DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Trump promises Schumer funding for NY tunnel project — if Penn Station and Dulles Airport are renamed after him

President Donald Trump told Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer last month that he was finally prepared to drop his freeze on billions of dollars in funding for a major New York infrastructure project.

But there was a condition: In exchange for the money, Schumer had to agree to rename New York’s Penn Station and Washington’s Dulles International Airport after Trump.

The startling offer, which was described by two people familiar with the conversation, was swiftly rejected by Schumer, who told the president he didn’t have the power to deliver on such an unorthodox request.

In the weeks since, Trump has continued to withhold the more than $16 billion earmarked for the long-planned Gateway project connecting New York and New Jersey through a new rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River.

The two states are now suing the Trump administration over the freeze, alleging in a complaint filed earlier this week that the funding suspension is unlawful.

A spokesperson for Schumer declined to comment. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The episode, first reported by Punchbowl, offers a fresh window into Trump’s ever-expanding effort to secure an outsized place in American history — and to do so in part by branding nearly everything around him with his own name.

Since returning to the White House, the president has introduced a slew of initiatives bearing the Trump name, including the Trump Gold Card offering a high-priced path to citizenship, the TrumpRx website offering lower-priced prescription drugs, and a new Trump-class battleship meant to solidify his era of “peace through strength” foreign policy for years to come.

Trump in recent months has set his sights on even bigger targets: Adding his name first to the US Institute of Peace and then, even more controversially, to Washington’s iconic Kennedy Center.

Still, Trump’s offer to Schumer would have represented perhaps his most audacious move yet, an apparent attempt to leverage the future of a massive infrastructure project to fulfill his own personal wishes.

The commission in charge of the Gateway tunnel has warned that it will soon have to shut down work on the project and lay off roughly 1,000 workers if the Trump administration does not release the funding it needs.

The tunnel’s construction predates Trump’s return to office, with the federal government on the hook for a significant portion of the funding needed to complete it. But Trump moved to halt the project late last year, a decision that Democratic officials in New Jersey and New York have argued was politically motivated.

Schumer has since played a central role in trying to negotiate the unfreezing of the funding. Yet despite that priority, there’s little that the Democrat could conceivably do on his own to put Trump’s name on either Penn Station or Dulles Airport.

While some conservative lawmakers have already introduced legislation to rename Dulles as the “Donald J. Trump International Airport,” it’s so far gained little traction.

The legislation has not advanced in the GOP-controlled Congress, and as a result remains unlikely to pass.

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https://www.aol.com/articles/trump-promises-schumer-funding-ny-001606929.html

That's comically stupid, lol

I think it's far more devious, manipulative, narcissistic and possibly illegal to simply call it stupid but that's certainly one word you could use to describe it I suppose.

Eh, call it whatever. It's dumb, but it's also likely just Trump trolling Shumer and it makes for a good headline.

That's what people have said about a lot of things trump has done. "He's just joking". Then we watch what he does afterwords and it often ends up the joke was on them.

He is holding up thousands of jobs. Equipment has been rented for a massive infrastructure project plan to benefit NJ and NY and the country and it cannot be used. Rent needs to be paid. Its beyond stupid its disgusting, wasteful, maybe illegal , moronic.

You mean like renaming the Kennedy center, driving away artists and then having to close it for two years? You mean like that.

Another simple point, have any of you been to Penn Station or Dulles lately?

Yes penn station is nice now

That overhang is a digital screen.

Judge orders Trump administration to restore funding for rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to restore funding for a new rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey

NEW YORK -- A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore funding to a new rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey on Friday, ruling just as construction was set to shut down on the massive infrastructure project.

The decision came months after the administration announced it was halting $16 billion in support for the project, citing the then-government shutdown and what a top federal budget official said were concerns about unconstitutional spending around diversity, equity and inclusion principles.

U.S. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas in Manhattan approved a request by New York and New Jersey for a temporary restraining order barring the administration from withholding the funds while the states seek a preliminary injunction that would keep the money flowing while their lawsuit plays out in court.

“The Court is also persuaded that Plaintiffs would suffer irreparable harm in the absence of an injunction,” the judge wrote. “Plaintiffs have adequately shown that the public interest would be harmed by a delay in a critical infrastructure project.”

The White House and U.S. Department of Transportation did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment Friday night.

New York Attorney General Letitia James called the ruling “a critical victory for workers and commuters in New York and New Jersey.”

“I am grateful the court acted quickly to block this senseless funding freeze, which threatened to derail a project our entire region depends on,” James said in a statement. “The Hudson Tunnel Project is one of the most important infrastructure projects in the nation, and we will keep fighting to ensure construction can continue without unnecessary federal interference.”

The panel overseeing the project, the Gateway Development Commission, had said work would stop late Friday afternoon because of the federal funding freeze, resulting in the immediate loss of about 1,000 jobs as well as thousands of additional jobs in the future.

It was not immediately clear when work would resume. In a nighttime statement, the commission said: “As soon as funds are released, we will work quickly to restart site operations and get our workers back on the job.”

The new tunnel is meant to ease strain on an existing, over 110-year-old tunnel that connects New York and New Jersey for Amtrak and commuter trains, where delays can lead to backups up and down the East Coast.

New York and New Jersey sued over the funding pause this week, as did the Gateway Development Commission, moving to restore the Trump administration's support.

The suspension was seen as way for the Trump administration to put pressure on Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, whom the White House was blaming for a government shutdown last year. The shutdown was resolved a few weeks later.

Speaking to the media on Air Force One, Trump was asked about reports that he would unfreeze funding for the tunnel project if Schumer would agree to a plan to rename Penn Station in New York and Dulles International Airport in Virginia after Trump.

“Chuck Schumer suggested that to me, about changing the name of Penn Station to Trump Station. Dulles Airport is really separate,” Trump responded.

Schumer responded on social media: “Absolute lie. He knows it. Everyone knows it. Only one man can restart the project and he can restart it with the snap of his fingers.”

At a hearing in the states' lawsuit earlier in Manhattan, Shankar Duraiswamy, of the New Jersey attorney general’s office, told the judge that the states need “urgent relief” because of the harm and costs that will occur if the project is stopped.

“There is literally a massive hole in the earth in North Bergen,” he said, referring to the New Jersey city and claiming that abandoning the sites, even temporarily, “would pose a substantial safety and public health threat.”

Duraiswamy said the problem with shutting down now is that even a short stoppage would cause longer delays because workers will be laid off and go off to other jobs and it’ll be hard to quickly remobilize if funding becomes available. And, he added, “any long-term suspension of funding could torpedo the project.”

Tara Schwartz, an assistant U.S. attorney arguing for the government, disagreed with the “parade of horribles” described by attorneys for the states.

She noted that the states had not even made clear how long the sites could be maintained by the Gateway Development Commission. So the judge asked Duraiswamy, and he said they could maintain the sites for a few weeks and possibly a few months, but that the states would continue to suffer irreparable harm because trains would continue to run late because they rely on an outdated tunnel.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory...on-restore-funding-rail-tunnel-129939719

surprise, Schumer came out this morning and said that trump is lying.
probably pedo 47 is going to have bondi on this asap.

I think if drumpf wanted to pay 16 billion for naming rights, it could be done, maybe

Instead he wants to use tax payer dollars to bribe someone into doing it.