Gov. Kathy Hochul said Trump had been warned that more legal action was likely over the freeze on funding. The lawsuit landed as the subway expansion project is on the verge of having a contract awarded for excavation on Second Avenue.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/2nd_ave_subway_render_1.jpg\")
The MTA released renderings of the Second Avenue Subway extension to 125th Street. Credit: Rendering via MTA<\/p>\n
\u201cWe told Donald Trump that if he did not restore the funding for this project, we\u2019d see him in court \u2014 today, we are doing just that,\u201d Hochul said in a statement. \u201cJust like Gateway, Donald Trump has two options: restore the money now, or wait for a judge to force him to.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second phase of extending the Q line<\/a> from 96th Street to new stations at 106th, 116th and 125th streets would deliver on decades-old commitments to bring subway service to East Harlem after elevated lines over Second and Third avenues were demolished in the mid-20th century. The first stretch<\/a> \u2014 with stations at 72nd, 86th and 96th streets \u2014 opened Jan. 1, 2017.<\/p>\n \u201cSecond Avenue Subway is an incredibly worthy project, long overdue transit justice for East Harlem, promised since the 1940s,\u201d Lieber said. \u201cAnd Phase 2 is well underway.\u201d<\/p>\n Two of the four contracts have already been awarded for the subway expansion project, which is partially funded by revenue from congestion pricing<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The first contract was awarded in January 2024 for the relocation of underground utilities<\/a>, while another followed last August for construction of a new tunnel north<\/a> from 116th Street. The second segment of the Second Avenue project will also make use of a tunnel built in the 1970s<\/a> that has sat dormant for more than half a century.<\/p>\n It instead has become the latest New York megaproject to be tangled up with the Trump administration, which has been critical of construction costs. The feds put funding on ice last fall<\/a> for the Second Avenue line, as well as Gateway, questioning whether the projects comply with a a USDOT rule on disadvantaged business enterprises.<\/p>\n \u201cUSDOT is committed to ensuring hardworking taxpayer dollars are being spent responsibly,\u201d a spokesperson for the federal Transportation Department said in a statement. \u201cWe are considering all legal avenues.\u201d<\/p>\n Brian Fritsch, of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, cited the feds\u2019 spotty track record on court fights over congestion pricing and the Gateway rail tunnel project, adding, \u201cThis crap is getting old.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019d think [U.S. Transportation] Secretary [Sean] Duffy would get tired of losing lawsuits for clearly unlawful behavior, but here we are again,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re confident the court will find in the MTA\u2019s favor and applaud Gov. Hochul and MTA leadership for standing up to Washington again.\u201d<\/p>\n The Second Avenue Subway was initially proposed<\/a> in 1929 and Hochul has more recently floated the idea of extending the line west<\/a> beneath 125th Street.<\/p>\n Lieber said the funding freeze has yet to affect ongoing construction on the next phase, but said the time for the feds to pay up is now.<\/p>\n \u201cI am very confident the Second Avenue project is going to keep moving forward,\u201d he said. \u201cWe just need to get through this process with the federal government.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration is being dragged into court again in the latest funding fight over a key New…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":666432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,3232,2142,5173,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-666431","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-budget","10":"tag-federal-government","11":"tag-infrastructure","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-newyork","15":"tag-newyorkcity","16":"tag-ny","17":"tag-nyc","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116254947866328971","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666431","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=666431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}