Trump pauses $2.1B for Chicago infrastructure projects, leveraging shutdown to pressure Democrats

CHICAGO (AP) – President Donald Trump’s administration will withhold $2.1 billion for Chicago infrastructure projects, the White House budget director said Friday, expanding funding fights that have targeted Democratic areas during the government shutdown.

The administration is pausing a planned extension of the Red Line L train to “ensure funding is not flowing via race-based contracting,” budget director Russ Vought wrote on social media. The move throws immediate uncertainty into a project that had promised to connect some of the region’s most disadvantaged and predominantly Black neighborhoods.

Vought made a similar announcement earlier this week involving New York, where he said $18 billion for infrastructure would be paused, including funding for a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River.

Trump, a Republican, has embraced Vought’s tactics. On Thursday night, he posted a video depicting him as the reaper, wearing a hood and holding a scythe.

Losing the money would be a significant setback for Chicago’s transportation plans. The Red Line extension is slated to add four train stops on the city’s South Side that would bring the famous elevated train to some of the poorest and most isolated neighborhoods in the metropolitan area.

Rogers Jones, the director of a violence prevention youth center next to the planned Roseland Red Line station, called the delay a severe blow to some of the region’s most disadvantaged areas.

Officials have demolished houses, widened streets, cut grass and put up signs throughout the area in preparation for the new station, he said.

“If you talk to any neighbors today, they want to curse, because they’ve been anticipating that,” Jones said. “I just don’t understand the Trump administration, bringing harm like that. It’s devastating when people are expecting something good coming and it does not come.”

Antonio Thomas, a lifelong resident of the Roseland community, has been helping unemployed neighbors get trained and certified to apply for construction jobs the project was expected to bring.

“In our community, we really don’t have job uplift like that or opportunities,” Thomas said. “It’s going to be a big blow if it doesn’t go forward. People are already economically stressed.”

In addition, a broader modernization project for the Red and Purple lines, which Vought said was also being targeted, is intended to upgrade stations and remove a bottleneck where different lines intersect.

Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley, a Chicago Democrat, criticized the White House’s announcement, calling it “a very bad day for public transit in the country when it becomes weaponized.”

“This was our prized baby and they know it,” Quigley said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. “This was the most important new transit project in Chicago in 50 years.”

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson pledged to “use every tool at our disposal to restore this funding.”

“Argentina gets $20 billion and the South Side gets nothing,” Johnson said in a statement. “What happened to America First?”

In New York’s case, Trump’s Transportation Department said it had been reviewing whether any “unconstitutional practices” were occurring in the two massive infrastructure projects but that the government shutdown, which began Wednesday, had forced it to furlough the staffers conducting the review.

The suspension of funds for the Hudson River tunnel project and a Second Avenue subway line extension is likely meant to target Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, whom the White House is blaming for the impasse. The New York senator said the funding freeze would harm commuters.

“Obstructing these projects is stupid and counterproductive because they create tens of thousands of great jobs and are essential for a strong regional and national economy,” Schumer said on X.

Yonah Freemark, a researcher at the Urban Institute who specializes in transit, said he expects Chicago and New York will now be forced to sue to argue they were simply following federal law in pursuing the projects they won through a competitive grant process.

Even if the cities ultimately prevail, the projects will take much longer and be far more expensive because of the delays, Freemark said. Competitive grant programs such as the ones under the infrastructure law are in place in part to avoid partisan decisions about how governments should divvy up the money, he said.

“I guess what we’re seeing in the Trump administration is that the federal government can renege on their commitments with these grants,” Freemark said.

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This story has been corrected to show $18 billion, not $18 million, was held in New York.

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Megerian reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Joey Cappelletti in Washington contributed to this report.