Administration stops $11 billion in Army Corps of Engineers’ projects due to shutdown

White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought announced Friday that $11 billion in Army Corps of Engineers’ projects will be paused and potentially canceled because of the government shutdown.

In a post on X, Mr. Vought said the shutdown has drained the Corps’ ability to manage the billions of dollars in water resource and military construction projects it oversees.

“The Corps will be immediately pausing over $11 billion in lower-priority projects & considering them for cancellation, including projects in New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Baltimore,” he said.

Those cities are all run by Democrats.

President Trump has made clear that his administration will be targeting Democrat-favored programs for cuts as he blames them for the shutdown.

“The Democrats are getting killed on the shutdown because we’re closing up programs that are Democrat programs that we were opposed to,” he said on Tuesday. “And they’re never going to come back, in many cases. So we’re able to do things that we were unable to do before.”

Mr. Trump said the White House would release a list on Friday of the government programs it was canceling, but as of Friday afternoon, the only announcement was Mr. Vought’s post about the paused Army Corps of Engineers’ projects.

The Washington Times reached out to the White House and OMB for comment on the status of the list.

The Army Corps of Engineers did not answer a question from The Times about which projects were paused but provided more information on the rationale behind it. 

“Because of the lapse in appropriations that provide for oversight of Army Corps projects, we believe that our office and the Corps may be unable to provide adequate oversight of all the projects currently in the portfolio, which includes projects essential to life and safety,” the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works said. “To enable continued oversight of the most critical projects throughout the nation, we will pause and review other projects to see if we can deliver them more efficiently.”

The office said the administration may decide after the shutdown and the review are over to take “further actions allowable under the law that limit, cancel, or reprioritize resources in a manner that is consistent with these reviews and with the administration’s stated priorities.”

Since the shutdown began earlier this month, Mr. Vought announced the cancellation of $8 billion in funding for green energy projects in 16 states, all represented by Democratic senators.

OMB has also put money for New York and Chicago infrastructure projects on hold to undergo reviews.

Mr. Trump said Wednesday that funding for one of those projects, the Gateway Tunnel, was canceled, as he called out Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer of New York for being responsible for the shutdown.

“It’s billions and billions of dollars that Schumer has worked 20 years to get,” the president said. “Tell him it’s terminated.”

Mr. Schumer accused the president of “petty revenge politics” and said he is only harming hundreds of thousands of commuters who stand to benefit from the new commuter rail tunnel under the Hudson River.

“What Trump has done on Gateway is vindictive, reckless, and foolish,” he said. “And if Donald Trump thinks he can use New Yorkers and New Jerseyites, commuters, small businesses, union construction workers, and the first responders as political pawns, it will backfire on him spectacularly.”