Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

19. Department of Transportation · Major · Needs Congress

Abolish DOT's discretionary grant-making and fund states by formula

Not started

621 19. Department of Transportation

“DOT’s discretionary grant-making processes should be abolished, and funding should be focused on formulaic distributions to the states, which know best their transportation needs and are incentivized to think of the long-term maintenance costs.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    No reauthorization bill has been introduced and DOT continues to award discretionary grants; the administration's reauthorization proposal to Congress asks to consolidate competitive programs, not abolish them, and is only reported on an off-allowlist source.

    No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Lead: Holland & Knight’s alert of July 2026 (https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2026/07/dot-secretary-duffy-reiterates-surface-transportation-reauthorization) describes a 2026-07-27 letter from Secretary Duffy to Senate committee leaders recommending “consolidating numerous competitive grant programs administered across DOT” and letting 12 IIJA programs expire. Off the allowlist, and the letter itself was not found on transportation.gov (the department’s briefing-room pages return HTTP 403 to automated fetches). Consolidation is not the Mandate’s ask (abolition in favor of formula funding); if the letter is located and it goes further, an attempted event (formal administration request) would be warranted.

  • The surface transportation authorization expires 2026-09-30; no reauthorization bill is in the Corpus (18,433 bills), only program-specific reauthorizations (H.R. 4948, 5452, 6078).

  • EO 14332 grant-process sweep (2026-09-29). Executive Order 14332 (2025-08-07) puts every agency’s funding announcements and discretionary awards under senior-appointee review and a test of the President’s priorities. Under the playbook §3b rule settled on 2026-09-29, it counts only where an ask’s object is review, clearance or priority-alignment of an agency’s awards. This Quote’s object is abolishing DOT’s discretionary grant-making. The order keeps discretionary grants and puts them under senior-appointee review, which is at most nearby. Status unchanged.

Action
abolish
Object
DOT discretionary grant programs
ID
1706