President Donald Trump nominated Steven Bradbury for deputy secretary of transportation yesterday. The former deputy transportation secretary, Polly Trottenberg, resigned as many officials do during a change of administrations.
Bradbury served in the first Trump administration as general counsel of the U.S. Department of Transportation and previously served under President George W. Bush in the Department of Justice.
“I’m deeply grateful to President Trump for the gift of his trust, and I look forward to rejoining the dedicated and professional staff of DOT in support of Secretary Sean Duffy,” Bradbury said in a post on LinkedIn.
Bradbury is a fellow at The Heritage Foundation, which produced the controversial Project 2025 document. In his writings for the think tank, he has said that the transportation department “is misusing its regulatory authority over fuel economy standards to push the Biden-Harris administration’s radical EV goals,” and he argued against the Environmental Protection Administration’s latest federal emissions standards for passenger vehicles and trucks. The rule, which went into effect last year, also has been opposed by some Republicans in Congress.
In a January 17 interview with Streetsblog USA, Trottenberg said “there will be differences in philosophy” on transportation under the new administration, but she added that the DOT “has had a very strong bipartisan tradition.”
The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation advanced the nomination of Sean Duffy as secretary of the Department of Transportation yesterday on a unanimous 28-0 vote. Whether Bradbury gets such an endorsement may depend on what he says in upcoming nomination and confirmation hearings.
In 2017, the Senate voted 50-47 to confirm Bradbury as general counsel at the DOT, with 45 Democrats and two Republicans opposed. The Senate does not yet have a nomination hearing for Bradbury on its calendar.
