From WNYC Studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Thursday, October 16th.

We're going to start today with some breaking news for New York and New Jersey that also is breaking news for the nation. President Trump,

if you haven't heard this yet, said yesterday he would use the government shutdown to permanently

cancel the gateway tunnel already under construction as a major upgrade for Amtrak and the

NJ Transit, New Jersey Transit commuter Railroad, into and out of Manhattan.

It's not just an upgrade. It's also a long-awaited repair since Superstorm Sandy back in 2012.

But here's the president at his news conference yesterday responding to a reporter's question.

The project in Manhattan, the project in New York, it's billions and billions of

dollars that Schumer has worked 20 years to get. It's terminated. Terminated. Schumer responded by saying

to the New York Times, and of course Schumer is the senator from New York and the Senate minority leader,

Schumer responded by saying, Gateway is the most important infrastructure project in America, period.

Donald Trump trying to kill it again is pure spite and stupidity.

It's petty revenge politics that would screw hundreds of thousands of New York and New Jersey

commuters, choke off our economy and kill good-paying jobs, unquote, from Chuck Schumer.

Governor Kathy Hokel amplified that. She said, this is not sticking it to New York.

This is the northeastern corridor to make sure that our tunnels are safe. They're damaged by

Superstorm Sandy. And she said on MSNBC, if this system of transportation collapses, the

northeastern economy and the economy of the country collapses. So it's national as well as local,

at least from the way they're arguing it.

And also in this respect, Trump was open at his news conference about using the shutdown to layoff workers and end government services from what he has called Democrat agencies and permanently lay off workers specifically from those.

We have the people that we want paid, pay, pay.

And we want the FBI paid, we want the military paid.

...