1. United States
2. Wash.
3. Letter

Open an investigation into Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's reality TV series "The Great American Road Trip" and its sponsors. Boeing, Toyota, Shell, Royal Caribbean Group, and United Airlines — all companies regulated by Duffy's own Department of Transportation — sponsored a show starring the sitting Cabinet secretary. That is a textbook conflict of interest, and it demands scrutiny. The DOT's defense is that "The Great American Road Trip Inc." is an independent organization that made its own sponsorship decisions. That explanation raises more questions than it answers. Duffy was simultaneously running the DOT, serving as acting head of NASA, and apparently moonlighting with an independent production entity. The public deserves to know what conversations happened between Duffy, his production partners, and those corporate sponsors — and whether any regulatory decisions at DOT benefited them. Regular families are skipping road trips right now because gas prices are punishing household budgets. Meanwhile, the Transportation Secretary is filming a seven-month road trip series bankrolled by the very industries he oversees. That's not a coincidence worth ignoring. Demand answers.