BALTIMORE — In the days after President Donald Trump threatened to pull federal support for Maryland’s most pressing and expensive infrastructure project, Gov. Wes Moore quickly dismissed the idea.

Trump falsely claimed he approved the money to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge and doesn’t have the power now to revoke it, Moore said repeatedly as he and the president exchanged personal barbs in their largest confrontation to date.

“He’s talking about pulling [something] that he did not give us in the first place,” Moore said on MSNBC, adding that Trump had made “such an ignorant comment.”

But as Moore emphasized Congress’ role in controlling federal spending, Trump has continued to push the boundaries of how much of that authority he can claim — risking, some say, commitments like those to pay for the Key Bridge.

“I take it very seriously,” said U.S. Rep. Johnny Olszewski Jr., who grew up in the Dundalk community on one side of the collapsed bridge. “This is probably the most important infrastructure project in the state of Maryland and in the mid-Atlantic. And so anything that even potentially jeopardizes it is of significant concern to me and should be of significant concern to Marylanders.”

Rebuilding the bridge — which fell in April 2024 when a container ship struck one of its supports — is estimated to cost up to nearly $2 billion, though Trump’s Transportation secretary reportedly said this week the cost could double.

Maryland officials lobbied aggressively for months to secure the full funding commitment from Congress at the end of last year before Trump took office.

Trump raised the idea of reversing that commitment in an Aug. 24 social media post that said Moore had been “rather nasty and provocative” as they differed on whether the president should send troops to address crime in Baltimore.

“Also, I gave Wes Moore a lot of money to fix his demolished bridge. I will now have to rethink that decision???” Trump wrote, which sparked additional back-and-forth comments.

Trump would need approval from Congress to not spend the Key Bridge funds. Olszewski and others said they believe there currently isn’t enough support, even in a Republican-controlled Congress, to do that.

Still, there are signs of cracks. U.S. Rep. Andy Harris — Maryland’s only Republican member of Congress, who played a role in getting the bridge funding last year — told Fox45 this week that “there’s a consequence” for Moore’s rhetoric and that the state might be able to cover the costs instead.

In a statement to The Baltimore Sun responding to Olszewski’s concerns about his comments, Harris said he supports rebuilding the bridge “swiftly and responsibly,” and that Maryland Democrats “should stop the political stunts and start working with the president to deliver real results.” He did not respond to questions about whether he would support a request from Trump to revoke or defer the bridge funding.

Trump has already successfully pressured Republicans to pull back funding. In July, they approved his rescissions request for $9 billion. He went even further on Friday, using another method in an attempt to rescind nearly $5 billion in foreign aid without congressional approval.

“We are seeing this gray area of the law tested in real time,” said Rachel Snyderman, a federal budget expert and managing director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Testing boundaries

One of the tests of Trump’s boundary-pushing will come in the next month.

Congress faces a Sept. 30 deadline to pass a budget or a temporary spending bill, and Trump’s latest actions raised additional concerns on Friday that an agreement might not be reached in time to avoid a government shutdown.

“We are heading into an appropriation season where Republicans are going to rely on Democrats to pass appropriations bills and keep the government funded and open,” Snyderman said. “And there is certainly concern right now that actions such as pocket rescissions [which Trump made on Friday] could risk undermining bipartisan cooperation.”

Funding for the Key Bridge was not included in the latest rescissions proposal. But Snyderman and Devin O’Connor — a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — said it appeared that the Key Bridge funding would fall into the category of discretionary spending that could potentially be included in a rescissions package from Trump. Mandatory spending in areas like Medicare and Social Security is exempt.

Maryland Democrats remained hopeful this week that the funding wouldn’t be pulled into the upcoming budget fight, though they indicated they would remain on guard.

U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who sits on the Appropriations committee, said in a statement that it was “locked into law and we are confident that it will be preserved.”

U.S. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, who took office this year after the funds were approved, said in a statement that she will work with her colleagues “to ensure the funds are used as they were originally intended.” U.S. Rep. Sarah Elfreth, of Anne Arundel County, was among those who pointed to the “economic urgency of the Key Bridge” and said it was “imperative we rebuild and deliver this funding as quickly as possible.”

Olszewski, of Baltimore County, was among many Democrats who voted against the $9 billion rescissions package in July and then vowed not to support another budget agreement that is prone to such actions.

“What is the point of crafting a bipartisan budget, having bipartisan agreements, if you’re going to only turn around and take away the things that you don’t like in those agreements in a partisan fashion afterwards?” Olszewski said. “In light of these conversations around the funding of the Key Bridge, that line is even more hardened for me now. It is a bright line that I cannot imagine crossing under any circumstances.”

Potential impact in Maryland

The next bridge is currently in the design phase, with construction scheduled to begin and finish by some point in 2028.

It’s not clear if Trump, if he were to propose any action on the bridge funding, would attempt to pull all federal support or just the 10% that the Maryland state government had been set to cover before the congressional action late last year. Officials hope that the costs will eventually be covered by the shipping company after litigation is finished.

In either case, state officials would face challenges in temporarily covering the cost, as the Maryland transportation budget has been hamstrung in recent years and the larger state budget also faces future deficits.

The president’s Transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, said this week that original estimates of $1.7 billion to $1.9 billion could be nearly double, according to The Washington Post.

The Maryland Transportation Authority said in a statement that the estimates were preliminary and the “uncertainty … was disclosed to Congress prior to the bipartisan vote to authorize the 100% cost share.”

“The yet unknown impact of the Trump Administration’s tariff and economic policies has injected additional uncertainty into the process, as the cost of raw materials and labor remains constantly in flux,” the authority said.

Olszewski said he hasn’t heard about any updated estimates but that there’s a need to act quickly and “as fiscally responsible as possible.”

He said it was “disappointing” to hear Harris’ public comments that indicated support for Trump’s threat to the Key Bridge. Without the federal support, Olszewski said, Harris is essentially “proposing a $2 billion tax increase on Marylanders.”

Harris, in response, did not directly answer the potential impact of losing federal support on state taxpayers but said Democrats were the ones not being fiscally responsible.

“Instead of working constructively to help all Marylanders, Maryland Democrats have chosen to sue the Trump administration at every opportunity — wasting taxpayer dollars in the process,” he said.

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