Donald Trump is leveraging $16 billion in withheld infrastructure funding to try to rename Washington-Dulles International Airport and Penn Station after himself.
The 79-year-old president’s latest move to affix his name on buildings of note, which PunchBowl News reported Thursday, relates to his withholding of funds for the Gateway Program, which will expand and renovate the Northeast Corridor rail line in New York City and New Jersey. Trump froze those funds last October during the government shutdown. New York and New Jersey have since sued.
Trump went to New York Sen. Chuck Schumer with his offer to release the funds in exchange for the Senate minority leader’s support for the name changes, four sources told the outlet. That discussion happened Jan. 15.
Schumer rejected Trump’s offer, claiming he couldn’t make it happen, CNN reported.
A source close to Schumer, 75, told PunchBowl: “There’s nothing to trade. The president stopped the funding and can restart the funding with a snap of his fingers… There’s no statutory need for Schumer to be involved here.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Schumer’s office and the White House for comment.
Some Republican lawmakers have already signaled their support for legislation to rename Dulles as the “Donald J. Trump International Airport.” If Congress did manage to see through Trump’s desire regarding the capital-area airport and New York’s major ground transportation hub, the situation would seem to go beyond the merely cosmetic name changes Trump applied to the Kennedy Center and the U.S. Institute of Peace via exterior lettering.
Meanwhile, the Department of Transportation said in December that it would “explore the revitalization” of the airport, which Trump visited in October to assess future projects. The airport, located 26 miles west of Washington, is named after John Foster Dulles, who was Secretary of State under Dwight Eisenhower for six years and, before that, briefly a New York senator in the seat Schumer now holds.
The Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station takes its name for Schumer’s late colleague, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, whom Schumer eulogized as “truly a giant—giant as a thinker, giant as a senator, and giant as a human being.” Moynihan led the effort to build the train hall that bears his name.
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