Ron DeSantis rips federal tailpipe emission monitoring, ‘woke roads’

The Joe Biden administration’s highway emission standards aren’t getting any traction with Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Speaking in Tampa, DeSantis complained about benchmarks that can qualify states for federal dollars, explaining that to “change your behavior to get crumbs from the federal government” is not “something that you want to do.”

“They did this infrastructure bill, and you get the bill and they try to give you money. But then you’ve got to jump through all these hoops,” DeSantis said. “I have to monitor tailpipe emissions for Florida drivers. I am not doing that. I’m not doing the woke roads. I’m not doing any of that.”

The Governor has talked about tailpipe emissions and so-called “woke roads” before.

He previously pledged to Floridians that he didn’t want to “police your tailpipe” during another soliloquy about federal funding conditions after the state rejected $320 million of conditional federal money requiring emissions testing in 2023.

In 2024, while targeting the Biden administration’s “weaponization of transportation dollars,” DeSantis rolled out a portal called Roads are not for Politics that he said spotlighted the “underhanded tactics” the Democratic President uses to “shoehorn” so-called “social justice initiatives” such as diversity, equity and inclusion and critical race theory into transportation allocations. The Governor blasted the Biden administration for attempting to “push an ideological agenda” with federal funds.

DeSantis targeted Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who said the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework would address “racism that went into those design choices” of 20th century highways that divided many major cities and destroyed neighborhoods.

“In 2022, Biden’s Secretary of Transportation launched a $1 billion transportation project that he said would combat ‘racist roads.’ And I’m thinking, like, everyone drives our roads. We’re not doing, I don’t know where you’re getting that (we’re) trying to do (that),” DeSantis said, taking another shot at remarks he’d previously condemned for representing the “woke-ification of federal policy.”