1 of 3 | President Donald Trump gives remarks during an event revealing TrumpRx, a website for purchasing discounted prescriptions, in Washington, D.C.,, on Thursday. Trump asked Sen. Chuck Schumer last month to name Dulles International Airport and Penn Station after him in return for releasing funds for a large infrastructure project. Photo by Aaron Schwartz/UPI | License Photo
The Trump administration told Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., last month that it would release funds to finish an infrastructure project if he named Dulles International Airport in Washington and Penn Station in New York after the president.
The administration blocked funding for the $16 billion Gateway project last fall and hasn’t released the money. The funding is scheduled to run out Friday.
Schumer quickly said no to the proposal, according to people familiar with the offer, ABC News, NBC News and CNN reported. Schumer said he didn’t have the authority to change the names.
Schumer and the administration have declined to comment.
The Hudson Tunnel Project would connect New York City and New Jersey and had already started. The project includes rehabilitating the North River Tunnel and building 9 miles of new passenger rail track.
The two states are suing the administration, according to a complaint filed Tuesday in a Manhattan court, saying that Trump is “engaged in political retribution” against the states.
“Suspending the funding for this monumental project based on the president’s desire to punish political rivals violates the Administrative Procedure Act many times over,” the states’ attorneys general wrote.
On Monday, the Gateway Development Commission also filed suit against the administration.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought announced the funding cut in October. He said the $18 billion in funding for the Hudson Tunnel and the Second Avenue Subway project is “under administrative review” to “ensure funding is not flowing based on unconstitutional [diversity, equity and inclusion] principles.”
Some senators created legislation in January that would ban the naming of federal buildings after sitting presidents, ABC News reported.
“For Trump to put his name on federal buildings is arrogant and it is illegal,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a bill sponsor, said in a statement. “We must put an end to this narcissism — and that’s what this bill does.”
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., a member of the Appropriations Committee, called the withholding of funds “ridiculous” in a statement Thursday, NBC reported.
“These naming rights aren’t tradable as part of any negotiations, and neither is the dignity of New Yorkers,” Gillibrand said. “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.”
“I demand that the president put people first and unfreeze this project and all the others his administration has been holding hostage for his personal gain,” she said.
In the past year, Trump has added his name to the U.S. Institute for Peace and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He named his new prescription drug plan TrumpRx, and a new plan for savings accounts for newborns, Trump Accounts.
This week in Washington
Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks during a press conference at the Department of Justice Headquarters on Friday. Justice Department officials have announced that the FBI has arrested Zubayr al-Bakoush, a suspect in the 2012 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
