Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has returned to his reality television roots, filming a cross-country road trip with his family that will be released as an unscripted series ahead of America's 250th birthday in July.

"The Great American Road Trip" follows Duffy, his wife and nine children on what he calls "a civic experience" — and encourages other families to follow suit.

"The motto is: to love America is to see America," Duffy says in the four-minute trailer, which dropped Friday. "It's one of the most powerful ways to understand this vast, beautiful, complicated place we call home."

The video shows the family snowmobiling out West, visiting Philadelphia's historic landmarks, thanking veterans at a diner and enjoying waterslides, interspersed with some backseat teasing and hints of a dramatic emergency-room visit. It also features cameos by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, country musicians Kid Rock and John Rich, a Benjamin Franklin reenactor and President Trump, who describes their exploits as "a little trip all over."

The trailer prompted backlash almost immediately.

Critics — from prominent Democrats to social media commenters — called it out of touch, as the administration's war in Iran has pushed gas prices to their highest level since July 2022. Some openly wondered whether taxpayers had footed the bill for Duffy's family vacation.

"The radical, miserable left has noticed our awesome Great American Road Trip trailer… and they hate it," Duffy wrote in a lengthy X response on Saturday. "They're upset because they don't want you to celebrate America! And they definitely don't want you to teach your kids civics & patriotism."

Those involved say production costs were covered by a nonprofit by the same name, The Great American Road Trip Inc. Its public list of sponsors is stacked with travel-related companies — like Toyota, Boeing and United Airlines — with ties to the Department of Transportation, raising more questions.

On Monday, the nonprofit government watchdog group Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) filed a complaint with Transportation's Office of Inspector General, accusing Duffy of violating federal gift and travel rules, and calling on the Department of Transportation's Office of Inspector General to investigate.

"You have everyday Americans who are struggling with the price of gas, struggling with the costs of everyday items, and you have the cabinet secretary announcing that he is going on a trip with his entire family, which appears to have been funded by the industries that his department is overseeing," CREW president Donald Sherman tells NPR.

Sherman wants to know how much time the secretary — and government staff — spent on the project. And he says Duffy's insistence that it didn't cost taxpayers raises even more questions.

"If he's saying that this is a work project or that he did work on the project, then taxpayer funds should be paying for it," he adds. "And if it's a vacation or some kind of personal trip, then certainly industry should not be paying for it."

Duffy said on X that "career ethics and budget officials" approved his participation and travel "in accordance with federal rules." Department of Transportation spokesperson Nathaniel Sizemore told NPR on Monday that its "regulatory decisions are guided by career safety professionals, the law, and the facts."

What we know about the show's origins 

Duffy was a reality TV personality before he entered politics. He starred on The Real World: Boston in 1997, and met his wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy on MTV's Road Rules: All Stars, the following year.

In a joint Friday appearance on Fox & Friends — which Campos-Duffy co-hosts on weekends — Campos-Duffy said they'd rebuffed "dozens of reality TV people" wanting to do a show about their family over the last three decades.

Then, she said, President Trump tasked Cabinet members with celebrating America's 250th birthday. That inspired Duffy, who said he grew up taking family road trips from his native Wisconsin to Florida.

"I wanted to lean into America's 250th birthday; Rachel and I actually met on a road trip on a reality TV show," Duffy said. "And so over the course of seven months, we just kind of found these moments where I might be able to do some work, take the kids with me, do a road trip."

Campos-Duffy said they initially figured they would just document their travels through social media videos.

"And then we started talking about it, we were like, 'Let's go back to our roots. Let's do this one for free. We'll put it on YouTube, we'll let the whole country see it,'" she said. "If just one more family says, 'Load up the car and let's go spend time together … let's see America during her birthday year,' then, we said, we will have done something wonderful."

It's not clear when the five-part series will arrive on YouTube. Duffy told Fox & Friends that episodes will drop in June. Tori Barnes, the executive director of The Great American Road Trip Inc., told NPR on Monday that "the timing and cadence has not yet been finalized."

Duffy says he was working on the road

Barnes says filming took place in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Tennessee, Montana, Wyoming, Florida, South Carolina, Arizona, Louisiana and Massachusetts.

"If I never lived in this house, none of you would be here," Duffy, in the trailer, tells his kids outside the converted 19th-century Boston firehouse where his season of The Real World was filmed. Duffy reportedly worked with the same production company that did his season of The Real World (Barnes did not address NPR's requests for confirmation).

Duffy has said filming happened in one- to two-day windows like "weekends and the kids' spring break" over a seven-month period. Both the Great American Road Trip Inc. and the Department of Transportation declined to confirm when exactly that window was.

