Dot To Cancel ‘small Number’ Of Biden-era Awards As Grant Probe Nears End, Official Says

The Transportation Department will cancel a “small number” of the thousands of grants approved but never finalized by the Biden administration as part of a review by the Trump administration that is nearly complete, the agency’s No. 2 official said Tuesday.

Deputy Transportation Secretary Steven Bradbury said at a POLITICO event that the Biden administration left a "historic backlog” of 3,269 grants unfinalized when it left office, of which the Trump administration has “worked through” around 3,000 awards.

The “great majority” of those projects will move forward if they are consistent with the law and align with the administration’s priorities, Bradbury said.

“We’re moving as quickly as we can, and in some cases, we’ve adjusted the scope and nature of what’s being funded, but the basic project is still moving forward,” he said. “It’s a small number relative to the large mass that we're deciding to withdraw or not move forward.”

DOT has already finalized around 1,500 of the awards, he added.

In March, the department froze all discretionary grants and cooperative agreements that were not fully obligated to review whether they involved “climate, equity, and other priorities counter to the Administration’s Executive Orders.”

As part of that ongoing review, DOT canceled seven grants earlier this month for bike lanes and other projects deemed unfriendly to cars, totaling more than $65 million.

Bradbury said the Biden administration had “loaded up every grant agreement with their own social justice priorities, none of which were required by statute.”

“We had to clean that up and create new templates for our grant agreements — that took a while,” he said.

Bradbury said DOT is not opposed to bike lanes, but called them “more of a local interest” except in cases where there is a “strong safety need.”

The Energy Department has also cancelled Biden-era awards funded by the bipartisan infrastructure law and Inflation Reduction Act as part of an ongoing probe of more than $15 billion in project grants.

Other agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, have also moved to cancel funding that was fully obligated under the Biden administration.