Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, criticized Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in a Senate hearing on Tuesday for a video he shared on social media that bragged about withholding more than $73 million in highway funding from the state — one of the latest efforts by the Trump administration to punish blue states for their immigration policy.
A fast-paced, meme-filled video posted on Mr. Duffy’s official social media account on Sunday derided Democrats and the Biden administration while promoting Mr. Duffy’s record as transportation secretary. Ms. Gillibrand took issue with the video’s mocking tone as it briefly singled out New York, which has fought the Trump administration over its efforts to prevent undocumented immigrants from operating commercial trucks.
The withholding of highway funds was the latest effort by the Trump administration to pull transportation funding from New York infrastructure projects. Earlier this year, a federal judge forced the administration to pay out billions in federal grants that had already been allocated to build a rail tunnel under the Hudson River, after the Trump administration moved to suspend the funding. In a dramatic standoff, construction on the project briefly came to a halt — and more than 1,000 workers were laid off — before the court order unlocked the federal funds.
New York State has sued the administration over both efforts to cut funds.
“I did not like the fact that you bragged about cutting funding to New York,” Ms. Gillibrand said to Mr. Duffy. “That sounded like a political argument that is not a very nice thing to say about a state that has 20 million people that need to get to work every day.” She later added, “It is not appropriate for a secretary to demean an entire state.”
Mr. Duffy responded that “every state has complied but New York, and we have tools to pull money from New York, and we did.” California, for example, agreed to revoke the driving credentials of some 17,000 foreign nationals after coming under similar pressure.
As the exchange grew heated, and the two shouted back and forth at each other, Mr. Duffy suggested that Ms. Gillibrand’s criticism demonstrated a lack of gratitude for federal transportation funding.
“We’re going to give $8 billion to rebuild Penn Station,” Mr. Duffy said, referring to the long-delayed project the administration has taken control of. “Is that a joke? You welcome that, right?”
Mr. Duffy has withheld the $73 million in highway funding unless the state rescinds all commercial driver’s licenses issued to people not authorized to work in the United States. The video, saturated with internet memes and references to popular media, invoked the Seinfeld “Soup Nazi” in a mocking reference to the funding freeze.
