New York and New Jersey sued the Trump administration on Tuesday for freezing $15 billion in federal funding for a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River between the two states, seeking a quick ruling because construction that has been underway could be forced to shut down as early as Friday.<\/p>\n
The administration put a hold on the funding in September, citing the government shutdown. The White House budget director, Russ Vought, said on the social platform X at the time that officials believed the spending was based on unconstitutional diversity, equity and inclusion principles, and the U.S. Department of Transportation said it was reviewing any \u201cunconstitutional practices.”<\/p>\n
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Manhattan by New York Attorney General Letitia James and New Jersey Acting Attorney General Jennifer Davenport, asks a judge to declare the funding suspension unlawful and order payments to resume immediately so construction can continue without interruption.<\/p>\n
\u201cAllowing this project to stop would put one of the country\u2019s most heavily used transit corridors at risk,\u201d James said in a statement Tuesday evening. \u201dOur tunnels are already under strain, and losing this project could be disastrous for commuters, workers, and our regional economy.”<\/p>\n
The White House and U.S. Transportation Department did not immediately return emails seeking comment Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
A similar lawsuit over the tunnel funding was filed Monday against the federal government by the Gateway Development Commission, a local panel overseeing the project.<\/p>\n
The construction project calls for building a new rail tunnel under the river to carry Amtrak and area transit trains between New Jersey and New York City, as well as repairing an existing, 116-year-old rail tunnel that was damaged by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.<\/p>\n
Work began in 2023. The project is funded by the 2021 federal infrastructure law signed by Democratic President Joe Biden.<\/p>\n
Gov. Sherrill will hold a news conference this afternoon at Newark Penn Station to update the continuing situation concerning the Gateway Rail Project. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York and New Jersey sued the Trump administration on Tuesday for freezing $15 billion in federal funding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,53543,10659,53544,1066,9,24,63,129,131,130,655],"class_list":["post-122487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-gateway-redevelopment-project","tag-gateway-tunnel-project","tag-gateway-tunnel-rail-project","tag-new-jersey","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news","tag-trump-administration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}