Center stage is UP President and CEO Jim Vena’s headline-grabbing September pilgrimage to the White House in pursuit of a POTUS 47 merger endorsement. A UP predecessor won President Abraham Lincoln’s support for a partial transcon linking the Missouri River with the Pacific Coast. The studious former railroad attorney understood the project’s role in facilitating trade and binding the nation economically.
Persuading POTUS 47 required different skills—playing to his fleeting attention span, impulsive tendencies and receptive reactions to flattery. A well-informed Vena deftly first focused on the President’s issue de jour, crime. Then he pivoted, observing that while Lincoln promoted but half-a-transcon, POTUS 47 could take credit for the whole coast-to-coast chalupa.
Vena recalled his time as a board member at Memphis-based FedEx, emphasizing the city’s high crime rate; then noted UP and NS connect there, foretelling a POTUS double win. Order National Guard troops to purge Memphis of evil-doers and then host a photo-op of his driving a commemorative Golden Spike. The strategy worked.
With characteristic embellishment, POTUS 47 repeated to alter-ego Fox News Vena’s Oval Office words: “Sir, when I walk one block to my hotel [in Memphis] they won’t allow me to do it; they put me in an armored vehicle with bullet-proof glass to take me one block. It is so terrible.”
A UP spokesperson confirmed the two also spoke of “creating an American transcontinental railroad.” POTUS 47 was quoted that the merger deal “sounds good to me,” and Vena said he further met with “very senior people in the Administration.”
POTUS 47 loyalist, Commerce Secretary and dealmaker-in-chief Howard Lutnick told CNBC, “The concept of making [railroads] more efficient to get across the country is obviously something that we applaud. Whether that should be through a merger or any other way, I’ll leave that to the regulators and overseers.”
Indeed. The Surface Transportation Board (STB) is a statutorily independent (from the Executive Branch) agency with sole authority to approve rail mergers. Sensitive to a POTUS who breaks norms, Lutnick’s comment sought to deflect impressions of improper meddling. Nonetheless, Vena and the POTUS unwittingly tossed the STB into a thorny briar patch.
Further feeding negative perceptions was the August sacking by POTUS 47 of Democratic STB member Robert E. Primus, who opposed a previous rail merger, CPKC. His removal appears headed for Supreme Court review. The STB statute limits removal to “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office,” of which Primus is not accused. The POTUS, however, has had legal success, so far, with similar removals at the National Labor Relations Board and Federal Trade Commission.
Notions that the Vena-POTUS chat is influencing STB’s two Republicans, Chairperson Patrick J. Fuchs and Vice Chair Michelle A. Schultz, or that Vena is lobbying them, lack substance. An STB spokesperson said that while Vena had in 2025 one private meeting with Fuchs—and no other STB members—it dealt with non-merger issues.
What we know of Fuchs and Schultz from conversations and close attention is they hold as sacred STB’s integrity and commitment to fact-based decision making. They now carry an unprecedented burden to provide fully transparent, detailed and plain-English reasoning as to their votes, should a formal merger application be filed (Oct. 29 at the earliest).
We’ve learned that in expectation of the application’s filing, “rigorous and thorough” baseline data gathering—traffic flows, maps, track charts, joint rate and traffic agreements—is under way and already exceeds what was assembled during the entire 2021-2023 CPKC merger proceeding.
If a formal merger application is filed, a final STB decision would come in early 2027. Fuchs’ second and final term ends Jan. 14, 2029. Schultz awaits Senate confirmation to a second and final term expiring Nov. 30, 2030. Democrat Hedlund, whose first term expires Dec. 31, 2025, awaits nomination to a second five-year term. Republican nominee Richard Kloster awaits Senate confirmation for a first five-year term. If Primus returns, his second and final term expires Dec. 31, 2027. Otherwise, a vacancy exists for another Democrat to be nominated by POTUS 47.
Railway Age Capitol Hill Contributing Editor Frank N. Wilner is author of Railroads & Economic Regulation,” available from Simmons-Boardman Books, 800-228-9670.
