{"id":578268,"date":"2026-02-09T21:04:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T21:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/578268\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T21:04:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T21:04:14","slug":"gateway-tunnel-federal-funds-still-frozen-after-trump-admin-appeals-order-to-temporarily-fund-hudson-river-rail-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/578268\/","title":{"rendered":"Gateway Tunnel: Federal funds still frozen after Trump admin appeals order to temporarily fund Hudson River rail project"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"Rally-Gateway\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Union construction workers affected by the work stoppage attend a Gateway Tunnel Project Rally in North Bergen, New Jersey, United States, on Feb. 9, 2026. The Trump administration files papers to fight a court order that would restore federal funding to the $16 billion Hudson River Tunnel as a deadline looms to resume payments. <\/p>\n

Photo by Kyle Mazza\/NurPhoto<\/p>\n

Federal funds for the critical Gateway Tunnel rail project remain frozen after U.S. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas on Monday paused her Feb. 6 decision<\/a> pending the Justice Department\u2019s appeal to a higher court \u2014 issuing the order minutes before the feds would have had to disperse up to $200 million to the project.<\/p>\n

Vargas had ruled Friday that the Trump administration\u00a0had to temporarily disperse funds it had withheld from the Gateway rail tunnel project. Work on the Gateway Tunnel \u2014 a $16 billion endeavor to build two new train tubes for Amtrak<\/a> and NJ Transit<\/a> service across the Hudson River \u2014 halted on Friday and will remain paused until the funds are released, officials with the Gateway Development Commission overseeing the project said on Monday.<\/p>\n

In court filings on Feb. 9, the Trump administration asked Vargas to stay her Friday ruling, which held the states of New York and New Jersey would suffer irreparable harm if she didn\u2019t force the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) to temporarily unfreeze funding to the major rail project, which had been halted since Oct. 1. The case stems from a lawsuit<\/a> filed by New York and New Jersey Attorneys General Letitia James and Jennifer Davenport seeking to force the feds to release the funds.<\/p>\n

Vargas said on Monday that she granted a brief stay on her order \u2014 until Feb. 12 at 5 p.m. \u2014 to allow for a decision from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals first. If the government loses its appeal, Vargas\u2019 Friday order mandating the unfreezing of funds will take effect.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gateway Tunnel pause can put entire NYC region in big trouble, pols say
\n\"GatewayView of construction underway for the Gateway Program\u2019s Hudson River Tunnels, New York, NY, at Hudson Yards, October 6, 2025. The Trump administration is withholding $18 Billion for New York area transportation projects, including the East Harlem Subway extension along 2nd Avenue to review contracts over Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) requirements.(Photo by Anthony Behar\/Sipa USA)<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, on Monday, more than 200 Gateway workers with Laborers\u2019 International Union of North America (LIUNA), who lost their jobs due to the funding freeze<\/a>, rallied at one of the project sites in North Bergen, NJ. The workers \u2014 joined by New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill and New York U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer \u2014 called for the Trump administration to release the funds so they can get back to work.<\/p>\n

Sherill charged that Trump is playing politics with workers\u2019 lives.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are working men and women feeding their families on this job, and every day that goes by that he doesn\u2019t release the funds is a day that our families are in trouble,\u201d Sherill said of Trump.<\/p>\n

Schumer warned that if the pause drags on, it could lead to the shutdown of the existing 116-year-old rail tunnel, which serves hundreds of thousands of Amtrak and New Jersey Transit commuters every weekday, and deal a major blow to the national economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this tunnel were to collapse, and we know it will if we don\u2019t build a new one, there\u2019ll be a recession, a depression in New York, New Jersey and all across America,\u201d Schumer said. \u201cWe are not going to let that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked why the Trump administration has yet to unfreeze the funds, U.S. Department of Transportation \u2014 the federal agency funding Gateway \u2014 spokesperson Nate Sizemore referred amNewYork to the White House. He also pointed to the Trump administration\u2019s appeal.<\/p>\n

The USDOT initially froze the funds<\/a> around the start of the last government shutdown in October under the pretense that it needed to review the project\u2019s compliance with newly changed rules for contracting with minority-and-women-owned businesses.<\/p>\n

The feds have argued the states do not have the right to sue over the pause in funding, as they weren\u2019t directly named in the funding contract for the project, and that the suit filed against the USDOT by the GDC<\/a> would be enough to grant them relief.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPlaintiffs do not point to any statute requiring DOT to fund that project or to disburse funds on any particular schedule, nor do they claim themselves to be parties to any contract with the United States,\u201d reads a filing from U.S. Attorney for New York\u2019s Southern District Jay Clayton.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lawyers for Davenport\u2019s office characterized the USDOT\u2019s appeal as \u201cextraordinary\u201d and having \u201cno prospect of success\u201d in an opposition brief filed Monday afternoon. The filing emphasizes that the states have their own independent interests and potential harms from the lack of federal funding, such as ensuring successful rail traffic in the region and footing the bill for maintaining safety at the dormant project sites during the pause.<\/p>\n

\u201cDOT does not deny that its September 30 suspension was unlawful \u2014 it does not deny that the indefinite Project-wide funding freeze violated federal rules,\u201d the brief says. \u201cNor does DOT deny its freeze imposes independent and profound \u2026 harms on the states.\u201d<\/p>\n

The states argue the Trump administration halted funding purely as an act of political retaliation against New York and Congressional Democrats, pointing to posts the president made on Truth Social.<\/p>\n

The GDC confirmed on Monday it has not yet received any federal funding since the Friday ruling. A spokesperson said the commission was \u201cencouraged\u201d by the judge\u2019s Friday order and was \u201ccontinu[ing] to pursue all avenues to regain access to the funding for the Hudson Tunnel Project.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet GDC officials said the continued absence of $205 million in federal reimbursements means that construction work on the $16 billion project, to replace a two-tube decaying rail tunnel connecting New York and New Jersey underneath the Hudson River, halted at 5 p.m. on Friday and remains paused. They also said that 1,000 workers were immediately laid off across the project\u2019s five construction sites when work stopped on Feb. 6.<\/p>\n

White House spokesperson Kush Desi did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Union construction workers affected by the work stoppage attend a Gateway Tunnel Project Rally in North Bergen, New…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":578269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,240722,218535,242907,250978,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,24672,1807,4352,11752,250979,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-578268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-gateway-development-commission","tag-gateway-tunnel-project","tag-gdc","tag-new-jersey-gov-mikie-sherrill","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-pm-newsletter","tag-president-trump","tag-trump-administration","tag-u-s-department-of-transportation","tag-u-s-sen-chuck-schumer","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116042705541882946","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}