Union Pacific Railroad is the lone Nebraska-based company publicly known to have donated to the new White House ballroom championed by President Donald Trump. It’s also a Nebraska-based company that will soon need a federal regulator to approve a massive merger that, if green-lit, would give the company control of more than 40% of rail freight traffic in the United States.
Trump recently fired the most anti-merger board member of that federal regulator, the Surface Transportation Board, as he tries to exert unprecedented influence over ostensibly independent federal agencies.
Union Pacific is far from the only White House ballroom donor that may have reason to curry presidential favor. Many of the publicly known donors are massive companies or billionaires. A recent report by Public Citizen, a consumer rights advocacy group, says that 14 out of 24 known corporate donors to the ballroom are facing federal enforcement action or have had enforcement suspended this year by the Trump administration.
Anthony Hatch, a longtime Wall Street analyst of the railroad industry, said he doesn’t think Trump fired the board member because of the looming railroad merger. He termed the U.P. donation part of “playing the lobbying game.”
“This guy is a transactional president,” Hatch said. “All of those other people have transactions in front of the president. U.P. is politically savvy, and they’re playing the game the way they see it.”
Union Pacific did not respond to requests from the Flatwater Free Press for comment on how much money it donated for Trump’s ballroom and when and why the company donated.
Beyond the unspecified amount donated for the ballroom, the railroad company spends millions of dollars each year on lobbying and political donations. According to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks money in politics, Union Pacific historically donates more to Republicans, but in recent years it also has donated to Democratic campaign committees and to the presidential campaigns of both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
Union Pacific is also already a rail giant, one of the two dominant railroads in the western half of the United States. Its recent announcement that it intends to merge with Norfolk Southern Railway – one of the dominant railroads in the eastern U.S. – would cement Union Pacific as the largest railroad in the United States.
If the merger is approved, the combined Union Pacific/Norfolk Southern would remain under the Union Pacific name and stay headquartered in Omaha, U.P. has said. The company would own its own transcontinental railroad, over 50,000 miles of rail lines in 43 states.
Union Pacific says that the merger will allow the railroad to better compete with Canadian railroads and will generally improve efficiency for shippers using the railroad. Nebraska politicians, including U.S. Sens. Deb Fischer and Pete Ricketts and Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, all Republicans, and Omaha Mayor John Ewing, a Democrat, have expressed support for the merger and its potential economic benefits.
“This has the potential to create jobs, increase wages, and streamline the supply chain. This merger is a great deal for Nebraska and America,” Ricketts said in a statement.
But the merger is also a big bet for Union Pacific, and industry experts say that it’s not obvious how the Surface Transportation Board will rule.
The deal is unprecedented because it’s the first of its size to be considered under new regulations introduced during the George W. Bush administration. The 2001 regulations include a requirement that mergers like this should include provisions for “enhanced competition.”
Hatch described the proposed merger as “the most complicated deal that’s ever happened in the rail industry.” If it happens, he said, it likely will set the stage for future mergers between other major railroads.
If the merger doesn’t happen, it may cost Union Pacific dearly. A penalty built into the agreement with Norfolk Southern says that failure to close the deal for multiple reasons, including the lack of federal approval, would force Union Pacific to pay Norfolk Southern $2.5 billion.
A previous merger between smaller railroads judged under less-stringent rules was approved by the Surface Transportation Board in a 4-1 decision in 2023. The lone board member to vote against that merger, Robert Primus, had been nominated for the board by the Trump administration and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate during Trump’s first term.
Primus argued that the 2023 merger shouldn’t be approved for a variety of reasons, including, he wrote, that industry consolidation had been bad for rail customers.
In August, weeks after Union Pacific submitted its notice to begin the merger process, Trump fired Primus, a Democrat, from the independent agency without giving a reason. The board, which already had a vacancy, now has a 2-1 Republican majority.
Primus has since filed a lawsuit challenging his dismissal, noting that the law that established the Surface Transportation Board said board members can be fired only in cases of “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
Democracy Forward, Primus’ legal representation, declined to comment for this story.
Primus likely would have voted against the Union Pacific merger, said Hatch, the railroad analyst. But he doubted Trump fired him for specifically that reason, instead dismissing him because “they want to break the backs of independent agencies in general.”
Hatch also is dubious that the Trump administration, or any presidential administration, would push through a rail merger without hearing from other massive companies — like major rail customers — who might oppose it. Such stakeholders as competing railroads, unions and industry groups representing rail freight shippers have issued statements opposing the proposed merger.
“You’re dealing with political and economic power issues between enormous industries,” Hatch said. “Why would you want to railroad, so to speak, this merger through if ExxonMobil doesn’t want it, or the chemical industry, the agribusiness industry, the steel industry, the auto industry?”
But there’s little doubt that the Trump administration is seeking more sway over independent boards and agencies, said Lauren McFerran, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a left-wing think tank.
Within days of taking office, Trump fired board members and commissioners from the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In February, he issued an executive order designed to bring these agencies under control of the White House. Through his first year back in office, he has continued to fire dozens of independent agency leaders.
“When you give all these levers of control to the president over these agencies, then they’re making decisions based on who’s donated to the president,” said McFerran, a former member of the National Labor Relations Board. “Or how likely that the agency’s work will impact (a president’s) ability to get reelected, and not based on the public good, and that’s the real danger here.”
These types of agencies have a long history in the United States. The very first independent agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission, was created in 1887 to regulate the railroad industry in response to mounting public pressure.
At that time, small shippers faced high railroad rates that they claimed were price gouging, according to a U.S. Senate history of the law. The ICC served as a model for the creation of other independent agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In 1935, the Supreme Court ruled it unlawful for a president to fire executives at independent agencies without cause, further defining the role of independent agencies. In December, the Supreme Court will revisit that decision as it hears arguments related to a Federal Trade Commission commissioner who Trump fired in March without listing a cause.
And in 1995, the Interstate Commerce Commission was abolished and a new regulator was established: the Surface Transportation Board that will soon consider the Union Pacific merger.
