Duffy says he and his household filmed “The Nice American Highway Journey” in short home windows, like weekends and faculty holidays, throughout a seven-month interval.
Division of Transportation/Screenshot by NPR
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Division of Transportation/Screenshot by NPR
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has returned to his actuality tv roots, filming a cross-country highway journey together with his household that shall be launched as an unscripted collection forward of America’s 250th birthday in July.
“The Nice American Highway Journey” follows Duffy, his spouse and 9 youngsters on what he calls “a civic expertise” — and encourages different households to comply with go well with.
“The motto is: to like America is to see America,” Duffy says within the four-minute trailer, which dropped Friday. “It is one of the highly effective methods to grasp this huge, lovely, difficult place we name dwelling.”
The video reveals the household snowmobiling out West, visiting Philadelphia’s historic landmarks, thanking veterans at a diner and having fun with waterslides, interspersed with some backseat teasing and hints of a dramatic emergency-room go to. It additionally options cameos by Inside Secretary Doug Burgum, nation musicians Child Rock and John Wealthy, a Benjamin Franklin reenactor and President Trump, who describes their exploits as “slightly journey throughout.”
The trailer prompted backlash virtually instantly.
Critics — from outstanding Democrats to social media commenters — known as it out of contact, because the administration’s struggle in Iran has pushed fuel costs to their highest stage since July 2022. Some brazenly puzzled whether or not taxpayers had footed the invoice for Duffy’s household trip.
“The unconventional, depressing left has observed our superior Nice American Highway Journey trailer… they usually hate it,” Duffy wrote in a prolonged X response on Saturday. “They’re upset as a result of they do not need you to have a good time America! And so they undoubtedly don’t desire you to show your children civics & patriotism.”
These concerned say manufacturing prices have been lined by a nonprofit by the identical title, The Nice American Highway Journey Inc. Its public listing of sponsors is stacked with travel-related firms — like Toyota, Boeing and United Airways — with ties to the Division of Transportation, elevating extra questions.
On Monday, the nonprofit authorities watchdog group Residents for Ethics and Duty in Washington (CREW) filed a grievance with Transportation’s Workplace of Inspector Normal, accusing Duffy of violating federal reward and journey guidelines, and calling on the Division of Transportation’s Workplace of Inspector Normal to research.
“You’ve got on a regular basis People who’re fighting the worth of fuel, fighting the prices of on a regular basis gadgets, and you’ve got the cupboard secretary saying that he’s going on a visit together with his complete household, which seems to have been funded by the industries that his division is overseeing,” CREW president Donald Sherman tells NPR.
Sherman desires to understand how a lot time the secretary — and authorities employees — spent on the challenge. And he says Duffy’s insistence that it did not value taxpayers raises much more questions.
“If he is saying that it is a work challenge or that he did work on the challenge, then taxpayer funds must be paying for it,” he provides. “And if it is a trip or some form of private journey, then definitely business shouldn’t be paying for it.”
Duffy stated on X that “profession ethics and price range officers” authorised his participation and journey “in accordance with federal guidelines.” Division of Transportation spokesperson Nathaniel Sizemore informed NPR on Monday that its “regulatory choices are guided by profession security professionals, the regulation, and the details.”
What we all know concerning the present’s origins
Duffy was a actuality TV persona earlier than he entered politics. He starred on The Actual World: Boston in 1997, and met his spouse, Rachel Campos-Duffy on MTV’s Highway Guidelines: All Stars, the next 12 months.
In a joint Friday look on Fox & Mates — which Campos-Duffy co-hosts on weekends — Campos-Duffy stated they’d rebuffed “dozens of actuality TV folks” desirous to do a present about their household over the past three a long time.
Then, she stated, President Trump tasked Cupboard members with celebrating America’s 250th birthday. That impressed Duffy, who stated he grew up taking household highway journeys from his native Wisconsin to Florida.
“I wished to lean into America’s 250th birthday; Rachel and I really met on a highway journey on a actuality TV present,” Duffy stated. “And so over the course of seven months, we simply form of discovered these moments the place I’d be capable to do some work, take the youngsters with me, do a highway journey.”
Campos-Duffy stated they initially figured they might simply doc their travels by social media movies.
“After which we began speaking about it, we have been like, ‘Let’s return to our roots. Let’s do that one free of charge. We’ll put it on YouTube, we’ll let the entire nation see it,'” she stated. “If only one extra household says, ‘Load up the automotive and let’s go spend time collectively … let’s have a look at America throughout her birthday 12 months,’ then, we stated, we could have accomplished one thing fantastic.”
It is not clear when the five-part collection will arrive on YouTube. Duffy informed Fox & Mates that episodes will drop in June. Tori Barnes, the manager director of The Nice American Highway Journey Inc., informed NPR on Monday that “the timing and cadence has not but been finalized.”
Duffy poses together with his spouse, Rachel Campos-Duffy, and a few of their youngsters after being sworn in by Vice President Vance in January 2025.
Rod Lamkey/AP
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Rod Lamkey/AP
Duffy says he was engaged on the highway
Barnes says filming came about in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Tennessee, Montana, Wyoming, Florida, South Carolina, Arizona, Louisiana and Massachusetts.
“If I by no means lived on this home, none of you’d be right here,” Duffy, within the trailer, tells his children exterior the transformed Nineteenth-century Boston firehouse the place his season of The Actual World was filmed. Duffy reportedly labored with the identical manufacturing firm that did his season of The Actual World (Barnes didn’t deal with NPR’s requests for affirmation).
Duffy has stated filming occurred in one- to two-day home windows like “weekends and the youngsters’ spring break” over a seven-month interval. Each the Nice American Highway Journey Inc. and the Division of Transportation declined to substantiate when precisely that window was.
