Red states could benefit as Trump’s transportation secretary prioritizes funds based on birth and marriage rates

A plan to target federal funds for communities with birth and marriage rates above the national average could end up disproportionately benefiting pro-Trump areas, according to a CNN analysis of Census and health data.

In a Fox News segment last year on America’s declining birth rate, former congressman Sean Duffy joked about how he would “lose count” of his nine kids, and urged viewers to follow his lead in having more children. “If you look at what’s good for country and society, it’s to reproduce, to have kids,” Duffy declared. “That shows that you’re healthy, you’re strong, and you’re patriotic.” Now, in his new position in President Donald Trump’s cabinet, Duffy is writing that philosophy into an unlikely area of federal policy: transportation funding. The day after he was sworn in as Secretary of Transportation, Duffy issued a four-page memo to align the department’s grants with what he described as “sound economic principles.” One of his new directives: the department should give a “preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average” in programs and funding. That move could end up disproportionately benefiting pro-Trump areas, according to a CNN analysis of Census and health data and other research charting the wide variations in birth and marriage rates around the US. Duffy’s order – which was foreshadowed by his public warnings that a falling birth rate is a “crisis” for the country – echoes rhetoric pushed by conservative activists and Trump allies like Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance, who have long raised the alarm about the declining numbers of births and marriages.