Why an East Texas lawmaker wants to name I-35 through Austin after President Donald Trump
Less than two months after U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Florida, introduced federal legislation to enshrine Trump alongside the images of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt in the iconic national monument in the Black Hills of South Dakota, Freshman Texas state Rep. Joanne Shofner of Nacogdoches raised the ante.
Or maybe lowered it.
Shofner, a first-term Republican, filed House Bill 5503, which would name the perennially bogged down Interstate 35 through the heart of Democrat-friendly Austin after the president. Ironically, the highway's name change would begin and end at the Travis County boundaries just about where I-35 starts snaking through countryside that's a bit more hospitable to Trump.
If the measure passes — and it's a big "if" considering that six of the seven House members and two of the three senators representing Travis County are Democrats — Shofner, whose East Texas district is some 230 miles from the exit on I-35 that leads to the Capitol, said it'd be an appropriate name change to the highway that bisects the city that serves as the seat of state government.
More: Honk if you agree: Austin's I-35 ranked among top congested roads in Texas, worst for truck traffic
"It is fitting that this designation is located in our state capital, recognizing a president whose impact on Texas and the country is profound and enduring," she said in a news release that lavishes praise on Trump's return to the White House.
Some on social media suggested the proposal is a dig at the Democrats who control the city's and county's governments.
"If that's not a pointy finger in the eye of deep blue Austin, I don't know what is," the conservative newsletter, Shooting News Weekly, said in a post on X.
Shofner said that is not the purpose of her bill.
"It's not a poke in the eye of beautiful Austin," she told the American-Statesman. "I'm not like that."
Still, some couldn't resist noting the antipathy for the interstate in Austin.
"People hate IH35 already," former Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, who is both a Republican and a Trump critic, said on X. "This ain't gonna help."
According to a 2024 analysis by the Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University, the 8-mile stretch of I-35 between U.S. 290 and Texas 71, which includes the double-decked portion through the heart of downtown Austin, has the the highest "congestion cost" in the state. That refers to the "monetary value of the time, fuel, and other resources wasted due to traffic congestion," according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
Trump would not be the first president to have a major highway named for him in Texas. Just four days after Democratic President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, Nueces County commissioners renamed what was then called the Padre Island Causeway in his honor.
Kennedy's successor and native Texan, Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson, became the namesake for I-635, a beltway that opened in 1959 as an alternative to the I-35 East that allowed motorists to bypass downtown Dallas' heavier traffic. The highway was named for LBJ in 1974, the year after his death.
The President George Bush Turnpike is part of a toll road network that was designed and built to relieve pressure on the highway system serving the suburbs on the outer loop of the greater Dallas area.
While those presidential projects were aimed at relieving congestion or connecting a destination beach island to the mainland, a Trump highway through Austin might be viewed by some as an homage to gridlock.
"No one is awful enough to deserve to have I-35 named after them," said an X user who calls himself "a political heretic." "I can't condone such cruelty."
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Should Texas Legislature name I-35 in Austin after Donald Trump?
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