Transportation secretary Sean Duffy sent a memo Thursday directing staffers to “give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average” when implementing the Department of Transportation’s programs and policies.
Journalist Ken Klippenstein posted several screenshots of the memo on X.
Effective immediately, the memo declared that staffers should move to mitigate the “unique impacts” of DOT programs on “families” and should prioritize “family-specific difficulties,” such as “accessibility of transportation to families with young children.”
In response to the Duffy’s directives, several commentators remarked that what the transportation secretary is in fact asking for is diversity, equity and inclusion—which President Donald Trump has vowed to end across federal agencies.
“Isn’t this dei?” wrote one commentator.
The moderate conservative PAC The Lincoln Project added, “So this is actually DEI.”

According to the memo, DOT staffers should also “prohibit” all recipients of DOT assistance and support from “imposing vaccine and mask mandates.”
The memo added that recipients of DOT funding must be in “compliance or cooperation with Federal immigration enforcement and with other goals and objectives specified by the President of the United States of the Secretary.”
President Trump signed a flurry of executive orders aiming to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across the federal government to restore “merit-based opportunity.”
In an executive order aimed at combating DEI in private companies working with the government declared, “Hardworking Americans who deserve a shot at the American Dream should not be stigmatized, demeaned, or shut out of opportunities because of their race or sex.”
Further escalating his war on DEI, Trump appeared to blame DEI for a Wednesday mid-air crash that killed 67 people in Washington D.C.