Sean Duffy's Department of Transportation enforced a CDL/immigration crackdown that left ~2,000 NYC special ed students without a bus. Two ironies are impossible to ignore:
He had almost no transportation background going into the job — one mention of the topic in a decade of home state Wisconsin media coverage — and in Congress he opposed mass deportations, favoring a path to citizenship instead. He's now running the opposite policy.
He's the father of a daughter with Down syndrome. Oh, and eight months into this job, he used an ableist slur onstage with her standing next to him.
Nearly 2,000 New York City students with disabilities started this school year with no bus company assigned to their route — the fallout of a federal crackdown on driver's licenses.
Quick context: In April 2025, President Trump signed an executive order that made it nearly impossible for drivers without permanent legal status to renew their commercial licenses.
The person in charge of enforcing it, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, directed the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to sharply restrict "non-domiciled" CDLs — licenses issued to drivers without permanent legal status.
Duffy audits the States
Duffy audited nine states, and flagged New York as the worst offender—DOT said New York had the highest rate of unlawfully issued licenses, mostly because the state kept issuing 8-year licenses to drivers whose work authorization expired years sooner. DOT pulled $73 million in highway funding when New York State disputed the finding.
Commercial driver's licenses are usually the bailiwick of the states, issued by DMVs under broad federal guidelines. Duffy's DOT changed that, forcing states to comply with sharply narrower eligibility standards, backed by the threat of losing federal highway funds.
The Irony
Duffy, a Tea Party Republican first elected to Congress in 2010, came to the DOT job from Fox Business. Before Congress, he was on reality TV and before that had a career as a competitive lumberjack—with all that chopping, you’d think he’d have been tapped to work with DOGE.
When he was nominated for the DOT position, a Wisconsin reporter, Frank Zufall, who covered him for nearly a decade in Congress, went looking for anything he'd said on the subject. He found exactly one mention — a 2012 comment about a bridge project he'd worked on with Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. His legislative focus in Congress leaned into healthcare, banking regulation, and immigration.
On the birth of his daughter: Duffy said his family would "need even more love, time, and attention" once she arrived.
And on immigration, Duffy was no hardliner. In Congress, he opposed mass deportations, favored a path to citizenship for long-term undocumented residents, and pushed for more visas for skilled workers. The man now running the enforcement push that de-licensed thousands of school bus drivers once argued for something close to the opposite.
But the most bitter irony in all this lies in the fact that Duffy is also the father of a daughter with a disability.
Duffy being sworn in.
The family story
Sean and Rachel Campos-Duffy's ninth child, Valentina StellaMaris Duffy, was born in October 2019 with a heart condition and Down syndrome. Duffy had resigned his seat in Congress the month before, saying his family would "need even more love, time, and attention" once she arrived. Campos-Duffy later wrote that the extra chromosome "certainly made her EXTRA cute."
Eight months into his tenure running the agency, Duffy stood on a stage in Washington with Valentina beside him and used a slur for people with intellectual disabilities.
At a June 2026 rally kicking off the America 250 celebration, Duffy criticized performers who had withdrawn from the event, telling the crowd the military band and singers were "way better than those libtards that canceled on us." Valentina was standing next to him at the time.
Duffy now runs the agency with a hand in stranding thousands of disabled New York City students without transportation.
When disability advocates, commentators, and others pointed out that Duffy had used an ableist slur while his own daughter with Down syndrome stood beside him on stage, Duffy displayed no regret. He attacked “liberal” values when replying to a HuffPost query about the incident: "I will not be lectured by the same people who want to abort babies with special needs. Rather than policing language, maybe liberals should spend time with these beautiful children, acknowledge their humanity, and while they're at it, try loving their country more than they hate President Trump."
Nobody is accusing Duffy of hurting disabled children on purpose. The CDL crackdown was built around immigration enforcement, not disability policy.
"It's ironic," said Corey Muirhead, executive vice president of Logan Bus Co., which services NYC and Long Island schools, "because two of the largest states affected by the executive order were Texas and Florida — high-immigration states. Think of all the oil truckers and long-haul truckers through Texas. The trucking industry lost a substantial number of drivers, which slowed down the movement of fuel in this country — and that has to contribute to higher prices."
Still, the man who enforced a law that has put additional stress on an already-stressed NYC school bus system, with 200 routes unassigned and thousands of special needs children affected, is a parent who has lived, personally, what it means to need "more love, time, and attention" for a child with a disability.
Request for comment
Lighthouse sent Secretary Duffy's press office a request for comment, asking about the CDL enforcement's impact on New York's school bus staffing and, given his own family's experience, what he would say to NYC parents of children with disabilities currently struggling to get their kids to school. The Department of Transportation had not responded as of publication.
It's ironic.
For the New York families still waiting on a phone call, a route number, a bus that never came, or one that's double-booked, it's the whole story in miniature: a government that talks about disabled children in the abstract, and neglects to see them — or serve them — up close.