Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and President Donald Trump’s secretary of transportation, Sean Duffy, agree on one thing: They want the Francis Scott Key Bridge built faster.

The typical adversaries met Thursday and afterward issued a joint statement — as opposed to providing separate thoughts.

“During today’s meeting, we made significant progress,” they said. “We agreed to accelerate the reconstruction of both the Francis Scott Key Bridge and the American Legion bridge.”

The American Legion Bridge connects the Capital Beltway between Montgomery County and Virginia.

Their statement, however, did not specify a new timeline for construction of the Key Bridge. Neither Duffy’s nor Moore’s team immediately provided details.

The bridge was initially anticipated to open in 2028 and cost less than $2 billion. The state updated those figures in November after a more detailed analysis. It is now expected to open to traffic at the end of 2030 and cost $4.3 billion to $5.2 billion.

The bridge has long been expected to be funded entirely by the federal government, but Trump has flirted with the idea of walking those dollars back.

“We also made significant progress on cost sharing for the Francis Scott [Key] Bridge to ensure fairness,” the statement said.

What that cost-sharing plan would mean remains unclear.

The bridge collapsed March 26, 2024, after a container ship lost power multiple times and crashed into a support pier, killing six construction workers. Several members of the ship’s crew have remained in Baltimore ever since as part of a deal brokered by the federal government.

In November, the federal agency investigating the incident detailed a series of defaults — beginning with a loose wire but also including inappropriate use of a flushing pump and other concerns — that led to the disaster.

Engineers are finalizing designs for the bridge, which will be a cable-stayed structure, as construction begins. Crews recently installed the first production pile, which will form part of its foundation.

“We all agree that building great, big, things shouldn’t be impossible in America,” Duffy and Moore said. “That includes the Francis Scott Key Bridge and the American Legion Memorial Bridge — two major infrastructure projects that are essential to the Baltimore and Beltway economy."

Speaking on CNN Thursday night, Moore described the meeting with Duffy as “productive” and an example of bipartisanship – though his remarks did come after several minutes of criticizing the Trump Administration’s immigration enforcement in response to questions from host Kaitlan Collins.

He said “we are working together to ensure that we can both accelerate the timeline and control the costs.”

“We are going to move fast and we’re going to move together,” Moore said. “And people see that. I will work with Democrats and Republicans. We are working with members of the Trump Administration to serve the people of the state of Maryland.”

State and local transportation departments faced new levels of uncertainty throughout 2025 as the Trump administration placed additional requirements on grant funding agreements and sowed uncertainty around previous appropriations.

Targets included projects with a focus on racial equity, the environment or other initiatives deemed too “woke,” ranging from small-scale grants, such as a $6 million research award to the Johns Hopkins University, to large resets like scrapping Biden-era greenhouse gas emission targets on highways.

The agency attempted to cut funding to states that the administration deemed were not complying with its immigration agenda but was blocked by a federal judge.

Maryland’s transportation department, headed into a tight budget year itself, could see more roadblocks from the White House in 2026.

Last week, at a ribbon-cutting for the first of several new Maryland Transit Administration subway vehicles, Federal Transit Administration Regional Administrator Terry Garcia Crews told the crowd of local elected leaders and advocates the federal dollars assisting the purchase were just planned and “not a guarantee.”

The MTA is slated for roughly $200 million over the next few years for the purchase, on top of roughly $234 million it’s already received, appropriations that have been in the state’s budget for years.

MDOT’s proposed six-year capital spending plan, which lawmakers will take up during budget deliberations in Annapolis, includes more than $8 billion in federal funds to put toward new transit vehicles, road repair and expansion, paving runways at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and more.