White House budget director Russell Vought said Wednesday that the Trump administration was putting on hold billions of dollars of federal funding for infrastructure projects in New York City.
Vought wrote on X that he would be pausing $18 billion in funding for infrastructure projects to “ensure” that the money was not “flowing based on “unconstitutional DEI principles.”
“Roughly $18 billion in New York City infrastructure projects have been put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing based on unconstitutional DEI principles,” Vought wrote.
“Specifically, the Hudson Tunnel Project and the Second Ave Subway,” he added in a second post.
The announcement, coming on the first day of the federal government shutdown, would dramatically affect major projects for the home state and city of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.
Hours before the shutdown on Tuesday, Trump had threatened that he could “get rid of a lot of things” that would prominently affect Democrats.
“We’re doing well as a country, so the last thing we want to do is shut it down, but a lot of good can come down from shutdowns,” Trump said at the White House on Tuesday afternoon. “We can get rid of a lot of things that we didn’t want, and they’d be Democrat things.”
Trump has also said he could fire “many” federal workers during a shutdown.
Cutting funding for major projects would a be new front in the ongoing clash between Democrats and Republicans in Washington. The federal government shutdown at midnight on Wednesday after party leaders on both sides failed to reach a funding deal.
Democrats had demanded measures to extend health care funding — including Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire — while GOP leaders offered a proposal that would keep the government open at current spending levels until Nov. 21.
