Trump Withholds Appropriated Funds for Rail Tunnel Project Till Penn Station and Dulles Airport Are Named After Him

When the president spends federal money, that money does not belong to him. It is allocated by Congress to be used for the benefit of the American people. But Donald Trump thinks everything belongs to him, and therefore everything should be named after him. So he is holding up federal spending in an attempt to force people to name more things after him.

Punchbowl News had the scoop, but see this follow-up in The New York Times:

The Trump administration has sought to pressure Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, to help name New York’s Penn Station and Washington Dulles International Airport after President Trump in exchange for releasing billions of dollars he has frozen for a rail tunnel under the Hudson River. …

The push to rename the station and the airport for Mr. Trump comes as the president, who recently put his name on the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, has been on a renaming spree and has appeared increasingly preoccupied with his legacy. …

[T]he Transportation Department said in October that it would withhold money until the project could be reviewed to make sure that its contracts followed with new federal rules targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

That announcement came in the middle of a 43-day government shutdown, timing that seemed intended to pressure Mr. Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House Democratic leader, into making a deal.

In a way, it’s refreshing to see all the other excuses about DEI and budget negotiations swept away and have it out in the open that what this is really about is Donald Trump’s personal vanity—which he wants to satisfy with the tax dollars of the American public.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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