Next stop, Trump Station? Administration wants to rename New York’s Penn Station

The Trump administration is seeking to rename Manhattan’s Penn Station as part of a planned $8 billion redesign of the country’s busiest transit hub

NEW YORK -- Will President Donald Trump ’s name grace one of the most famous -- and sometimes maligned -- landmarks in his hometown of New York City?

The Republican administration this week urged leading U.S. Senators to rename Penn Station as it undertakes a projected $8 billion redesign of the dreary, underground Manhattan transit hub that also happens to be the busiest in the western hemisphere.

But the U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, in a Wednesday letter seeking congressional funding approval for the rehab and other major transportation priorities, stopped short of saying what the station’s moniker should be changed to.

Spokespersons for the transportation agency provided the letter but didn’t respond to follow up questions Thursday.

Duffy has made it no secret he would welcome seeing his current boss’ name etched across the rail station’s facade.

“I imagine you’re asking, ’Is this going to be Trump Station?' ” the former Wisconsin congressman said last summer as officials sought bids for the project’s master developer. “I think that has a nice ring to it.”

Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, when asked earlier this year, simply responded: “ Why not?”

In his second White House stint, the term-limited Republican has sought to burnish his legacy through public works projects, from a massive new White House ballroom to a triumphal arch and a failed attempt to rename the Kennedy Center. Earlier this month, Florida's Palm Beach airport changed its name to the President Donald J. Trump International Airport.

Trump, for his part, has acknowledged a possible name change was floated in talks with the Senate’s top Democrat, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, of New York.

But he pushed back at the notion that he suggested it in exchange for unfreezing federal funding for the Gateway project, a major rail tunnel running under the Hudson River from Penn Station into New Jersey.

“Chuck Schumer suggested that to me, about changing the name of Penn Station to Trump Station,” Trump said earlier this year aboard Air Force One.

At the same time, he argued that it doesn’t make much sense for such a major New York landmark to be named after another state.

“I LOVE Pennsylvania, but it is a direct competitor to New York, and ‘eating New York’s lunch!’,” he said on his social media platform Truth Social as he stressed the renaming idea was “brought up by certain politicians and construction union heads, not me.”