The CTA is “fully and entirely committed” to building the Red Line Extension on the Far South Side, the agency’s acting president said Wednesday, days after President Donald Trump’s White House froze $2.1 billion in federal funding for the extension and another major Chicago transit project.
“CTA is actively working to ensure the smooth delivery of the Red Line extension project as planned,” interim President Nora Leerhsen said at the agency’s board meeting Wednesday.
News of the federal funding freeze came Friday, when White House budget director Russ Vought said on social media that the administration was pausing the funds “to ensure funding is not flowing via race-based contracting.” The move came amid broader attacks on federal funding waged by the Trump administration against Democratic-led cities and states.
“Illinois, like New York, is well known to promote race- and sex-based contracting and other racial preferences as a public policy,” a Friday statement from the U.S. Department of Transportation read. “These critical reviews are intended to ensure no additional federal dollars go toward discriminatory, illegal, and wasteful contracting practices.”
The DOT cited CTA’s diversity programs for what it calls Disadvantaged Business Enterprises in its statement about the funding pause. The CTA requires small and Disadvantaged Business Enterprise participation, or DBE, for both the construction of the project and for professional services.
To qualify as a DBE, businesses must be 51% owned and controlled by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals. “Socially disadvantaged” individuals include people who are women, Black, Hispanic, Native American, Asian Pacific and Subcontinent Asian American, according to the agency’s website.
Illinois elected officials slammed the funding freeze Friday and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said that the city would consider legal action to defend the funds and the city’s contracting practices.
“We’re going to do everything in our power to ensure that construction continues,” said Johnson, who on Wednesday Trump called to be jailed along with Gov. JB Pritzker. “The South Side has fought for this for 50 years, and we have finally delivered it, and after 50 years of struggle to make sure that the South Side is prioritized, this president is now going to try to disrupt that? Not under my watch.”
A spokesperson for the mayor did not immediately respond Wednesday when asked for an update on potential legal action.
In addition to pausing Red Line Extension funds, dollars for the CTA’s Red and Purple Modernization project were also put on hold Friday. Four renovated train stations opened on the North Side as part of that project this summer.
Advocates for the Red Line Extension describe it as an overdue promise to the people of the Far South Side, who have long been cut off from CTA rail access.
The planned project would extend the Red Line from 95th Street to 130th Street. Four additional rail stations are slated to be built as part of the project.
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Pre-groundbreaking work on the extension was continuing despite federal threats, Leerhsen said Wednesday.
That work includes soil testing, the relocation of utility lines and the demolition of properties acquired to make way for the new track and stations, CTA spokesperson Tammy Chase said after the Wednesday meeting.
On Wednesday, Leerhsen said the agency had received a request for information from the government to which it would respond within a required two-week period.
Earlier this year, when the CTA locked down the final chunk of federal funding for the Red Line extension — which has been mired in ever-increasing price tags — officials maintained that the money would be safe from attacks from the Trump White House because of an agreement signed with the Federal Transit Administration.
“Historically, there’s never been a situation in which a full-funded grant agreement has been reneged on by the federal government,” former CTA President Dorval Carter said in January.