President Donald Trump on Monday repeated his opposition to a massive public works project to create another tunnel connecting New York and New Jersey and distanced himself from reports that he wanted to make federal funding for it contingent on renaming New York’s Penn Station and the Washington area’s Dulles International Airport after him.
In a post to his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump said the federal government would not be responsible for cost overruns on the new tunnel, a warning that comes less than two weeks after a federal judge temporarily blocked his administration from withholding money for the $16 billion project.
NBC News and other news outlets previously reported that the Trump administration asked Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to support renaming Penn Station and Dulles airport in his honor in exchange for releasing tunnel funding. On Monday, Trump said the Gateway tunnel project would become “financially catastrophic for the region, unless hard work and proper planning is done, NOW, to avoid insurmountable future cost overruns.”
“Please let this statement represent the fact that, under no circumstances, will the Federal Government be responsible for ANY COST OVERRUNS – NOT ONE DOLLAR!” the president wrote. “The Federal Government is willing to meet, however, to make sure that this does not happen!”
Trump added that the concept of renaming Penn Station “was brought up by certain politicians and construction union heads, not me.”
Trump and his administration have repeatedly threatened funding for the underwater tunnel, which has been in the works for years amid delays and other problems.
Last fall, White House budget director Russell Vought announced the Trump administration was freezing funding for the project, questioning whether the money flowing to it was being allocated “based on unconstitutional DEI principles.”
Vought announced that same day that the administration was slashing billions of dollars that had been allocated to fund other projects in states that former Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, carried during the 2024 election.
