By Frank Yemi
Copyright inquisitr
Donald Trump just aimed a political blowtorch at Chicago’s transit plans. As the government shutdown drags on, budget director Russell Vought says the administration is pausing $2.1 billion in federal money for two marquee Chicago Transit Authority projects, the long-promised Red Line Extension on the South Side and the Red and Purple Modernization on the North Side. The stated reason, per Reuters, is a crackdown on what the administration calls “race-based contracting.” The practical effect is years of engineering, community promises, and scheduled timelines suddenly thrown into limbo.
The funding freeze is part of a broader escalation that targets Democratic-run cities during the shutdown. Earlier this week, the administration put a hold on roughly $18 billion tied to New York’s Gateway rail tunnel and Second Avenue Subway, the pet infrastructure priorities of Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and other blue-state officials.
Vought, posting the move as a point of pride, framed Chicago’s pause as a compliance review, saying money will not flow where the administration believes federal grants are steered by DEI-style preferences. Transportation officials followed with a new interim rule that bars race and sex-based contracting requirements across DOT grants, a sweeping change that lands mid-shutdown and instantly places CTA’s procurement under a microscope.
Chicago’s Red Line Extension is the city’s signature equity project, a 5.6-mile push into transit-starved neighborhoods that the previous administration approved to address decades of disinvestment. Pulling federal support risks blowing a crater in the financing stack and delaying station builds, track work, utility relocations, and the union jobs tied to them. The separate Red and Purple overhaul has already started reopening modernized North Side stations, work that assumed federal reimbursements continuing on schedule.
If this feels like a coordinated squeeze, that is because it is being sold as one. Vought and allies have also trumpeted plans to cancel nearly $8 billion in Department of Energy projects across 16 Democratic-leaning states, a move pitched as slashing “Green New Scam” funding while negotiations over spending grind to a halt. Governors, agencies, and project sponsors say they are still trying to figure out which specific grants are being axed and under what authority.
Back in Chicago, transit watchers warn the pause could cascade into real-world pain. Delay federal draws for months and contractors slow or demobilize. Construction inflation eats the budget. Riders wait longer for faster trips and accessibility upgrades. And the neighborhoods that were promised a once-in-a-generation Red Line buildout watch another political knife fight swallow their timeline. Local outlets note that DOT has not produced evidence that Chicago’s use of the longstanding Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program violates federal law. The department says it is “reviewing” CTA’s practices under its new interim rule.
The administration is leveraging the shutdown to punish blue metros while casting the cuts as clean governance and civil-rights compliance. In New York, the fight lands on projects that Schumer hails as essential to the region’s economy. In Chicago, the blow lands on a South Side extension that city officials have sold for years as the definition of fair investment. The White House gets a pressure tactic. Riders and workers get uncertainty.