Department of Transportation Memo Grants Marriage Preferences and High Birth Rates?

A new Department of Transportation (DOT) memo directs the department to give grant preferences to “communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.”  The action comes after the DOT announced that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy had authorized a series of actions to advance President Trump’s agenda to “rescind woke policies” and roll back regulations. This is an unprecedented federal government policy tied to marriage and birth rates, and it’s not clear how it would be enacted.  The federal government can effectively wield spending to enact an administration’s policies. That can include setting preferences for disadvantaged businesses, women- or minority-owned businesses or areas in need of economic development.  The question remains for the agency, “how are you defining marriage? Is it the place where ‘the married couple’ resides? Or where the marriage took place? Though it remains murky, areas that could be most negatively affected by this policy would include states like Oregon, Colorado, and California that have some of the country’s lowest fertility rates, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. South Dakota, Texas and Nebraska have some of the highest. Finally, the memo prohibits imposing vaccine or mask mandates and requires local compliance with federal immigration enforcement.