Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced Tuesday that his department would redirect $1.73 billion in Biden-era grants away from establishing “DEI bike lanes” to build roads and bridges instead.
So, what exactly is a “DEI bike lane?”
The Daily Wire pointed to former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s claim that a series of 2021 grants funding bike lanes would serve to “improve infrastructure, strengthen supply chains, make us safer, advance equity, and combat climate change.”
Upon hearing “equity,” President Donald Trump’s goons can’t help but get triggered into attacking any federal spending that won’t benefit them directly. In reality, those Biden-era grants directed funds to build a new transit center in North Carolina, replace bridges in New Mexico, extend streets in New Hampshire, install traffic lights and crosswalks in Missouri, and install bike lanes in Seattle, among other projects. Now the financial status of these projects is unclear.
Of course it is. Everything I don’t like is woke.
To be fair, everything that is good about the United States of America is DEI. There are even expressions of it in the Declaration of Independence.
Granted, the DoI was written by slaveowners, but Jefferson was borrowing from enlightenment philosophy which really was about everyone having equal rights, equal relationship to law, equal liberties, etc. When Lincoln and the Republican postbellum Congress took power, they understood the enlightenment principles that guided the framers and extended them to all men (but not yet women).
France did more to balance the playing field with the Napoleonic code, though that was because Napoleon wanted to be emperor and understood the whole social contract thing. France would still have to wait until the 20th century before providing full freedom of religion. And now France is frightened of Islam.