> Trump seizes on and pushes yet another highly unpopular issue

Donald Trump made a pledge to the American people.

“I will never, ever ride a bicycle,” he declared.

The joke landed because Mr. Trump is known to be more of a limo-and-golf-cart sort of guy (plus he’s morbidly obese, clumsy and 80 years old). But more recently, his administration has begun acting on its deep aversion to cycling, revoking federal grants for what it calls “D.E.I. bike lanes.”

In a high-profile move earlier this year, the administration even tried to remove a bike lane near the White House.

Sean Duffy, Mr. Trump’s transportation secretary, has argued that when bike lanes cut into space for cars and trucks, the result is more congestion, “longer travel times and wasted fuel.”

But Mr. Duffy and his colleagues have also deployed rhetoric that suggests the bicycle is hopelessly lefty, belonging in the same category as green-haired baristas, Rosie O’Donnell and yard signs professing that love is love.

Last month, the Transportation Department told National Public Radio that liberals believe “that everyone should ride a bike to their shoebox-sized apartment to eat crickets to achieve a phony climate agenda.”

The attacks are depressing to longtime cycling advocates like Bill Nesper, executive director of the League of American Bicyclists. “There is something there that they’re playing on, which is ‘Look at that dork on a bike,’” Mr. Nesper said.

Whether this strategy pays off politically remains to be seen. A 2025 YouGov poll showed that 76 percent of Americans supported bike lanes in and around where they live, including 66 percent of Republicans.