Trump administration officials offered Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to release billions of dollars in frozen federal funding for a critical rail tunnel project connecting New York and New Jersey — but only for a price: support for renaming New York’s Penn Station and Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C., for President Trump.
The extraordinary offer, first reported by Punchbowl News, was rejected by Schumer, who in any case would have little direct say in changing either name.
With funding for the project suspended by the administration, work on it was halted on Friday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced. “Thousands of jobs on the line. Billions in economic benefits at risk. All because Donald Trump is on a revenge tour,” Hochul, a Democrat, wrote on X.
After the federal government shut down last October, Trump announced that his administration “terminated” the Gateway Tunnel project under the Hudson River, a critical, $16 billion transportation infrastructure plan for New York, New Jersey and other northeastern states. Funding for the project has yet to be released, even though the shutdown ended in November and Congress has since passed annual appropriations bills to fund federal operations. The Trump administration said early on that Gateway funding was under review to ensure compliance with its new rules regarding diversity, equity and inclusion programs, though it has since offered inconsistent explanations for the move.
As the funding fight dragged on, the commission leading the project sued the government on Monday for breach of contract, claiming that the Department of Transportation had failed to disburse more than $205 million for project costs without any contractual basis for withholding the funds. “DOT’s breach has jeopardized the project, threatened the livelihoods of the countless workers employed in its construction, endangered passengers who must rely on decaying, century-old rail infrastructure, and undermined the United States’ reputation as a reliable contracting party,” the lawsuit says.
Democratic officials argue that Congress has approved funding for the project and that stopping work now makes little sense. About 1,000 people have been working on the project, and the commission’s lawsuit says that nearly $2 billion has already been spent, adding that a forced halt to construction “will result in massive job losses for workers” as well as other costs.
New York and New Jersey also sued the Trump administration this week, charging that the funding halt was an act of political retribution by the president based on Trump’s desire to punish political rivals. “Donald Trump's revenge tour on New York threatens to derail one of the most vital infrastructure projects this nation has built in generations, putting thousands of union jobs and billions of dollars in economic benefits in jeopardy and threatening the commutes of 200,000 riders,” Hochul said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.
New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand rejected the idea of renaming Penn Station or Dulles airport in exchange for unfreezing funding. “This is ridiculous,” she wrote in a post on X. “These naming rights aren’t tradable as part of any negotiations, and neither is the dignity of New Yorkers. At a time when New Yorkers are already being crushed by high costs under the Trump tariffs, the president continues to put his own narcissism over the good-paying union jobs this project provides and the extraordinary economic impact the Gateway tunnel will bring.”
The president has long plastered his name on buildings and golf courses, dating back to his days as a developer. As a businessman, he put the Trump name on a range of failed products ranging from water and vodka to steaks and a for-profit “university.” As president, he has put his name — and sometimes his image — on a “gold card” program for immigrants, new investment accounts for children, a new class of battleships, the U.S. Institute for Peace, the Kennedy Center for performing arts, a White House ballroom now under construction and the newly launched TrumpRx prescription drug website, among other things.
Hochul’s press office responded to Trump’s latest effort at legacy-building with tongue-in-cheek post on X proposing a different renaming of a New York landmark, one Trump knows well:
