Pete Buttigieg spent four years turning a bridge-and-road program into a DEI slush fund.
Now Trump's Transportation Secretary just announced nearly $2 billion going exactly where it was always supposed to go.
And Buttigieg's billion-dollar bike lane legacy just got paved over.
What Buttigieg Did With Your Infrastructure Money
The BUILD program has been around since 2009, originally designed to fund roads, bridges, ports, and the infrastructure Americans actually use every day.
Biden's team renamed it RAISE – Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity – and the new name told you everything.
Under Buttigieg, roughly 20% of BUILD/RAISE funding went toward pedestrian and bike lane projects.
Just 2% went to maritime infrastructure – the ports that move American goods and support national security.
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2072693528358949187?s=20
In 2021, Buttigieg declared the program would focus on "equity" and combating "climate change."
By 2023, the Biden DOT was requiring grant applicants to "consider how their projects can address climate change, ensure racial equity, and remove barriers to opportunity."
That same year, Buttigieg reestablished an Advisory Committee on Transportation Equity specifically to "institutionalize equity into Agency programs, policies, regulations, and activities."
"We are grateful to the distinguished members of the ACTE, and I look forward to working with them as we continue our efforts to bring better infrastructure—and the jobs and opportunities that come with it—to every community across the country,” Pete Buttigieg said at the time.
A New York Post investigation found that Buttigieg's DOT approved roughly 400 DEI-related grants over his four years – totaling more than $80 billion.
Just 60 such grants were approved under the previous Trump administration.
What Trump's DOT Is Doing Instead
Secretary Sean Duffy announced Tuesday that $1.73 billion in BUILD grants will go toward roads, bridges, and shipping ports.
The breakdown tells the story: 77% – approximately $1.3 billion – goes to roads and bridges along critical transportation corridors.
Another 7% – roughly $121 million – goes to maritime infrastructure, more than tripling Buttigieg's allocation for ports.
https://twitter.com/BuildFreedomUS/status/2074541070038311072?s=20
Zero dollars go to bike lanes.
"America is fortunate to have a Builder in the White House who knows America is only as great as our infrastructure," Duffy told The Daily Wire. “That’s why this Department is investing in repairing critical roads and bridges that connect Americans to job opportunities, port infrastructure that bolsters our national security, and aviation and transit projects that move American families.”
"The impact of these dollars will be felt in communities nationwide for years to come," he added.
The program's name went back to BUILD the moment Trump returned to office – the word "equity" stripped from the title along with the ideology behind it.
Duffy moved to eliminate DEI and climate-related mandates from DOT grant criteria in his first weeks on the job, directing department officials to rescind any policies tied to the Biden agenda.
42,000 Bridges. Zero Bike Lane Dollars. Do the Math.
There are approximately 42,000 bridges in poor condition across this country right now.
Forty thousand Americans die on roads every year.
The BUILD program alone received nearly $13 billion in applications one year – for $1.8 billion in available funding.
Communities lined up with legitimate infrastructure needs.
https://twitter.com/SeanParnellASW/status/2074618274461921766?s=20
Buttigieg's answer was to filter those applications through an equity lens and send money to pedestrian projects in cities that already had functioning transportation networks.
Trump's answer is $1.3 billion for roads and bridges, $121 million for ports, and not a single dollar for bike lanes that nobody outside a progressive city council meeting asked for.
Biden took a program designed to fix the infrastructure working Americans depend on – the roads they drive to work, the bridges that carry freight, the ports that keep prices down – and turned it into a political reward system for cities that already voted for him.
Every dollar that went to a bike lane in Portland was a dollar that didn't fix a weight-restricted bridge in rural Missouri.
Sean Duffy just ended that.
Sources:
- Leif Le Mahieu, "Trump Uses Biden's Billion-Dollar DEI Bike Lane Program To Fix What Americans Actually Use," The Daily Wire, July 7, 2026.
- U.S. Department of Transportation, "President Trump's Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy Announces Nearly $500 Million in Funding to Revitalize American Infrastructure," FHWA, July 15, 2025.
- U.S. Department of Transportation, "Trump's Transportation Secretary Invests $1 Billion into Building Big, Beautiful Infrastructure to Make American Roads Safer," DOT, June 2025.
- New York Post, "Pete Buttigieg's DOT Spent $80 Billion on DEI Grants, Delayed Air Traffic Control Upgrades," New York Post, July 21, 2025.