Sizemore, the Division of Transportation spokesperson, informed NPR over e-mail that “in these transient stops, the Secretary additionally typically carried out extra visits like touring air site visitors management towers and assessing port infrastructure.”
“Like with some other official engagements, the Division lined the flight,” he added.
Duffy’s tenure has coincided with a chaotic time for air journey, from aviation disasters to shutdown shortages to monetary woes attributable to excessive jet gas costs. Sizemore stated celebrating the nation’s 250th birthday is a part of Duffy’s official duties, too.
At one level within the trailer, Duffy says to his household whereas sitting on a sofa: “Somebody has to pay for this operation; I gotta go to work.”
The journey was funded by firms Duffy oversees
The Toyota brand on the road-trip automotive is displayed prominently within the four-minute trailer.
Division of Transportation / Screenshot by NPR
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Division of Transportation / Screenshot by NPR
Because the trailer made the rounds on social media, many commenters requested how the journey was paid for. Some frightened it was costing taxpayers, whereas others stated its product placement — just like the Toyota automotive, a Japanese model, prominently featured within the video — raised questions of corruption. Sherman, of CREW, agrees.
“One has to wonder if the choice to prominently characteristic Toyota on this challenge is as a result of Toyota paid for a sponsorship or as a result of the secretary really thinks that selling Toyota is in the most effective curiosity of the American public, American automakers and the people who work for that business,” he stated.
Duffy wrote on social media — and the Division of Transportation reiterated — that “zero taxpayer {dollars} have been spent on my household.” None of them obtained a wage or manufacturing royalties, he stated, and the Nice American Highway Journey, Inc. lined manufacturing prices.
Barnes confirmed the nonprofit lined manufacturing prices, although didn’t specify what these amounted to. Sizemore, of the Division of Transportation, stated the nonprofit additionally lined “issues like fuel, automotive leases, lodging and actions.”
“The Nice American Highway Journey Inc is an unbiased group,” Sizemore stated. “How and who they settle for donations from in furtherance of their mission to have a good time America’s 250th birthday is their determination.”
The Nice American Highway Journey Inc. describes itself as an unbiased nonprofit 501(c)(4) group, “absolutely funding its personal efforts to have a good time and share America’s story.” (An IRS database search didn’t yield any outcomes for a company by that title, and Barnes didn’t reply to NPR’s requests for an identification quantity.)
The nonprofit’s web site lists over a dozen sponsors “powering America’s highway journey,” most of that are within the journey or transportation business. They embrace Toyota, Boeing and Royal Caribbean, which Sherman says have been topic to investigation — and in some instances, fines — by the Division of Transportation in recent times “and positively could possibly be sooner or later.”
“[The nonprofit] has grow to be a automobile for offering entry, to its sponsors, to a cupboard secretary, which ought to make on a regular basis People who can’t pay for comparable entry actually involved,” Sherman provides.
In one other signal of the closeness between authorities and business, Barnes, the director of The Nice American Highway Journey Inc., most lately served as the manager vice chairman of public affairs and coverage on the U.S. Journey Affiliation.
She informed NPR that the nonprofit has “three key pillars”: celebrating America’s 250th birthday, selling journey and tourism and highlighting “the transportation, infrastructure and ingenuity that constructed America over the previous 250 years and can construct America over the subsequent 250 years.”
“We’re supported by companions who share these targets and imagine in encouraging People to rediscover the folks, locations and experiences that outline our nation,” Barnes wrote in response to questions on potential conflicts of curiosity.
Sherman hopes CREW’s nine-page grievance, in addition to the mounting public curiosity, will immediate the Division of Transportation’s inspector basic to launch an investigation into whether or not Duffy violated authorities ethics guidelines.
He says the American folks should know what occurred, and different authorities officers must be placed on discover, “particularly as a result of I think about as we get nearer to the 250th anniversary, there shall be extra of those makes an attempt to type of muddy the waters between what’s official motion and what’s not.”
Fuel costs could crush cross-country highway journey goals
“The Nice American Highway Journey” — each the collection and the nonprofit — goals to spotlight iconic locations throughout the nation and encourage households to go to them.
However Duffy’s name to “fuel up the automotive, pack up the youngsters, get behind the wheel and get out and see America” has gotten a blended reception. Fuel costs are skyrocketing because of the U.S. struggle in Iran, as many critics — from social media commenters to Duffy’s predecessor — have been fast to level out.
“I like a superb highway journey, however that is brutally out of contact: a Trump Cupboard member making a documentary about himself whereas common households cannot afford highway journeys anymore, as a result of Trump and his struggle put fuel costs by the roof,” Pete Buttigieg, transportation secretary below President Biden, wrote on X.
Sizemore, the Division of Transportation spokesperson, blamed Democrats for having “pressured People into costly electrical automobiles” and praised Duffy for supporting Trump’s “vitality dominance agenda.”
Nonetheless, many YouTube and Instagram commenters lamented {that a} highway journey just like the Duffys’ is financially out of attain for them, at the least for now.
When requested concerning the excessive value of fuel, Barnes, the manager director of the nonprofit, pointed to shorter road-trip choices.
“Whether or not one goes simply two hours away from your own home or two days. You could possibly go to the seaside, you might go to [a] campground,” Barnes informed NPR over e-mail. “It is concerning the journey of getting out and seeing America.”
Duffy made a really comparable case on Fox & Mates days earlier.
“You could possibly go for 2 hours, you might drive for 2 days, you might do a day journey,” he stated. “It suits any price range to do a highway journey.”