Sizemore, the Department of Transportation spokesperson, told NPR over email that "in these brief stops, the Secretary also often conducted additional visits like touring air traffic control towers and assessing port infrastructure."

"Like with any other official engagements, the Department covered the flight," he added. 

Duffy's tenure has coincided with a chaotic time for air travel, from aviation disasters to shutdown shortages to financial woes caused by high jet fuel prices. Sizemore said celebrating the country's 250th birthday is part of Duffy's official duties, too.

At one point in the trailer, Duffy says to his family while sitting on a couch: "Someone has to pay for this operation; I gotta go to work."

The trip was funded by companies Duffy oversees  

As the trailer made the rounds on social media, many commenters asked how the trip was paid for. Some worried it was costing taxpayers, while others said its product placement — like the Toyota car, a Japanese brand, prominently featured in the video — raised questions of corruption. Sherman, of CREW, agrees.

"One has to wonder whether the decision to prominently feature Toyota in this project is because Toyota paid for a sponsorship or because the secretary actually thinks that promoting Toyota is in the best interest of the American public, American automakers and the people that work for that industry," he said.

Duffy wrote on social media — and the Department of Transportation reiterated — that "zero taxpayer dollars were spent on my family." None of them received a salary or production royalties, he said, and the Great American Road Trip, Inc. covered production costs.

Barnes confirmed the nonprofit covered production costs, though did not specify what those amounted to. Sizemore, of the Department of Transportation, said the nonprofit also covered "things like gas, car rentals, lodging and activities."

"The Great American Road Trip Inc is an independent organization," Sizemore said. "How and who they accept donations from in furtherance of their mission to celebrate America's 250th birthday is their decision."

The Great American Road Trip Inc. describes itself as an independent nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization, "fully funding its own efforts to celebrate and share America's story." (An IRS database search did not yield any results for an organization by that name, and Barnes did not respond to NPR's requests for an identification number.)

The nonprofit's website lists over a dozen sponsors "powering America's road trip," most of which are in the travel or transportation industry. They include Toyota, Boeing and Royal Caribbean, which Sherman says have been subject to investigation — and in some cases, fines — by the Department of Transportation in recent years "and certainly could be in the future."

"[The nonprofit] has become a vehicle for providing access, to its sponsors, to a cabinet secretary, which should make everyday Americans who cannot pay for similar access really concerned," Sherman adds.

In another sign of the closeness between government and industry, Barnes, the director of The Great American Road Trip Inc., most recently served as the executive vice president of public affairs and policy at the U.S. Travel Association.

She told NPR that the nonprofit has "three key pillars": celebrating America's 250th birthday, promoting travel and tourism and highlighting "the transportation, infrastructure and ingenuity that built America over the past 250 years and will build America over the next 250 years."

"We are supported by partners who share these goals and believe in encouraging Americans to rediscover the people, places and experiences that define our country," Barnes wrote in response to questions about potential conflicts of interest.

Sherman hopes CREW's nine-page complaint, as well as the mounting public interest, will prompt the Department of Transportation's inspector general to launch an investigation into whether Duffy violated government ethics rules.

He says the American people deserve to know what happened, and other government officials should be put on notice, "especially because I imagine as we get closer to the 250th anniversary, there will be more of these attempts to sort of muddy the waters between what's official action and what's not."

Gas prices may crush cross-country road trip dreams

"The Great American Road Trip" — both the series and the nonprofit — aims to highlight iconic destinations across the country and encourage families to visit them.

But Duffy's call to "gas up the car, pack up the kids, get behind the wheel and get out and see America" has gotten a mixed reception. Gas prices are skyrocketing due to the U.S. war in Iran, as many critics — from social media commenters to Duffy's predecessor — were quick to point out.

"I love a good road trip, but this is brutally out of touch: a Trump Cabinet member making a documentary about himself while regular families can't afford road trips anymore, because Trump and his war put gas prices through the roof," Pete Buttigieg, transportation secretary under President Biden, wrote on X.

Sizemore, the Department of Transportation spokesperson, blamed Democrats for having "forced Americans into expensive electric vehicles" and praised Duffy for supporting Trump's "energy dominance agenda."

Still, many YouTube and Instagram commenters lamented that a road trip like the Duffys' is financially out of reach for them, at least for now.

When asked about the high cost of gas, Barnes, the executive director of the nonprofit, pointed to shorter road-trip options.

"Whether one goes just two hours away from your house or two days. You could go to the beach, you could go to [a] campground," Barnes told NPR over email. "It's about the adventure of getting out and seeing America."

Duffy made a very similar case on Fox & Friends days earlier.

"You could go for two hours, you could drive for two days, you could do a day trip," he said. "It fits any budget to do a road trip."