Next Stop, Trump Station: Feds Move to Strip Penn Off Penn Station

Transportation Secretary's Sean Duffy's letter to three Senate committees asks Congress to rename the busiest rail hub in the Western Hemisphere

There is a rendering of the new Penn Station in which the first thing you see — before a train, a track, a departure board — is the name Donald J. Trump, etched in stone beneath a presidential seal.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wrote to three Senate committees on Wednesday, asking them to direct Amtrak to rename New York Penn Station. The letter also seeks $1 billion for the $8 billion rebuild and permission to siphon property tax from the blocks around it. It never says what the new name should be. It asks Congress to authorize a renaming and leaves the name to be filled in later.

He never says the new name. He doesn’t need to.

That’s because he said it out loud last August, asked whether the station would keep its title: “Trump Station, he figured, has a nice ring to it."“

The developer chosen to build it doesn’t use a P in its logo for Penn Station. It uses a T, probably not for “Train.”

This shouldn’t be surprising. Trump has done this before. Many, many times.

This is a man who spent forty years putting his name on buildings and has spent this term putting it on the country. Fifteen days ago, Palm Beach International Airport became President Donald J. Trump International Airport. The State Department stuck his name on the U.S. Institute of Peace. He wanted Dulles. He wanted the Kennedy Center. Penn Station — busiest rail hub in the Western Hemisphere, 600,000 bodies a day, in his hometown, on the site of the building New York is still mourning — was always the prize.

He just told everyone he never asked for it, but he has tried extortion.

On October 1, the administration froze $205 million owed to the $16 billion Gateway tunnel under the Hudson, citing a review of diversity practices in contracting. The shutdown ended in November. The money stayed frozen. In February, reporting surfaced that Trump had offered Chuck Schumer a trade: back the renaming of Penn Station and Dulles, and the money moves. Schumer told him he had no authority to rename anything.

Then Trump, on Air Force One, said Schumer suggested it to him. Unions suggested it. Democrats. Republicans. Everybody suggested it. Schumer was online within the hour calling it an “absolute lie.”

Four days later his own press secretary took the story back. Asked why the president wanted the name changed, Karoline Leavitt said it was something he’d floated with Schumer. Then, unprompted: why not.

Which brings us to the part that should worry them. Trump’s handpicked board voted his name onto the Kennedy Center in December 2025. A federal judge tore it off in May in a 94-page ruling issued, pointedly, on John F. Kennedy’s birthday. Workers unscrewed the letters in June. An appeals court refused to put them back this month.

He put the name on a memorial to an assassinated president and dared a court to take it down. A court did. He is now going through Congress instead — the one route that would survive a court.The letter also seeks $1 billion

Jerry Nadler, whose district holds the station, called it a hostile takeover and pointed out nobody has said who pays. Kathy Hochul swore in March that the Moynihan Train Hall would be renamed “over my dead body.” Yesterday her spokesman said the governor is focused on actually building the thing.

New York already lost one Penn Station — demolished in 1963, a loss so obscene it produced the city’s landmarks law. This time the building survives.

Now it’s the name on the demolition list.

If you’re got something out of this, consider becoming a paid subscriber to Edwards Wire. Almost everything I publish on Substack and YouTube is free and always will be. Paid subscribers are what let my team do this work without fearing demonetization, billionaire algorithms, and censorship.