For weeks, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has derided the New York City subway, repeatedly making fear-mongering assertions that the nation’s biggest transit system is unsafe.
He has characterized the subway as a hellscape, even though it is used by more than four million riders a day and underpins the financial and cultural capital of the United States. He has threatened to withhold federal funding for the trains unless crime rates decrease, even though crime rates are decreasing.
And on Friday, he and Eric Adams, the increasingly Trump-aligned mayor of New York City, rode the subway together, at Mr. Adams’s invitation. Where or when, exactly, was a bit of a mystery.
What ensued was a cat-and-mouse game involving Mr. Duffy; Mr. Adams; Janno Lieber, the head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority; and a cadre of angry train supporters seeking to confront Mr. Duffy on their home turf.