What a giant train merger has to do with National Guard in Memphis
Last week, the CEO of a rail company met with President Donald Trump to discuss a giant train merger. During that conversation, Trump sought his opinion on National Guard deployment, the president said Friday, Sept. 12.
“And so I said, ‘What do you think? Where should we go next, as a city?’” Trump said during a Friday morning interview on “Fox & Friends.” “He said, ‘Sir, Memphis would be good.’”
Trump did not name Jim Vena, the CEO of Union Pacific, but described the person he spoke to as the head of the company. Union Pacific confirmed Vena, a FedEx board member from 2022 to 2023, met with the president.
In a statement to The Daily Memphian and other media, Union Pacific acknowledged Vena and Trump discussed the company’s proposed merger with Norfolk Southern Corp., another railroad giant. The meeting took place Tuesday, Sept. 9, according to media reports.
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Laura Testino
Laura Testino is an enterprise reporter on The Daily Memphian’s metro team who writes most often about how education policies shape the lives of children and families. She regularly contributes to coverage of breaking news events and actions of the Tennessee General Assembly. Testino’s journalism career in Memphis began six years ago at The Commercial Appeal, where she began chronicling learning disruptions associated with the pandemic, and continued with Chalkbeat, where she dug into education administration in Memphis. Her reporting has appeared in The New York Times, The Times-Picayune, The Tuscaloosa News and USA Today.
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