The Trump administration is withholding $73.5 million in federal highway funding from New York due to the state’s refusal to revoke nearly 33,000 commercial driver’s licenses issued to immigrants whose legal status had expired. This move is part of a broader pattern of using federal funding as a policy enforcement tool against Democratic-led states. Governor Hochul’s office has criticized the action as a baseless attack, while Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has defended it as necessary for public safety. This approach of leveraging federal funding to extract compliance from states has implications beyond just highway funding, impacting various policy areas and potentially complicating the legislative calendar heading into the midterm elections.
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