{"id":467395,"date":"2026-02-14T02:36:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T02:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/467395\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T02:36:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T02:36:14","slug":"gateway-tunnel-funding-nj-awaits-205m-or-returns-to-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/467395\/","title":{"rendered":"Gateway Tunnel funding: NJ awaits $205M or returns to court"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill<\/a> said federal officials have made available the first $30 million of $205 million in federal funding needed to resume the Gateway Tunnel<\/a> construction project.<\/p>\n

Sherrill made the announcement close to 5:30 p.m., on her X account. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Trump administration has finally sent the first $30 million of the $200 million owed to the Gateway Tunnel,\u201d she wrote. \u201cThis is just the first step. I\u2019m not going to stop fighting until we get every dollar we\u2019re owed and this project is complete.\u201d<\/p>\n

New Jersey and New York returned to U.S. District Court this afternoon after the states requested a status conference on the restoration of the funding.<\/p>\n

Attorneys for New Jersey and New York returned to U.S. District Court this afternoon after the states requested a status conference on the restoration of the funding, said Michael Symons, a spokesperson with the New Jersey Attorney General\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

U.S DOT officials told the court it has initiated some payments, but they are still processing and have not yet been received by the Gateway Development Commission, state officials said on background. <\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of our efforts, the Department of Transportation is finally delivering the Gateway project funds it has been unlawfully freezing for months,\u201d said Acting Attorney General Jennifer Davenport. \u201cWhen we fight, we win. We will always stand up for the Gateway project, for New Jerseyans, and for our workers from attacks out of Washington, D.C.\u201d<\/p>\n

The judge ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to file a status report by 3 p.m. Tuesday on the federal government\u2019s efforts to comply with the court order and disburse the funds, officials said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe courts have spoken and it\u2019s time for our people to go back to work,\u201d Sherrill said at a press conference<\/a> Friday in the Secaucus Junction NJ Transit station. \u201cCongress approved this money and it belongs to the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gateway Development Commission officials said construction will remain paused until it receives the $205 million in funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cGDC is grateful to New York and New Jersey for their support in restoring our access to the federal funding for the Hudson Tunnel Project,\u201d officials said in statement. \u201cWe have received an initial disbursement of $30 million from the federal government and expect to receive the full $205 million in reimbursement funds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are working with our contractors to plan how to deploy these funds in the most effective way and get workers back on the job to resume some construction as soon as possible,\u201d said Molly Beckhardt, a commission spokesperson.<\/p>\n

The $16 billion Hudson River Tunnel Project will build two new tunnels and rehabilitate the existing rail tunnels. Boring the first tunnels through the Palisades in North Bergen was scheduled to start this year.<\/p>\n

Sherrill is not declaring victory until all the funds are released.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is just a start, but we anticipate that what this court decision says is funds need to keep flowing,\u201d she said. \u201dAnd if that\u2019s not the case, we\u2019ll be back in court.” <\/p>\n

Sherrill was flanked by two members of Congress and dozens of union laborers. The workers were laid off when construction stopped on Feb. 6. She called on the Trump administration to let all the allocated funds flow.<\/p>\n

Union workers, including Tracy Porter, a local 472 laborer, have been out of work since Feb.6.<\/p>\n

Porter, 59, of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was working on the site in North Bergen where the first of two tunnel boring machines was scheduled to begin drilling through the Palisades.<\/p>\n

He expressed hope the president would let them go back to work.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel pretty confident like the rest of local 472 that the governor will keep fighting until its done and we can quit all this stalling and get back to work,\u201d Porter said.<\/p>\n

He also had a message for Trump that echoed the America first slogan he campaigned on. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is what he needs to focus his time on. Focus on the American people who voted for him, for all the things he claimed he was going to do.\u201d Porter said. \u201cRestore the funding and leave us alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sherrill criticized the Trump administration\u2019s actions for the potential waste of $20 million a month if Gateway construction remains stopped, in addition to legal costs.<\/p>\n

Other speakers referred to Trump\u2019s demand that he would release the funding if Democrats agreed to support renaming<\/a> New York City\u2019s Penn Station and Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, D.C., for him.<\/p>\n

U.S. Rep. Rob Menendez<\/a> (D-8th Dist.) challenged Trump to come to New Jersey, look laid off workers in the eye and \u201ctell them their future and our country\u2019s future is less important than getting his name on a building. I guarantee he will not.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThe right thing to do is get the funding released and let\u2019s drive this to its conclusion,\u201d he said. \u201cPublic transportation, public infrastructure belongs to all of us.\u201d <\/p>\n

A U.S. Court of Appeals declined to overturn a lower court ruling that ordered federal transportation agencies to restore funding frozen on Oct. 1, 2025. However, the larger funding issue is still before the courts.<\/p>\n

The Appeals Court will hear arguments on Feb. 23 about a federal appeal of the Feb. 6 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Jeannette A. Vargas. She ordered federal officials in President Donald Trump\u2019s<\/a> administration to release the funding. <\/p>\n

That was in response to a joint suit filed on Feb. 3 by New Jersey and New York which sued<\/a> the Trump administration<\/a>. The state\u2019s action came one day after a suit was filed by the Gateway Development Commission<\/a>, which is overseeing tunnel construction. Both contend the federal government breached contracts it signed in 2024.<\/p>\n

Multiple federal grants and loans for the Gateway totaling $12 billion were finalized and approved in 2024 by the Biden administration.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for the two states filed papers asking Judge Vargas for a 14-day extension of her restraining order against the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Transit Administration.<\/p>\n

Menendez said that he was optimistic the two states would prevail based on other court challenges the administration has lost.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are multiple instances across the county of when the the president and his administration tried to withhold congressionally appropriated money,\u201d the congressman said. \u201cI expect them to keep on losing.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill said federal officials have made available the first $30 million of $205 million…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467396,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-467395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}