NEW YORK – In a significant development, a federal judge has mandated the Trump administration to reinstate funding for a pivotal rail tunnel connecting New York and New Jersey. The decision arrived just in time, as work on this extensive infrastructure project was on the brink of halting.
This ruling follows the Trump administration’s earlier decision to withdraw $16 billion in funding, justifying the move with the ongoing government shutdown at the time and concerns raised by a senior federal budget official regarding potential unconstitutional expenditures linked to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
U.S. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas in Manhattan granted a temporary restraining order requested by New York and New Jersey, preventing the administration from cutting off the funds. This order remains in place while the states pursue a preliminary injunction to ensure continued funding as their legal battle progresses.
“The Court is convinced that Plaintiffs would face irreversible damage without an injunction,” Judge Vargas noted. “Plaintiffs have compellingly demonstrated that delaying such a crucial infrastructure project would harm the public interest.”
As of Friday evening, neither the White House nor the U.S. Department of Transportation had issued responses to requests for comments.
New York Attorney General Letitia James hailed the decision as “a crucial triumph for the workforce and travelers in both New York and New Jersey.”
“I am grateful the court acted quickly to block this senseless funding freeze, which threatened to derail a project our entire region depends on,” James said in a statement. “The Hudson Tunnel Project is one of the most important infrastructure projects in the nation, and we will keep fighting to ensure construction can continue without unnecessary federal interference.”
The panel overseeing the project, the Gateway Development Commission, had said work would stop late Friday afternoon because of the federal funding freeze, resulting in the immediate loss of about 1,000 jobs as well as thousands of additional jobs in the future.
The new tunnel is meant to ease strain on an existing, over 110-year-old tunnel that connects New York and New Jersey for Amtrak and commuter trains, where delays can lead to backups up and down the East Coast.
New York and New Jersey sued over the funding pause this week, as did the Gateway Development Commission, moving to restore the Trump administration’s support.
The suspension was seen as way for the Trump administration to put pressure on Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York, whom the White House was blaming for a government shutdown last year. The shutdown was resolved a few weeks later.
At a hearing in the states’ lawsuit earlier Friday in Manhattan, Shankar Duraiswamy, of the New Jersey attorney general’s office, told the judge that the states need “urgent relief” because of the harm and costs that will occur if the project is stopped.
“There is literally a massive hole in the earth in North Bergen,” he said, referring to the New Jersey city and claiming that abandoning the sites, even temporarily, “would pose a substantial safety and public health threat.”
Duraiswamy said the problem with shutting down now is that even a short stoppage would cause longer delays because workers will be laid off and go off to other jobs and it’ll be hard to quickly remobilize if funding becomes available. And, he added, “any long-term suspension of funding could torpedo the project.”
Tara Schwartz, an assistant U.S. attorney arguing for the government, disagreed with the “parade of horribles” described by attorneys for the states.
She noted that the states had not even made clear how long the sites could be maintained by the Gateway Development Commission. So the judge asked Duraiswamy, and he said they could maintain the sites for a few weeks and possibly a few months, but that the states would continue to suffer irreparable harm because trains would continue to run late because they rely on an outdated tunnel.
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Collins reported from Hartford, Connecticut.
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