Trump taps Sean Duffy, Fox host and former Congressman, for transportation secretary

WASHINGTON — President-elect Trump has chosen Sean Duffy, a Fox News contributor and former GOP congressman, to head the Department of Transportation.

In announcing the pick, Trump praised Duffy as a “respected voice and communicator” in a post on Truth Social.

Duffy represented his native Wisconsin in the U.S. House of Representatives for eight years. He’s worked as a contributor at Fox News since 2020, and hosted The Bottom Line on the Fox Business Network since 2023.

This is the second time in as many weeks that President-elect Trump has chosen a Fox host to serve in his cabinet. He tapped Pete Hegseth of Fox & Friends to lead the Department of Defense.

Duffy’s roots in the television business run deep. He appeared on MTV’s The Real World in 1997, and on another reality show called Road Rules: All Stars, where he met his future wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, also a Fox host.

Duffy is also an accomplished lumberjack, winning several world championships in speed climbing events. 

After earning a law degree, Duffy served as the District Attorney in Ashland County, Wisc. from 2002 to 2010, when he resigned to run for Congress. In Washington, he served on the House Financial Services Committee, where he was also chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations. 

“Admired across the aisle, Sean worked with Democrats to clear extensive Legislative hurdles to build the largest road and bridge project in Minnesota History,” Trump wrote in his post.

The DOT, headquartered in Washington, D.C., is a sprawling department with an annual budget of more than $100 billion and over 57,000 employees that’s deeply involved in maintaining the nation’s aviation system, highways, railroads and ports.

Joel Rose/NPR

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Joel Rose/NPR

If confirmed as transportation secretary, Duffy would lead a sprawling department with an annual budget of more than $100 billion and over 57,000 employees that’s deeply involved in maintaining the nation’s aviation system, highways, railroads and ports.

Under the current Secretary Pete Buttigieg, the department has handed out billions of dollars in funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law to build roads and bridges, dig tunnels, modernize airports and more.

Buttigieg has also pursued an ambitious agenda aimed at protecting the consumer rights of air travelers, despite some pushback from airlines. And he’s touted efforts to make the nation’s roads safer for pedestrians and other vulnerable users.

The future of those initiatives is now in question.

The Department of Transportation includes the Federal Aviation Administration, which is in charge of the nation’s airspace, as well as agencies that regulate the nation’s railroads, and set safety standards for passenger cars, trucks and commercial vehicles.

There are several areas where the department’s broad mandate intersects with the business interests of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who stands to benefit from Trump’s victory after pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into his reelection campaign.

Musk’s company SpaceX has sometimes clashed with regulators at the FAA over its launch practices.

Another DOT component, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, is formally investigating Tesla, Musk’s car company, over its “Full Self-Driving” system after the company reported four crashes in low-visibility conditions, including one that killed a pedestrian. That probe is just the latest effort by NHTSA to scrutinize Tesla’s driver-assistance systems, including an earlier inquiry into its “Autopilot” system after a series of crashes involving parked emergency vehicles.

The transportation secretary during President-elect Trump’s first term, Elaine Chao, resigned after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, citing the “traumatic and entirely avoidable” violence that day.