Transportation secretary rescinds Biden memos prioritizing infrastructure resilience to climate change

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy rescinded memos from the Biden administration prioritizing infrastructure resilience to climate change, according to a Monday press release.

According to the press release from the department, the announcement about the rescinding came from Duffy on Monday. The department said the memos “displaced the long-standing authorities granted to States by law, added meritless and costly burdens related to greenhouse gas emissions and equity initiatives.”

The Trump Transportation Department also put forth a memo of its own dated last Friday in which it called the memos “controversial” and asked for their rescinding.

Webpages for the memos on the Federal Highway Administration’s (FWHA) website are both currently displaying “Page Not Found.”

According to a Government Accountability Office report from 2022, one of the memos from 2021 had aims including pushing for states to “invest in projects that upgrade the condition of streets, highways and bridges and make them safe for all users” and “modernizing” those same pieces of infrastructure to make the transport network “more sustainable and resilient to a changing climate.”

An archived version of the other memo, which is from 2023, also states that the FWHA would carry on with focusing on “infrastructure that is less vulnerable and more resilient to a changing climate.” The 2021 memo was also superseded by the 2023 memo.

Duffy said in the release that his department “is getting back to basics — building critical infrastructure projects that move people and move commerce safely.”

“The previous administration flouted Congress in an attempt to push a radical social and environmental agenda on the American people,” he continued. “This was an act of federal overreach. It stops now.”

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