#kathy-hochul — Trump Fail

Trump Unveiled a $22.5 Billion Overhaul of Dulles Airport — and Around the Same Time Tried to Trade $16 Billion in Frozen Hudson-Tunnel Funding for Naming Rights, Offering to Unfreeze It Only if Dulles and New York's Penn Station Were Both Renamed After Him, While a GOP Bill Moves to Make Dulles the "Donald J. Trump International Airport" and the Cost per Passenger Jumps Nearly Ninefold

On August 6, 2026, Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced a $22.5 billion, decade-long overhaul of Washington Dulles International Airport — ripping out the widely disliked "people mover" mobile lounges in favor of a U-shaped passenger train, a central walking tunnel, new concourses and gates, and a 32,000-space parking garage, while preserving Eero Saarinen's landmark 1962 terminal. Parts of that are a genuine improvement, and the airlines, not federal taxpayers, would fund it through Airports Authority bonds. But two things wrap the project in the same self-dealing that defines this presidency. First: separately, Trump reportedly offered to unfreeze $16 billion in federal Gateway Hudson River tunnel funding — money he froze in October 2025, stalling one of the nation's most critical infrastructure projects and roughly 1,000 jobs — only if Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer would support renaming Dulles Airport AND New York's Penn Station after Trump. Schumer rejected it, saying he has no authority to rename them; Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand called it "ridiculous," adding "these naming rights aren't tradable in any negotiations, nor is the dignity of New Yorkers." Second: a bill by Rep. Addison McDowell (R-NC), with GOP cosponsors, would rename Dulles — currently named for Eisenhower's Secretary of State John Foster Dulles — the "Donald J. Trump International Airport." And the overhaul's cost lands on travelers: Dulles' cost per passenger, about $10 today, is projected to reach $90.64 by 2035, a figure airlines typically pass through in fares. It is the Palm Beach airport playbook at national scale: a real project used as a stage for putting the president's name on the country's infrastructure — and, this time, holding a $16 billion tunnel hostage to get it.

FEMA Will Withhold 20% of a $1 Billion Anti-Terrorism Grant Program — Money for Cybersecurity and Protecting Crowded Public Spaces — Unless States Rewrite Their Elections to Trump's Demands Before the Midterms, a Power the Constitution Gives Him Zero Authority Over

The Trump administration is holding counterterrorism money hostage to force states to change how they run elections before the November 2026 midterms. FEMA's fiscal-year 2026 Homeland Security Grant Program notice says the agency will withhold 20% of each state's total award — from a $1.064 billion program that funds cybersecurity, emergency planning, training, equipment, and protection of crowded public spaces — until the state proves it has complied with new "Election Security" requirements. Those requirements: submit a plan to abandon electronic voting systems that use bar codes/QR codes and move to hand-marked paper ballots (eliminating ballot-marking devices); conduct 5% manual post-election audits; reconcile voters against ballots cast; run the entire voter roll through the DHS "SAVE" citizenship database within 120 days; and verify the citizenship of every poll worker and vendor. In FY2025 the election-related hold was just 3% for three modest actions; FY2026 escalates it to 20% and a far larger list. The 3% election-security set-aside and the 20% holdback are explicitly separate — meeting one does not release the other. The grants flow largely to populous urban states: New York alone expects about $204 million in FY2026. Switching to hand-marked paper ballots would cost states hundreds of millions — Georgia's Republican secretary of state estimated $66 million for his state alone. The Constitution gives the president no authority over election administration; a federal judge recently wrote exactly that while blocking parts of Trump's anti-voting executive order, and another judge blocked DHS from using SAVE to purge voters, finding the administration "knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens." The DOJ has separately sued 30 states for refusing to hand over voter lists and warned election officials in all 50 states they could face criminal charges. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul: the administration is "once again putting New Yorkers' lives at risk to forward their political agenda." Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows: "Trump is trying to meddle in how states run American elections because he's terrified of losing power after the 2026 midterms."