A push by the Trump administration to rename New York's Penn Station after the president is heading for a confrontation in Congress, with Senator Chuck Schumer vowing to block any bill that would rebrand the busy Manhattan transit hub. The dispute pits the White House's desire to attach the president's name to one of the nation's busiest stations against fierce resistance from New York's senior senator.
The plan surfaced in a letter that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sent to Senate leaders last week, in which he asked Congress to reauthorize funding for a range of transportation initiatives. Among the requests was an additional one billion dollars in grant funding for the design and construction of the aging Penn Station, which is slated for a major overhaul in the years ahead.
Tucked into the same letter was a line directing Amtrak to rename New York Penn Station. The Department of Transportation did not spell out what the new name would be, but the directive put in writing what had until now been an informal ambition, moving the idea from casual remarks into an official transportation request before lawmakers.
That ambition has been a poorly kept secret. The president signaled last summer that he wanted the station to carry his name and has spoken openly about the idea, saying it was going to be Trump Station and that he thought the name had a nice ring to it. The renaming would apply to a hub that officials describe as the busiest transit facility in the Western Hemisphere.
Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, drew a hard line against the proposal. He said Penn Station needs to be rebuilt but not rebranded, and declared that any transportation bill, or any bill at all, that renames Penn Station for Trump is dead in the United States Senate. I will block it, he said, adding that it was not going to happen.
The station is set for a sweeping reconstruction, an 8 billion dollar project expected to begin in 2027 under Amtrak's control, which Duffy's funding request is intended to help advance. The renaming question now threatens to become entangled with the money, since the same letter that seeks the additional construction funds also carries the directive to change the station's name, tying the two matters together as they head to Congress.
Penn Station, which took its name from the now-defunct Pennsylvania Railroad back in 1910, ranks among the busiest transit hubs in the Western Hemisphere and is heading into a major rebuild beneath Midtown Manhattan. Commuters interviewed at the station largely rejected the idea of renaming it, saying the hub needs to be modernized but that they do not want the president's name attached to it. For now, the dispute over what to call it sets up a standoff between the administration's renaming push and a New York senator determined to keep the president's name off the station.