Labor Day, the traditional close to American summer road trip season, is less than three weeks away. The arrival of U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's conflict-riddled, corporate-funded family road trip reality show is much more difficult to predict.
Duffy acknowledged this recently while taking time off from his day job – again – to campaign in Wisconsin with his son-in-law, who is seeking a U.S. House seat in Congress
.Duffy, in an Aug. 10 interview with NewsNation, said the project called "The Great American Road Trip" was created to "encourage people to get out and travel and see this beautiful country" by filming his family doing just that. But he acknowledged the project was behind schedule to “make sure I come into compliance with all of
the ethics rules" for his government post, and might finally be posted on YouTube in a week or two.
This corporate grift – a clear financial benefit for Duffy and his wife, Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy – is being paid for by companies regulated by the U.S. Department of Transportation. It was staged during a summer when Americans scaled back on travel due to the increased cost of gasoline and rising taxation sparked by a war of choice in Iran launched in February by Duffy's boss, President Donald Trump.
Americans cut back on travel, and Sean Duffy races to the bottom on fuel efficiency
A Gallup poll in June found that 57% of Americans were driving less and 46% changed their summer travel plans because of the rising cost of gas.
The American Automobile Association found that anticipated travel around July 4 was essentially flat from a year before, a remarkable thing considering that national holiday marked America's 250th birthday.
"The Great American Road Trip" was specifically tied to the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence when the Department of Transportation announced it in March. Duffy in May said the television show would premiere in June.
Adam Zuckerman from Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group, told me Duffy's time atop the Department of Transportation has included a proposed steep rollback in gas efficiency standards for American cars, something that will keep the cost of travel up even if the cost of gas comes back down.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which Duffy now oversees, set a standard in 2024 for cars to achieve 50.4 miles per gallon by model year 2031. Duffy is pushing to reduce it to 34.5 miles per gallon in the same time frame.
"It's essentially a race to the bottom on fuel efficiency, meaning that for every mile that Americans drive, they have to pay more," Zuckerman told me.
Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan nonprofit government watchdog, in May asked the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Transportation to "investigate potential violations of federal gift and travel rules, the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Executive Branch Employees and any other relevant violations of federal law related to" Duffy's corporate-financed family vacation.
A spokesperson from the Office of Inspector General in May confirmed that the CREW complaint had been received and was being reviewed. That spokesperson on Aug. 17 declined to comment when I asked about the status of the complaint.
A CREW spokesperson told me that the group has not received a response yet from the inspector general.
'The Great American Road Trip' is greatly lacking in transparency
This freebie road trip for a wealthy couple and their kids raises so many more questions than it answers.
Tori Barnes, a lobbyist who worked for the U.S. Travel Association and now runs Great American Road Trip Inc., told me in May that it was registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization in 2025.
By law, social welfare organizations "may not inure to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual."
I reached out to Barnes again recently, asking if she has any concerns about her television series not airing before the end of the summer road trip season. I also asked her why Great American Road Trip Inc. is still not listed on a searchable Internal Revenue Service website that lists nonprofits.
Barnes did not respond to that, or when I asked her for more details about her nonprofit's IRS filings.
Duffy's media team at the Department of Transportation was similarly uninterested in engaging when I asked if he is concerned about his television series missing the road trip season, or about the blatant lack of transparency for the nonprofit's IRS paper trail.
Some road trips take longer than others. So Americans will have to wait some more for the Duffy family adventure, and for honest answers about how much the corporations we pay him to regulate paid for him to hit the road.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on Bluesky, @bychrisbrennan.bsky.social, and on X, @ByChrisBrennan. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Translating Politics, here.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Sean Duffy's 'Great American Road Trip' is an even greater grift | Opinion
