NY: Penn Station funding bill DOA in Senate if renaming it ‘Trump Station’ is in the plan: Schumer

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — the New York Democrat to whom President Trump has already appealed to rename NYC’s Penn Station after him — said this week he’ll block any effort to brand the iconic transit hub as “ Trump Station.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — the New York Democrat to whom President Trump has already appealed to rename NYC’s Penn Station after him — said this week he’ll block any effort to brand the iconic transit hub as “ Trump Station.”

“Any surface transportation bill that requests to rename Penn Station is dead in the United States Senate,” Schumer said Sunday. “I will block it. It does not matter what they attach it to—a standalone, an amendment, or a line item buried on page 400 of a transportation bill—it is not getting through.”

“Hijacking this bill for a Trump vanity project is a non-starter, and it will not move without Democratic votes,” the senator said. “If a renaming is in it, it will not move.”

Schumer’s line in the sand comes after a line in a Wednesday letter from Trump’s Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.

As first reported by the Daily News, Duffy told the heads of three Senate committees that it was an “administration priority” to direct “[Amtrak to rename New York Penn Station.”

Duffy – who left it to the Senate’s imagination what the new name might be – told reporters last August that he thought “Trump Station” “has a nice ring to it.”

That was months before the president told Schumer he would restore the funding he was withholding from a project to build a new tunnel into Penn Station – but only if the New York Democrat would agree to rename Penn for Trump.

That funding was later restored by court order.

The station, which is owned by Amtrak and used by Amtrak, NJ Transit and the MTA’s Long Island Rail Road, is the busiest rail hub in the nation.

Long-awaited efforts to renovate and improve the station were taken over from the MTA by the federal DOT in April 2025, amid tensions between the Trump administration and Albany over the state’s congestion pricing program. At the time, Duffy said the federal takeover would ensure “every dollar is spent wisely to create a transit hub all Americans can take pride in.”

Amtrak has since unveiled a $7 billion to $8 billion plan to rebuild the station.

Asked about the apparent effort to rename Penn Station, Gov. Hochul — who welcomed the federal government’s takeover of the project last year along with the subsequent freeing-up of more than $1 billion in New York State funds — declined to opine.

“The last I checked, names go on when a project is done,” she told the Daily News. “Let’s get the project done.”

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