiety and mayhem in the Chicago-area walk/bike/transit scene. His transit chief Marc Molinaro ran a op-ed in the Tribune that not only got the facts about local public transportation safety very wrong, but also doubled as a thinly viewed threat to send in the National Guard.
And the ICE crackdown has walking, biking, and transit feel unsafe for many residents. However, there was a hilarious incident last weekend, when agents failed to apprehend a speedy non-citizen delivery biker, bumbling around like militarized Three Stooges.
But stuff got real this morning. The Donald's fellow ex-reality TV show star USDOT Secretary Sean Duffy announced he's blocking $2.1 billion in already-approved federal funds for the CTA's Red Line Extension and Red & Purple Modernization Program. His reason for freezing the funding is "discriminatory, unconstitutional" Disadvantaged Business Enterprise practices by the transit agency, although such measures were required federal law.
According to Duffy's press release, this week the USDOT put in place an interim final rule prohibiting race- and gender-based contracting rules from federal grants. The department sent letters to the transit agency, allegedly "to determine whether any unconstitutional practices are occurring." The same thing is happening with NYC’s Second Avenue Subway and Hudson Tunnel projects.
Here's what transit analyst and former Chicagoan Yonah Freemark had to say about this ludicrous logic.
"Together, these critical reviews are intended to ensure no additional federal dollars go towards discriminatory, illegal, and wasteful contracting practices," said the news release from the former reality star. "The American people don’t care what race or gender construction workers, pipefitters, or electricians are." That seems hypocritical, because in Duffy's 1997 audition for "The Real World: Boston," he explicitly stated his own preference for "cute girls."
The press release went on to say that the USDOT would like to complete the reviews as quickly as possible. But the secretary scapegoated Democrats for the government shutdown that "has negatively affected the Department’s staffing resources for carrying out this important analysis." The release baselessly added, "Benefits for illegal immigrants are not worth potential impacts to important investments in our nation’s transportation infrastructure."
When Streetsblog asked the CTA media department or a statement on this nonsense, a spokesperson played it cool. "The Chicago Transit Authority is in receipt of the letters from the Federal Transit Administration, which we are currently reviewing." Understandably, they don't want to poke the hornet's nest and endanger any other projects.
But U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, the latter of whom is one of the most outspoken critics of the Mango Mussolini, didn't mice words. "Trump and Project 2025 Architect Russ Vought are weaponizing the Republican Shutdown to try to cut billions in already-approved funding to expand and improve Chicago's public transit system," Quigley said in a shared statement. "This is our money, and as a leader in transportation funding, I will fight to make sure we get it back.”
"At a time when federal agents are sowing chaos in Chicago, the Trump administration is holding bipartisan funding hostage," Pritzker stated. "Illinois is entitled to this funding, and I will continue to stand up to these reckless attacks on Illinois working families and communities."
Transit advocate Nik Hunder, who published a widely cited analysis of the $5.7 billion RLE project's funding issues last March, argued today that this seemingly existential threat to 'L' improvements is actually a paper tiger. "Yes they have attempted to cancel it, no it will not withstand a legal challenge," he posted on Bluesky. "This is a 'don't like it' rescission attempt which is not protected the [Code of Federal Regulations]." He referred followers to his February 2022 explanation of why, while the Pumpkin Spice Stalin would love to defund transit projects in blue states, he ultimately won't succeed.
These are certainly grim times for the local public transportation system, and our city in general. But the pushback to anti-transit Republicans from local politicians and advocates makes me feel more hopeful, with the 1986 Crowded House song "Don't Dream It's Over" going through my head: "You know they won't win."
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