Watchdogs and politicians, including former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, have criticized the “The Great American Road Trip,” a five-part reality series set to air on YouTube in celebration of the United States’ 250th anniversary. The show features current Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy as he travels across the country with his wife, Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy, and their nine children.

“The motto is: To love America is to see America,” Duffy says in the show’s trailer. “It’s more than a road trip. It’s a civic experience. It’s one of the most powerful ways to understand the vast, beautiful, complicated place we call home.”

The project, set to debut in June, has attracted ire, in part because gas prices have risen above $4.50 a gallon as a result of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, making ambitious road trips out of reach for many families. But it has also raised questions about some sponsors of the show — including Boeing, Toyota, Shell, Royal Caribbean Group and United Airlines — which Duffy’s department oversees and regulates, according to NBC News. 

The DOT told NBC News that The Great American Road Trip Inc. is an independent organization, and “how and who they accept donations from in furtherance of their mission to celebrate America’s 250th birthday is their decision.”

According to Politico, one watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, earlier in May called on the DOT’s acting inspector general to investigate whether Duffy violated federal gift and travel rules during the filming. The DOT’s inspector general office declined to comment. On May 16, the DOT provided a lengthy fact sheet to Politico, defending the road trip series.

Former Transportation Secretary Buttigieg on X called the show “brutally out of touch,” slamming “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.”