The freeze comes after the Trump administration paused billions for other projects during the shutdown.
Russ Vought, director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, has added to the growing pile of federal projects paused during the government shutdown.
He announced on X on Oct. 17 that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers “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.”
Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left's climate agenda is being cancelled. More info to come from @ENERGY.
— Russ Vought (@russvought) October 1, 2025
The projects are in the following states: CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VT, WA
Vought added that the corps would soon provide additional information on the pause.
The Epoch Times has reached out to the corps seeking more details.
The director’s announcement is the latest in a round of similar moves since the shutdown began on Oct. 1.
On the same date, Vought announced the cancellation of $8 billion in funding for climate-related projects in California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and other states—all of them blue.
The administration has also hit pause on billions allotted to infrastructure projects in Chicago and New York.
$2.1 billion in Chicago infrastructure projects–specifically the Red Line Extension and the Red and Purple Modernization Project–have been put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing via race-based contracting. More info to come soon from @USDOT.
— Russ Vought (@russvought) October 3, 2025
$2.1 billion in Chicago infrastructure projects–specifically the Red Line Extension and the Red and Purple Modernization Project–have been put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing via race-based contracting. More info to come soon from @USDOT.
— Russ Vought (@russvought) October 3, 2025
That money includes more than $2 billion for the extension of Chicago’s Red Line and other improvements to its rapid transit system.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker condemned the move.
“Illinois is entitled to this funding, and I will continue to stand up to these reckless attacks on Illinois working families and communities,” he said in a statement.
Unlike Vought’s other announcements, his latest on the corps funding explicitly cited the shutdown as the motivation.
He wrote that it “has drained the Army Corps of Engineers’ ability to manage billions of dollars in projects.”
The Trump administration has also permanently laid off thousands of federal workers.
In an Oct. 15 episode of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” Vought said those firings will “probably end up being somewhere north of 10,000” people.
