The Senate on Tuesday confirmed former Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.) to be the next Transportation secretary, putting him in place to lead a sprawling agency that oversees air travel, highways, pipelines and railroads.
President Trump’s Cabinet nominee received bipartisan backing and was confirmed Tuesday with a 77-22 vote.
Duffy was expected to easily clear the voting threshold. He was unanimously advanced out of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee with a 28-0 vote last week and in a unanimous procedural vote on the Senate floor Monday evening.
The former five-term congressman will take over an agency that has more than 55,000 employees and a budget of more than $100 billion.
He told senators during his confirmation hearing earlier this month that he would focus on improving aviation and highway safety.
Duffy, a former lobbyist, also said he will work to tackle the air traffic controllers shortage and to help restore trust in Boeing among the public as the plane manufacturing behemoth has dealt with several safety incidents in 2024.
As the head of DOT, the former reality television personality would have oversight of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the agency that is investigating Tesla, a major electric vehicle manufacturer led by tech billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk.
Duffy, when asked during the hearing by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), pledged to allow the NHTSA to “follow the evidence and operate objectively” in its probe of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software following a recall from October last year.
“Yes, I commit to this committee and to you that I will let NHTSA do their investigation,” he told Markey. “I think I also mentioned to you that a lot of the players in these spaces, I haven’t met any of them.”
